Victonomy

THE SEVEN CHARACTERISTICS OF A VICTONOMY where money is made by being and creating victims An article by Maya Lievegoed & Haim Dror

If in an economy money is the currency, in a victonomy victimhood is, and the haves (victims) are privileged over the have-nots (non-victims). Below you can read how to recognize if you are living in a victonomy and why you shouldn’t want to.

1 It makes you believe suffering is avoidable First, a victonomy makes you believe you can always feel happy. Life should always be fun and that anytime you don’t feel like that, someone owes you.

But not only is a life without suffering impossible, we need to suffer. Not all the time, but once a while. To understand the value of what we do have. To see the contrast between joy and pain. To appreciate the good things in life. And as Viktor Frankl would say: to find our meaning[1]. Does that mean there are no victims? Of course there are. In fact, you are more likely to meet a victim today than to not meet one. Everyone knows people who were bullied as a kid or suffered from another childhood trauma, have a chronic disease, had a car accident, lost their children or parents at a young age or crossed someone with bad intentions. I myself suffered from being born in a dysfunctional family with two mentally handicapped parents. We all become victims because we all, in some moment, will suffer to some degree. At the same time, we will all feel joy somewhere in our lives, also when life is tough. Even in wars. But in a victonomy, this is way too nuanced. Which brings us to the second characteristic.

2 There is no space for victim-nuance It would be so nice if there is good and bad, black and white.

‘Unfortunately’, life is more challenging. There are men who became victims of sexual aggression, female perpetrators, children who killed adults. There are people of all colors who have suffered from racism. Are there averages? Of course. But there are exceptions as well and we will never reach a just society by generalizations. However, the victonomy stimulates an ‘us versus them’ mindset, because the more explicit the perpetrator, the bigger victimhood can be claimed. ‘All women suffer from all men’ sounds worse for women than ‘some women suffer from some men in some situations’.

You can see this lack of nuance entwined with the politics of identity. But generalizations, like groupthink, don’t capture the complete truth and division never led to commonwealth (or sense😊).

3 Victimhood becomes political But why does the victonomy eliminate nuance? Because it aims to make suffering political by creating a false hierarchy in suffering. It’s false, because if we start ‘measuring suffering’, people from my generation for example (I was born in the 80’s) could never claim to be a victim. What is our suffering compared to the suffering of our grandparents in the horrific Second World War? But the victonomy prefers false ‘levels’ of groupvictimhood over true suffering. As a result, it became easier to criticize some types of genders more than others, some skin colors more than others, some sexual preferences, some religions, some nationalities and so on. Yet, the hierarchy isn’t straightforward. There are features in the hierarchy (for example skin color), hierarchies within the features (within one skin color) and hierarchies in the combination of features (for example, a specific type of gender, religion and handicap). This hierarchy is also referred to as the ‘oppression Olympics’, where ‘victims’ compete over being more oppressed than others. But such hierarchies won’t help the victims because like joy, suffering and perpetration is personal and should be treated as such. We can’t truly help an individual by defining him or her based on group characteristics. A good therapist, doctor or friend, will always see the individual, before the group, before a color, before a gender, before a religion. Just like a good judge will punish the perpetrator based on his or her individual actions and not on the group he or she (seems to) belong to. But in a victonomy, suffering gets a ‘group-label’ which leads to characteristic number four.

4 It makes it difficult to recognize the real victims The group labels in the victonomy make it difficult to recognize the real victims. If every handshake by a man becomes sexual intimidation of women, the real rape victims might not be believed in the future. If any joke is homophobic, real anti-gay violence might not be reported anymore.

If there will be a label for any type of deviance in a child’s learning curve, children with real learning disabilities will not be taken care of. They won’t firstly for the words (like suffering and trauma) will lose their meaning and secondly because society will run out of resources. The misuse of the term victims is a smoke screen blinding us for the real victims. In the victonomy they are the ones who will suffer most.

But since suffering is the currency, in order not to go bankrupt the victonomy needs victims. So it doesn’t care if it misses out on the ‘real’ victims. In fact, it even creates unnecessary ones.

(By the way, if you wonder how to recognize the ‘real’ victims simply think of this example: everyone understands that firefighters won’t come if you burn a whole in your pants with a cigarette. Firefighters prioritize problems and expect you to take responsibility. We need to do the same with victimhood. We will all suffer someday from something or someone. But we need to prioritize, to take responsibility and only in extreme cases and when our own capacities don’t suffice, call for help.)

5 It creates unnecessary victims Perhaps even worse than missing out on the real ones, is that a victonomy creates unnecessary victims. It does so in at least three different ways: Harmful helping: There are people that want to help ‘those poor orphans in Haiti’ and adopt them. Even though it is repeatedly shown how such international adoptions stimulate human trafficking[2] and separate children from their biological parents (supply follows demand). Another example: in the Netherlands more and more children receive healthcare and medication, for example for ADHD[3]. But do we know the long-term effects of this medication on their biological development[4]? It’s great to help others, but we need to make sure that they really need help and that we are the ones who know how to effectively provide it. Sometimes harmful helping comes from less noble motivations and is simply money driven[5].

Shrinking your action-radius: By repeatedly depicting all men as violent (I’m sure every woman knows at least some nice men), women might start te be afraid to work in a male-dominated workplace or to approach male investors. By labeling a child with four different learning-problems before the age of 8, the parents and the child him- or herself might already see a glass ceiling. Fear shrinks our action radius to feel safe, thus decreasing our opportunities to grow and accomplish ourselves. There are great men to work with. There are people without limbs who are great parents, there are blind people who successfully climbed mount Everest[6] and people with dyslexia who wrote amazing books[7]. It might help sometimes to know what makes you different. But by repeatedly being reminded of your limitations you might become insecure or even forget about the capacities you do have.

In the past, the jarring motion of trains was believed to cause brain injury to their passengers[8]. If we wouldn’t have tried it anyway, we would never have travelled the way we do nowadays. We would have become victims of our unnecessary fear.

Distraction from the serious issues: By focusing on the false hierarchy of suffering, issues that create more victims are often ignored. It’s popular to protest guns, but more children die because of swimming pools[9]. It’s important to discuss police violence but we can’t ignore the bigger social and economic problems of single parent families[10]. Equal rights between men and women are important, but why we don’t talk at least as much about how our study-choice (think liberal arts versus engineering) affects our career opportunities and future income[11]? (If you want to know why, read again characteristics two and three) But not only does the victonomy create unnecessary victims, it will then make you believe suffering is permanent.

6 It makes you believe victimhood is permanent In a victonomy you lose your worth when you lose your victimhood. That means it first ‘helps you’ to become labelled as a victim and then stimulates you to stay one. People are diagnosed with all kinds of deviances and once a

‘victim’ they can become a certified ‘experience expert’. It may be about being alcoholic, sick, traumatized or some other kind of suffering. I find this a confusing concept. If you become an experience expert to help yourself, let’s simply call it therapy. If you follow such programs to find work, let’s just use the term reintegration.

I have also often been suggested to turn my experience with foster care into my profession. Though sharing knowledge is great (societies develop by the sake of it), the suffering-experience can start to define the person when it becomes their work, their reputation and perhaps even their income. Don’t misunderstand me: everyone deserves to find his or her passion, but I don’t believe all victims were born to work in the domain of suffering they experienced, later in life. And is it sustainable? Can you build a lifelong career on something that happened to you at the age of let’s say, sixteen?

People in the last phase of their lives won’t tell you they feel accomplished because they were (professional) victims. You do find people who feel accomplished because they overcame great suffering and were able to dream, laugh and love again. In other words, to not let the suffering define their journey. If you want to wish someone an accomplished life, don’t wish them a life without suffering, but the capacity to overcome it and find meaning in it. However, for that you need personal agency.

7 It removes your agency In order to ensure suffering, the victonomy will try to remove your agency (mainly by characteristics three and six). Why? Because nothing can reduce suffering more instantly than an individual asking him or herself ‘what can I do to suffer less or let others suffer less?’.[12] Instinctively we all understand the meaning and importance of personal agency. If you see someone falling in the street you wouldn’t drag him. You would help him to stand up and reclaim his personal agency.

However, in a victonomy trying to help a victim reclaim his or her agency becomes offensive (I would argue this is due to political correctness). But reflecting a victim his or her agency doesn’t mean we don’t believe he or she became a victim of something. Or that we think it’s OK what happened. In fact, it’s the opposite of being offensive. It means we believe they are more than a sufferer and can contribute more to society than their experience with suffering. It’s about respecting the other for all he or she is and can be. But for that we need to be allowed to focus on the solution and not only on the problem. For that we need to be allowed to talk about which lessons can be learned about everyone’s role, including the one of the victim.

Any form of emancipation is always based on a person’s capacity to act, not to be acted upon. It is a mindset we should not only ambition on the individual level, but as a society as a whole.

Rosa Parks decided to claim the chair she was already sitting on. She took agency and did what she could do to make society better. She was not trying to be divisive, nor was she a certified racism-expert before she took a stand. She ‘just’ didn’t accept to stay a victim. Oskar Schindler, once member of the Nazi party, atoned and bribed SS officials in order to save his Jewish workers. He didn’t first officially certify them as victims of antiSemitism. Schindler ‘just’ did what he could to reduce their suffering and consequently turned 1200 of them into survivors.

These are inspiring examples of how you don’t choose to become a victim, but heavily control if you or others stay one by reclaiming personal agency.

Doing so is simple, but not easy. It’s simple because it involves the actions of an individual. It’s not easy, because the victonomy will try to make you forget that taking agency is possible and even your responsibility. Because more than anything, agency combined with accountability means the difference between victimhood and victory. Between lamentation and learning. Between a suffer-full past and a meaningful future.

So now, ask yourself, are you living in a victonomy? And if so, what do you do to change it?

1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/20/health/haiti-orphanages/index.html [3] https://www.nji.nl/ADHD-Probleemschets-Cijfers [4] https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/jarenlang-aan-de-ritalin-watdoet-dat-met-je~ba25e419/ [5] Just think of the jobs involved in creating, distributing and managing those millions of labels (for example for dyslexia: https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/dyslexie-industrie?share=1) or selling more products (for example surgical meshes: https://www.fda.gov/newsevents/press-announcements/fda-takes-action-protect-womens-healthorders-manufacturers-surgical-mesh-intended-transvaginal) [6] https://erikweihenmayer.com/ [7] http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/success-stories/famous-authors-withdyslexia [8] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/railway-madness-victorian-trains [9] https://epidemiological.net/2015/01/30/guns-swimming-pools/ [10] Journal of Research on Adolescence"; Father Absence and Youth Incarceration; Cynthia C. Harper, et al; 2004 - Fragile Families Research Brief"; Parental Incarceration and Child Wellbeing in Fragile Families; April 2008 [11] https://digital.scp.nl/emancipatiemonitor2018/emancipatie-weer-in-delift/ [12] https://www.consciouslifestylemag.com/how-to-feel-good-and-happyalways/

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