The Pondering Absurdist

(personal disclaimer, up front… I am not bigoted or racist toward ANY people or people groups… I’m just calling things “as I see them” in this post)

When did Western Civilization, at least that portion of the civilization living within the United States of America, become a society with such a “victim” mentality? When one looks at some blog writer aliases, some email addresses, or simply how a lot of people identify themselves, one might see the words “survivor” of this… or “victim” of that… In today’s world it seems that a lot of people love to put the blame for their current situation in life on the backs of others. “Well, I was bullied in high school, so I’m a bullying survivor.” “My parents spanked me, or whipped me with a belt when I was a child, so I’m a victim of child abuse.” “My husband beat me, so I’m a spousal abuse survivor.” And, don’t blame the messenger, “I was roofied at a bar, so I’m a rape victim/survivor.”

Humans have survived for tens or hundreds of thousands of years (Homo Sapiens, our current species, is credited with arriving on the scene around 300,000 years ago) with bad shit happening to them through all those years, even to death. “So I got gored by a woolly mammoth…” or “clawed to death by a cave bear,” it just wasn’t my day. Early man also routinely had sex with and produced offspring from any female they saw as a good candidate to propagate their “seed.” This often included immediate family members (and even members of other “species”). If another early man had a portion of food to eat and a stronger man didn’t, guess who ate, and who didn’t? It was called “natural selection”, or “survival of the fittest.”

It seems like it’s only been within the past ±80 years or so that people have started putting the blame for their own problems on others. As late as the World Wars (I and II), families were overjoyed to see their family members come back home alive from the front. They weren’t considered “abused” or “victims” of something unless they were dead and didn’t return home at all. Then there was nobody to blame, it was just war. Some of the soldiers suffered “shell shock” from their experiences, but they didn’t blame someone for it, they just accepted it and lived with it as part of their future lives. Soldiers came home with missing limbs, or worse, and still were just happy to be home and away from the nightmare that is war. In the 1950s, if a nerd said something provocative to the big dumb oaf known for bullying other students and got his ass kicked after school, he knew it was coming… and rightly so, because he had “poked the bear.”

It was probably in the late 1950s or early 1960s, when the American youth really started to rebel against societal norms. Illicit (non pharmaceutical) drugs really started to enter the scene and the police started cracking down on people who were not acting like “normal” citizens due to their being under the influence of mind-altering substances. Then these rebels started complaining about the “pigs” and blaming the police for their problems, instead of their own actions, taking the drugs that were causing their problems. When the Vietnam War happened and American soldiers started coming home with altered states of mind and missing limbs, the blame game started happening. There was talk about the US government’s use of Agent Orange, and how it had affected so many of our soldiers. In reality, Agent Orange affected multitudes of Vietnamese people more than it ever affected American soldiers. But did we hear about that? No, we only heard from the Americans playing the blame game when they got back home from the war.

The topic in this following paragraph may raise some hackles, but I think it goes right along with the subject at hand. My disclaimer is that the black peoples should never have been made slaves for white people who thought they were superior and “better than others.” That said, there are still many “African Americans” (not all black peoples came from Africa) today who blame their (poor? desolate?) position in life on slavery and what happened to their ancestors. Slavery has been around for thousands of years, and it has happened to many different people groups, most of them “white” skinned. None of the ancestors of slaves have been so loud about it as the “African Americans.” While it is true that the Civil Rights Act didn’t happen until as late as 1964 (over 60 years ago now), slavery for the black peoples in America was finally abolished in the mid 1800s, several generations ago for any person who might be still alive today. Slavery has absolutely no bearing on your state of being or position in life today. Many black people have suffered and died over the years to assure that. My advice is to take responsibility for your own actions and move onward and upward, and quit blaming the past for your lack of positive action and assimilation into society like the rest of the multi-generational immigrants in this country. I’ve known several black people who speak perfectly good English like the rest of the country, and who don’t lower themselves to speak “ebonics” anywhere and everywhere just because it represented their “culture.” These progressive, true Americans, are looked down upon by the less educated of their own society. If you really want to talk about oppressed peoples, look to the Jewish people. They have been oppressed for thousands of years, yet they keep on keeping on. They have become some of the most educated, wealthiest people (stereotype much?), and they don’t complain that their great, great, great…….. aunt back in 120 AD couldn’t circumcise their baby because the emperor Hadrian decreed that it was illegal.

With today’s youth (and a bit older, even up into the “millennials”), it seems that a lot of people are also now identifying as being on the “autism spectrum.” To be frank, it is my firm opinion that ALL humans (all organic chemistry “machines”) would appear somewhere on the autism spectrum due to their individual, particular brand of crazy… after all, what is “normal” for a human? The term is completely objective, depending on the individual in question. If two people were exactly the same, they wouldn’t be “individuals.” Even “identical” twins are not identical in every aspect.

“My therapist” also seems to be quite the buzzword phrase these days. Therapists are just part of that human equation mentioned above (organic chemistry machines), and could be just as fucked up as the “next guy.” Why should you need to spill your guts to another individual (human), who has their own specific ideas/concepts of what is “right” and what is “wrong?” Just because they have an education in Human Psychology? If you can’t survive in life without paying hundreds of dollars per session to “wash your dirty laundry,” then maybe you should just let natural selection take its course and help out the gene pool for the future of humanity.

Regarding my postulates in the first paragraph…

… if you are/were bullied in high school, there must be/have been a reason. You don’t seem “normal” (like everyone else) for some reason. I, personally, was a “know it all” (nerd) in elementary and junior high school, but was never bullied. It wasn’t until I transferred to a private “religious” school that I was harassed because I was a nerd and didn’t fit into the “cool” crowd. Thankfully I was big enough that I was never bullied physically. If you are bullied physically, there are options. Talk with the teachers or principal. Take martial arts classes and kick the ass of the would-be bully. Tell your parents about it and transfer to another school? Granted, bullying isn’t cool at all, and the bully should be the one punished. But instead of crying “woe is me,” maybe do something about it if you can.

… when I was a child, my brother and I lived in fear of the leather belt in the coffee table drawer. It wasn’t because my parent(s) was/were child abusers, it was because if my brother or I did something wrong, we knew there would be consequences. That is how it should be, and I don’t consider myself to have ever been “abused” as a child if I received “the belt” as a consequence of something I did that was against the (stated beforehand) rules. All too often these days, people don’t want to pay the consequences for their bad (anti-societal) actions. They consider it “abuse” if their own personal space has been compromised because of their breaking a set of rules (laws?) that was set and known to them. Don’t go crying “woe is me” if you’ve done something that you know is wrong. If your parents are/were truly abusers (broken bones, burns, etc.), then they need(ed) to be reported to the proper authorities. After the first broken bone, the onus is/was on you to get out of that situation. Don’t just live with it and complain about it.

… I have never been violent, or the receiver of violence in a relationship, so I cannot relate to this personally. However… there HAD to have been signs early in the relationship that any potential spouse had tendencies toward violence. Rather than saying “oh, it will get better… they will change…”, get the fuck OUT of the situation, BEFORE it becomes a bad place to be. As mentioned above, individuals are all different, and most of the time they don’t “change” just for you or the sake of a relationship. Some individuals have a chemical imbalance in their brains that leads them to irrational behavior and violent tendencies. Don’t say “woe is me” after the fact… let the po-po deal with them AFTER you leave them in your rear view mirror when you detect that first sign of violence.

… and lastly, if you’re in a bar and get “roofied”… why were you not watching your drink at all times? Men, for the most part, are horny, disgusting pigs if they’re out in a bar trolling for women. I’m not condoning the behavior, but some of them even stoop to the (illegal) level of drugging women to “have their way” with them. If you’re out and about, having fun with “the girls” or on a “Tinder date” in a bar, it is your own responsibility to watch out for yourself and your surroundings. You can’t automatically assume that everyone around you is trustworthy like a Boy Scout. Rather than crying “woe is me” after the fact, watch your surroundings and keep a close eye on your drink in a public (even private) setting.

Humans (around the world) are not perfect. Most of them are far from it. We are all individuals… fucked up in one way or another, but everyone, or someone, else is not to blame. It’s just the “nature of the beast.” If an American soldier ended up in Russia today and was staring down the barrel of a Kalashnikov, I’m sure the Russian soldier wouldn’t give two shits if the American said “stop, you can’t shoot me, you’re bullying me.” If you’re an American teen and your parents tell you “no, you can’t go out on a date with Charlie…” it’s not child abuse. They have their reasons. We all don’t need to fit into this little niche of being a victim of this, or a survivor of that. Just grow the fuck up and live life! It is way too short to focus on all the negativity!

PA