Defeating the Victimhood Mentality: Climbing Out of the Hole We Dug For Ourselves

Posted on June 28, 2007
Filed Under General Thoughts, Personal, Blogging and New Media |

Victimhood, Personal-Success Literature, & the Social Construction of Reality


My intention with this series of posts isn’t to answer questions or provide solutions. I’m simply pondering and thinking aloud in the hope of getting you to think along.

Growing up, I’ve had too many mostly seemingly unrelated interests and lacked a focus on one particular topic. More recently however there has been a convergence occurring in my mind, a convergence which I’m very excited about.

I sincerely believe that one of the biggest things holding us Muslims, Africans and Arabs back from moving forward is the collective state of mind we’re entrenched in and suffering from. Victimhood. But this is only a symptom of a deeper underlying problem, and that is a collective paranoia based on the premise that we’re under siege. It’s this deep paranoia that is crippling us and consuming our energy. Many, if not most of us are so obsessed and focused on outside threats or “threats” to such an extent, that it makes us lose the focus desperately needed to solve our internal issues.

How did that become our reality? How do we deal with it? These simple questions awakened me to the immense complexities we face if we are ever to truly progress.

I’m a huge fan of personal-success literature. In fact I like it so much that if I were the minister of education of any country, I’d make it part of the education syllabus. I’m dead serious. My most favorite author of all time is none other than Napoleon Hill. Anthony Robbins has also written some pretty good books. Moreover, he once said “the only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself”.

The story we keep telling ourselves is a negative one infested with victimhood. How do we change that? I believe a large part of “the answer” lies within personal-success literature and studies related to the sociology of knowledge. One particular topic that has recently captured my attention is social constructionism, originally born out of the book “The Social Construction of Reality”.

The Social Construction of Reality is a classic book in the sociology of knowledge written by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann and published in 1966.

The work introduced the term social construction into the social sciences. The central concept of The Social Construction of Reality is that persons and groups interacting together in a social system form, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other’s actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalised. In the process of this institutionalisation, meaning is embedded in society. Knowledge and people’s conception (and belief) of what reality is becomes embedded in the institutional fabric of society. Social reality is therefore said to be socially constructed.

The vast majority of people have the intellectual capacity to learn, do and become what they want. However the majority of those same people unfortunately don’t have the emotional capacity to step up to the challenges. IQ is great, but EQ is more important. A reality infested with victimhood only escalates the problem further.

There is a significant overlap between personal-success literature and what has been written about social constructionism. Also as a blogger or a person who reads sociopolitical blogs regularly, you’d realize that the internet and blogging are playing an increasing role in the social construction of reality for people around the world with access to cyberspace. Furthermore the effectiveness of the construction and or deconstruction of social reality is determined by various aspects including two things which I already have deep interests in, marketing and knowledge management.

Dominating the market place of ideas will only occur through better marketing, and that requires a thorough understanding of the audience we’re communicating our ideas to, which again brings us back to what the social reality of that audience is in the first place. What constitutes knowledge and what doesn’t to a particular society? In the West there is a higher emphasis on empiricism rather than revelation. In the Muslim world, the emphasis is instead generally on revelation. How can the proliferation of communication technologies and the internet be harnessed to spread empowering ideas that can bring about a positive mentality shift? If that happens, will it deal a sufficient and major blow to the victimhood mentality we generally suffer from? Those are just some of the questions that will be keeping me busy for the coming months (maybe even years).

I have a lot to read, consume, digest and learn. It’s fun. These are extraordinary times we live in. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to live and see the beginnings of the Sudan I envision, a Sudan with the best of Sudan, the UAE, America, Malaysia, Turkey, Europe and South Africa.

Information is like a drug and so I read to get my high.

Comments

19 Responses to “Defeating the Victimhood Mentality: Climbing Out of the Hole We Dug For Ourselves”

  1. Helen on June 28th, 2007 7:25 pm

    I like the philosophical, probing angles of this post especially with the important question of how Afro/Arab or Afro-Arab societies can reconceptualize their space in the knowledge economy by identifying what parts of their collective identities are positive, i.e. contributing to growth but and negative, i.e. depreciating growth.

    So that’s the knowledge economy perspective.

    But what about values? This is the problem of social transformation, and why paranoia and conservatism have such a strong place in Afro/Arab societies. And what about the autonomy to determine ones own values. The problem with this knowledge economy is that there’s a mostly a one-way transfer of whose knowledge is trustworthy, meaningful, important, useful…

    …and we cannot blame people who have existed for years, generations, centuries with their own (in many cases very practical) views of what constitutes knowledge to contest the dominant viewpoints.

    btw, I just got back from Sudan and had a great time - very friendly, wonderful people in general…

  2. howie on June 29th, 2007 2:20 am

    Internal vs. external locus of control…

    One group says “I am this way because of “society, genetics, medication, parents, white people, black people, the government, my horoscope, God, Satan, the weather”…External factors control my life…

    A smaller group says “I have to be responsible for my behavior, attitudes, ..especially my behavior”…I have to focus on what I can do about circumstances…even terrible circumstances.

    Group A tends to self-righteously go nowhere, but they have great justifications for it. Group B tends to get stuff done.

    Can a way of thinking infect and permeate a group, neighborhood, society, culture…yes…you bet it can.

    External forces can be horrific…you lay down…or you try to make things better.

  3. Drima on June 29th, 2007 6:26 pm

    Thanks Helen. May I know what you were in Sudan for? Humanitarian agencies or just chilling?

    Howie, you defintely got the point of this post. Everyone is capable of feeling victimhood but to varying degrees. The thing however is that it should not be our mindset by default. It shouldn’t at all. Unfortunately for too many people, it is. That’s what needs to be changed and it can only truly happen once the social construction of reality can be altered by injecting fresh and unheard of empowering ideas that break down victimhood rather than enforce it.

  4. Howie on June 29th, 2007 8:18 pm

    Drima-

    No hero is going to rescue us for the most part…no great leader…no great new form of government etc.

    Sure those things are important…very important…but so much change and progress can and must begin with each one of us…

    I think you are quite correct…you wrote that paragraph nicely. The realm of fresh new ways of thinking is critical in this…alternatives to rage, or defeatism, escapism, blaming, projecting etc.

    Great job here

  5. Rara Avis on June 29th, 2007 8:59 pm

    Salam Drima,
    I concur your contemplation here. Unfortunately, our external and internal perception of anything in the world depends on the external response it results in. I mean don’t we say in Sudan
    أكل على كيفك وألبس على كيف الناس؟
    that’s of course a minor issue, but as society grows, these issues grow accordingly in size and number.

    Unfortunately, social engineering is a generational process, and I hope our Sudanese society will undergo it, although I’m not optimistic about it from personal experience.

    Take care and keep it up

    Rara Avis

  6. Howie on June 29th, 2007 11:15 pm

    Rara-

    . “Unfortunately, our external and internal perception of anything in the world depends on the external response it results in”

    I would challenge you to re-think the word “depends” which is defeatest and again sounds like the external locus of control…

    “heavily influenced by”…that I would agree with.

    If this shyt was easy…there would be little to struggle with…Rara you are right…this is likely generational…if ever…

    As we say in America…”its a dark and lonely job…but somebody’s got to do it!”

    People like you, Drima…hopefully me…are seeds…not Moses, Jesus, Bhuddah, Mohamed that can bring complete social revolution…but we can shine some light, challenge people’s thoughts, bring a couple folk together…

    Hell…I have a Darfurian buddy now…a Muslim…who would have thunk a little Jew boy from LA would go fishing one day with a guy like that?

    We haven’t changed the world…but we can make things better for some…and if it is you, or your mom, or sister etc. that was the one positively affected…then that is a really big deal, at least to you it is.

    For sure I can do something about ME…that is where, hopefully, something better gets started.

  7. Mideast Youth - Thinking Ahead » Blog Archive » Defeating the Victimhood Mentality: Climbing Out of the Hole We Dug For Ourselves on June 30th, 2007 6:00 pm

    […] from The Sudanese Thinker) […]

  8. Helen on June 30th, 2007 6:39 pm

    Hey Drima,

    I just went to visit Eritreans living there.

    I know that you and Howie are trying to get to a point of agency and away from self-victimization, and I understand that because I’m tired of the victimization of Africans myself - but let’s just be careful to recognize that some people really ARE victims and others ARE victimizers.
    It is an example of our privilege that we are able to write about it and are not mired in victimhood ourselves. The difficulty is trying to understand the difference between someone who can get themselves out of a circumstance by looking at their support systems and someone who can’t because of a general lack of it. Thanks.

  9. Drima on June 30th, 2007 6:52 pm

    “The difficulty is trying to understand the difference between someone who can get themselves out of a circumstance by looking at their support systems and someone who can’t because of a general lack of it. Thanks.”

    Good point.

    PS: knowing you were or you are a victim of something is very different from having a victimhood mindset. ;)

  10. howie on July 1st, 2007 5:44 am

    Helen-

    I don’t think anybody here is saying there are no victims…that is absurd and there are, clearly, victims who are powerless in certain circumstances…in fact, often…

    What we are addressing here is a way of thinking that leads to a sense of victimization when one CAN do something about circumstances yet falls into blaming, scapegoating etc etc etc. I have seen plenty of this victimization thinking, in fact, when individuals have ALL KINDS of options…

  11. Drima on July 1st, 2007 6:15 am

    I can tell Howie, after all you’re a psychiatrist! ;)

  12. Roman Kalik on July 1st, 2007 8:39 am

    Great post, Drima, though I have little, if anything, to add to what was already said in the comments.

  13. Drima on July 1st, 2007 1:45 pm

    Thanks Roman. I’m going to be spending an increasing amount of time in the coming months researching the things mentioned in this post and other stuff related to them.

  14. The Sudanese Thinker » Britain’s Terrorist Plot on July 2nd, 2007 7:08 am

    […] of Muslims, the terrorist supporters and the ones in denial. The ones in denial are drowned in victimhood. As for the ones who support the Bin Laden types, they’re just blinded by anger and pure […]

  15. Mideast Youth - Thinking Ahead » Blog Archive » Britain’s Terrorist Plot on July 2nd, 2007 7:26 am

    […] of Muslims, the terrorist supporters and the ones in denial. The ones in denial are drowned in victimhood. As for the ones who support the Bin Laden types, they’re just blinded by anger and pure […]

  16. Ross Cornwell on July 2nd, 2007 8:17 pm

    I enjoyed readingyour blog today, and I thought that you might be interested to learn that a new edition of Napoleon Hill’s classic book “Think and Grow Rich” has been published.

    Its title is “Think and Grow Rich!” (subtitled) “The Original Version, Restored and Revised.” I am the editor/annotator of this new 412-page edition, which is really an homage to Dr. Hill. (For several years I was the editor-in-chief of “Think & Grow Rich Newsletter.”)

    What I have done is this: to restore Dr. Hill’s book to its original manuscript content (it was first published in 1937, but was abridged in 1960), annotate it with more than 50 pages of endnotes (most of the persons and events he discusses are generally unknown to readers today), index it thoroughly, add an appendix with a wealth of additional information about Dr. Hill and his work, and revise the book in ways to help remove certain “impediments” to reading the book today (language that today would be considered obsolete, sexist or racist). None of these things had previously been done with TGR.

    If you would like to learn a little more about this project, a quick visit to www.tgr-restored-revised.com will give you some details. The “Editor’s Foreword” provides more complete information, and the “Testimonials” page will demonstrate how well-received this new book is around the world.

    Here is the book’s Amazon.com page…

    http://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Original-Restored/dp/1593302002/sr=1-1/qid=1172004763/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-1493475-7148634?ie=UTF8&s=books

    ..and BarnesandNoble.com page…

    http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781593302009&itm=9 .

    The book is available on all the Amazon websites and most other online sellers, it can be ordered by any bookstore, and it will start appearing in bookstores soon.

    Our edition of TGR! is superior in every way to other versions on the market. It is a trade paperback, not a pocket-size mass market paperback. It is 412 pages versus 230+ (depending on the edition). It looks better, feels better, reads better than any other version. It is fast becoming the “version of choice” among Napoleon Hill devotees and other students of success and high achievement.

    Thank you for your time and attention.

    Ross Cornwell, Editor

  17. Helen on July 18th, 2007 5:05 pm

    Ok Howie…point well taken! I appreciate the difference. Helen.

  18. Africa Needs More Investment, Not More Aid : The Sudanese Thinker on November 7th, 2007 11:41 am

    […] Bank and IMF. Moreover, I too I’m a believer in self-initiative and a staunch opponent of the victimhood mentality many of us are entrenched in. Watch his […]

  19. Ayn Rand Speaking to the Elephants : The Sudanese Thinker on December 20th, 2007 3:23 pm

    […] aforementioned is related to ideas of mine written in a previous post: What constitutes knowledge and what doesn’t to a particular society? In the West there is a […]

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