A culture of victimhood
By Gabor B. Levy

Chemical & Engineering News carried an editorial last fall (October 13, 1997) 
entitled "Chemical Angst." It detailed the anxieties of the research community 
with respect to support and budgets. There was nothing wrong with the report 
itself, but it triggered my own anxiety about the spread of the culture of 
victimhood in the United States. I left Europe for America mainly because I 
understood that America was not burdened with this blight, and I found it so. 
Now, however, I sense with apprehension that we are slipping into the 
ideological morass as well. As Charles Sykes detailed in his recent book, 
A Nation of Victims (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), in today's America, 
everyone is a victim and no one is responsible.

When I write editorials, I sometimes feel uneasy discussing a wide variety of 
subjects. Most of us do not have expertise beyond one, or a very few, topics, 
and 1 certainly am so limited. However, I feel doubly qualified to discuss 
victimhood, having both a Jewish and a Hungarian background. There is no need 
to detail the 2000-year-old persecution of the Jews, which almost led to total 
extermination. As for the Hungarians, they also have historical claims of being 
victimized: devastation by the Tartars, the 150-year occupation by the Ottoman 
Turks, the oppressive rule of the Hapsburgs, and finally, the dismemberment of 
their country after World War I. Even the Hungarian national anthem has a 
plaintive, somber cast. It starts with an appeal to God to "bless the 
Hungarians.. who have long been torn by ill fate... a folk that akeady has 
atoned for all the past and the future." Growing up in this atmosphere, I 
realized how debilitating this attitude of a victim is, and I rejected it. 
It is devastating for the individual, and when spread over groups or entire 
nations, it can have truly tragic consequences.

The ideology of being a victim is a preferred lever of demagogues. I have 
observed how the Nazis came to power by selling Germans on the idea that 
they were victims of the treaty of Versailles imposed by the Allies. A more 
recent example is how the Shi'ite clergy took over Than using the basic 
tenets of their religion that preaches victimhood. In the United States, 
it is used across the entire social spectrum by a large number of politicians, 
so-called leaders, and spokespersons to gain power. It includes virtually 
everybody: children, the elderly, the disabled, and religious and ethnic 
groups of all stripes. There are militias (oppressed by our laws), the 
poor (victims of neglect), the rich (victims of taxation), motorists 
(victims of speed laws), motorcyclists (oppressed by helmet laws), and 
smokers (victims of cigarette toxicity and restrictive antismoking ordinances).
Not to mention women (victims of male sexism and brutality), and men (victims 
of female greed and aggressiveness). No one is exempt. We are indeed becoming 
a nation of victims.

This trend may lead to the disuniting and fragmentation of our society. It 
is a serious threat not to be taken lightly. Moreover, on a personal level, 
the mentality of being a victim is paralyzing and totally disabling. Once 
a person decides to be a victim, all self-criticism and self~improvement 
ceases. It has become universal in American society with tragicomic 
consequences. Recently, for instance, Autumn Jackson, who got caught 
trying to extort $40 million from Bill Cosby, declared in a televised 
interview after her conviction and sentencing that she considered herself 
a victim! Distasteful and depressing as this whole affair was, I had to 
laugh at its finale. It reminded me of the old Jewish joke of a man who 
meets an acquaintance with a terrible stutter, who says that he is applying 
for a job as a radio announcer. When the astonished fellow meets the man 
again and asks whether he got the job, he is told that he did not because 
the people at the station are anti-Semites.

The sad part is that this need not be so. I attended a reception some time 
ago at Yale University, held in honor of the visiting Lord Balogh, 
distinguished economist of Balliol College at Oxford University. We were 
standing in a group and our host, Professor Tobin, asked Balogh to explain 
why there were so many successful Hungarian Jewish scholars in every field. 
Balogh, who was himself of such origin, replied that the repression in 
Hungary was not so brutal as to totally discourage people, but the 
antiSemitism was sufficiently strong to spur them to maximum performance. 
This assessment was surely correct, but such constructive mindset was not 
limited to this small group suffering religious discrimination. I found 
similar attitudes widespread in the United States, where families were 
scrambling to emerge from the Great Depression of the 1930s. As the problem 
of victim culture is seriously considered, a great puzzle emerges. Half a 
century ago, Americans were generally self-reliant, motivated, and good-
natured. Today, the majority seems to have become bellicose, morose, and 
self-centered. We are on the way of becoming a nation of whiners. How 
did this happen?

It is probably due to a confluence of several things. First, survival is 
easier than in the earlier years, and people have the luxury of being 
fussy and demanding. Then there are the cadres of the legal profession, 
which promote discord. Finally, there are elected and self-appointed 
leaders of groups and splinter groups who maintain their power through 
manipulating their adherents into believing they are victims of one thing 
or another.

When probing deeper, a general psychological basis emerges. In this 
connection, the writings of David Gelernter of Yale University are 
revealing. For one thing, he is a genuine victim, having been seriously 
injured by a package mailed by the Unabomber. However, he vigorously 
rejects the debilitating label and mindset of a victim. He wrote in 
his Drawing Life (New York: The Free Press, 1997):

"When you encourage a man to see himself as a victim of 
anything-crime, poverty, bigotry, bad luck-you are piling 
bricks on his chest." 

But the puzzle still remains as to how the "spokespeople" unfailingly 
push the right button to make their flock feel like victims. The 
explanation is at hand in Gelernter's earlier book, The Muse in the 
Machine (New York: The Free Press, 1994). He proposes that human cognition, 
human thought processes, differ over a wide spectrum. At one end are the 
"low-focus" processes, and at the other are the "high-focus" ones. 
Spectroscopists may not be pleased by the use of optical terms, but the 
propositions seem plausible. The "high-focus" is characterized by piecing 
together memories in logical context, operations typical in science and 
technology. The "low-focus" regimes adjoin dreams and daydreams, and are 
supportive of the arts. They are the fountain of creativity, relying not 
on logical strings but rather on emotional content and coherence.

It is clear that the majority of our fellow citizens operate in a low-focus 
regime most of the time. Entertainment and arts reign supreme today, and 
poets seem to require hurt and suffering to be successful. The whole world 
seems to be on an emotional binge, and the press leads in the ways of 
illogic. A recent survey conducted at the Columbia University Graduate School 
of Journalism revealed that the majority of students believe in extrasensory 
perception and dousing, and a quarter even believe in the lost continent of 
Atlantis.

Geleruter thinks that low and high focus are not only compatible, but that 
they can be melded. He himself is a computer scientist as well as an artist 
and a writer. I have my doubts, and have expressed them recently ("The 
scientifically illiterate vs. politically clueless," Am Lab 1998; 30[6}:6). 
Be that as it may, the question seems to be not so much whether we can bridge 
this chasm but whether we, in science and technology, can resist the pervasive 
mentality of victimhood. If this means two cultures, then let us celebrate it. 
Vive la differance!

Dr Levy is consulting Editor of  American Laboratory