"Victim Mentality"

My jujitsu coach has written that victim mentality is poison and something that should be done away with.

Probably the best way to confront victim mentality is to remind the person who has it of the conditions of people who have it worse than does he.

I am a Russian and a Jew. I have seen victim mentality in both populations. Some people accuse me of having it as well; but I don’t think I do. I know that I am privileged. Whenever I catch myself feeling sorry for myself I remind myself of the situation of people in Haiti.

Most of us have been victims of something. That does not mean that we have to remain that way. It is possible to have a good life even if you have been victimized, and I know many people who were seriously wronged who ended up moving on and having good lives.

So we have men going around being all bitter because their women left them or because they suspected them of marital infidelity. I want to tell these men that they don’t know how good they have it. At least their woman is not Andrea Dworkin. At least their woman did not try to screw them out of everything that they had, as happened to a number of men I know. Sometimes it takes someone who’s dealt with such women to correct such men.

Is it the case, as a guru once told me, that there are no innocent victims? No, that is not true. There were plenty of innocent victims of Nazi aggression during the Second World War. The Russian and American soldiers who died in that war weren’t weak, they weren’t whiners and they didn’t have a victim mentality. They were strong, brave, honest men who did what they had to do for their country. It is a complete insult to these heroic men to accuse them of victim mentality or anything of the sort.

Most problems have solutions, and in many cases people’s attention should be directed toward solving them. However neither are we God. There are innocent victims; however most of them do not have to remain victims. The Russians and the Americans both came home from the Second World War and built great countries. It is this direction that one should take.