Victims
There are victims in life. Children brought into an uncaring world by deficient parents are victims. Human beings injured or slain without provocation by the violence of the criminal, hateful or deranged are victims.
In a conversation yesterday with a respected and intelligent person who works with many troubled people with AIDS, I became aware that he sees anyone with HIV as a victim to be protected against what he perceives as a hostile general society. We were discussing methods of assuring medication adherence by people with HIV in correctional institutions. He rebuked my assertion of concern for the uninfected population, as well as the people infected with HIV. "It's their problem. They need to protect themselves from getting infected." He then defended people with HIV who do not disclose their status to potential sex partners as victims of prejudice. I was both disappointed and angered by this position, the official position of many AIDS organizations. I simply said, "I believe it is the responsibility of every infected person to disclose his status to every partner. I believe that people uninfected by sexually transmitted diseases have rights to tax-supported, public health protection too."
The internal group-think of a victim subculture can become paranoid and/or self-serving. This is due in part to shared trauma, which can become the glue that holds the subculture together. It can also be due to exploitation of fear by leadership who learn to depend on the subculture for their rather prosperous lifestyles. Examples can be seen in any minority subculture. A corrupt minority politician, a sex educator who decides that he is ethically obligated to one small segment of human beings, two examples at ends of a wide spectrum.
I resent the blanket denouncement of all victims by politicians and lobbyists on the political Right, who try to gut social-network programs and just litigation statutes for purely selfish motives. However, I also resent to exploitation of victims by their self-proclaimed advocates for equally selfish motives.
As a nurse, I have known many actual victims of life situations beyond their control. I have also known many people who see themselves as victims, when they are actually simply reaping what they have intentionally sewn in their lives by being irresponsible, proud and/or stupid. The problem with the "victim culture" mentality is that there are no lessons learned by discerning the difference between accidental and intentional personal disaster. In those lessons lie the means to prevent greater future personal disasters.
Being a humanist to me means being committed in belief and action to the greater good for human life and its environment. My commitment to non-violence is an essential component of that belief and action. I see violence as the greatest impediment to human rights and human justice. Violence, as I see it, is intentional human action which produces trauma. Trauma and the threat of trauma produce victims, who are impaired by their trauma to some degree for the rest of their lives. The prevention of intentional trauma is the responsibility of anyone who cares about human progress. Sheltering and/or enabling victims who then victimize is not a way to human progress.
We live in strange times. Here in Boston, a city councillor, Chuck Turner, a convicted felon, who accepted a bribe on camera, repeatedly gets air time in the media to proclaim himself a victim and a crusader for the victimized poor in response to being legitimately and justly bounced from the Boston City Council yesterday. How could he be taken seriously?
As the U.S. has become a nation of increased civil rights, it has unfortunately also become a nation of decreased personal responsibility. This may well be part of the natural pendulum swing of change in human society. Balance is hard to achieve in an individual life in modern society. It makes sense that a diverse society must struggle even greater to maintain balance.
In a conversation yesterday with a respected and intelligent person who works with many troubled people with AIDS, I became aware that he sees anyone with HIV as a victim to be protected against what he perceives as a hostile general society. We were discussing methods of assuring medication adherence by people with HIV in correctional institutions. He rebuked my assertion of concern for the uninfected population, as well as the people infected with HIV. "It's their problem. They need to protect themselves from getting infected." He then defended people with HIV who do not disclose their status to potential sex partners as victims of prejudice. I was both disappointed and angered by this position, the official position of many AIDS organizations. I simply said, "I believe it is the responsibility of every infected person to disclose his status to every partner. I believe that people uninfected by sexually transmitted diseases have rights to tax-supported, public health protection too."The internal group-think of a victim subculture can become paranoid and/or self-serving. This is due in part to shared trauma, which can become the glue that holds the subculture together. It can also be due to exploitation of fear by leadership who learn to depend on the subculture for their rather prosperous lifestyles. Examples can be seen in any minority subculture. A corrupt minority politician, a sex educator who decides that he is ethically obligated to one small segment of human beings, two examples at ends of a wide spectrum.
I resent the blanket denouncement of all victims by politicians and lobbyists on the political Right, who try to gut social-network programs and just litigation statutes for purely selfish motives. However, I also resent to exploitation of victims by their self-proclaimed advocates for equally selfish motives.
As a nurse, I have known many actual victims of life situations beyond their control. I have also known many people who see themselves as victims, when they are actually simply reaping what they have intentionally sewn in their lives by being irresponsible, proud and/or stupid. The problem with the "victim culture" mentality is that there are no lessons learned by discerning the difference between accidental and intentional personal disaster. In those lessons lie the means to prevent greater future personal disasters.
Being a humanist to me means being committed in belief and action to the greater good for human life and its environment. My commitment to non-violence is an essential component of that belief and action. I see violence as the greatest impediment to human rights and human justice. Violence, as I see it, is intentional human action which produces trauma. Trauma and the threat of trauma produce victims, who are impaired by their trauma to some degree for the rest of their lives. The prevention of intentional trauma is the responsibility of anyone who cares about human progress. Sheltering and/or enabling victims who then victimize is not a way to human progress.
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