Subtitles section Play video
-
In /On the Genealogy of Morals/, Nietzsche searches through history for the origins of
-
morality.
-
And in it, he talks about how some people use morality like a dog-leash to control others.
-
They use morality to get people to do what they want.
-
It's an interesting idea with lots of implications, but I'm interested in exploring one particular
-
version of this idea: /playing the victim/. Someone who plays the victim is an example
-
of someone who uses morality to gain power, and that's what I wanna explore in this
-
essay.
-
But before we can understand what it means to /play the victim/, we need to understand
-
what it means to be a victim.
-
For this essay, we can define a /victim/ as /someone who is taken advantage of by another
-
person/.
-
And we can call /the act of taking advantage of someone/ a /crime/.
-
And typically, what we want for all victims is /justice/.
-
And /justice/, as discussed by Nietzsche, can be thought of as /giving back to the victim
-
what was lost when the crime was committed/.
-
In other words, you can think of justice as /the repaying of debts/: the criminal must
-
repay the debt they acquired by taking advantage of the victim.
-
I'm not saying this is what justice means, but this is a way many people understand justice,
-
and this definition is important in the context of this video.
-
So what does it mean to play the victim?
-
What separates a genuine victim from someone playing the victim?
-
A genuine victim was actually taken advantage of, but someone playing the victim wasn't.
-
And how do you determine whether someone was actually taken advantage of?
-
It comes down to /consent/. Someone is taken advantage of when their presence is used in
-
a way they didn't agree to.
-
And so a true victim did not give consent or was not in a position to give consent,
-
such as in the case of a child or someone who was severely intoxicated.
-
But someone who plays the victim gives legitimate consent and then claims they didn't.
-
Or they claim /you/ consented to things which you didn't consent to or were not in a position
-
to consent to.
-
I'll explore what both cases look like a little later on.
-
So why would someone play the victim?
-
To put it simply, they play victim so someone will save them from their problems.
-
They're looking for a rescuer.
-
And how do they get people to save them?
-
Someone who plays the victim has two main weapons: obligation and guilt, and pity and
-
disgust.
-
Let's take a look at the first weapon: obligation and guilt.
-
Here, the person playing the victim claims that /you/ consented to things that you didn't
-
consent to or were not in a position to consent to.
-
They impose an obligation on you and make you feel guilty for not living up to the obligation.
-
They try to coerce you into paying a debt that you did not consent to taking on.
-
Let's look at an example.
-
At the age of 22, Jane's husband left her with their two sons: Jamie and Michael.
-
Jane told herself that she would dedicate her life to her sons, and that in return they
-
would take care of her.
-
/I will take care of them,/ she thought, /and in return, they can never leave me/.
-
So keep that in mind: Jane is imposing an obligation on her sons.
-
She's binding them into a covert contract.
-
But they're children.
-
They're not in a position to consent to such a contract.
-
So how does this play out?
-
Jane will do anything for them as long as they don't leave her alone.
-
But as they start growing up, naturally, they start wanting to live their own lives.
-
They want to spend time with their friends and lovers.
-
And anytime they want to leave the house, anytime they want to do something without
-
her, anytime she feels them creating some distance from her, their mom uses guilt and
-
obligation to make them stay.
-
She says, “after everything I've done for you, after all the time, energy, and money
-
I've spent on you, you're just going to leave me?!
-
You are terrible sons!
-
You should be ashamed!”
-
But is this fair of Jane to do?
-
She imposed this contract on her kids—/I will take care of you as long as you never
-
leave me/—when they were not in a position to consent to such a contract.
-
And whenever they seem to threaten her contract, she uses guilt and obligation to force them
-
to comply again.
-
Instead of handling the problem of loneliness in a mature and healthy way, she emotionally
-
blackmails her sons into rescuing her.
-
Now let's look at the second weapon someone uses when playing the victim: pity and disgust.
-
Here, the person playing the victim claims that they did not give /you/ legitimate consent
-
when they actually did.
-
They're trying to claim they didn't give you legitimate consent so that others feel
-
pity for them and disgust for you.
-
If people feel pity for them, they get people on their side and increase the chances that
-
someone will come and rescue them.
-
If people feel disgust for you, the person playing the victim turns people against you,
-
which will increase the chances that you submit to their demands.
-
Let's return to our example.
-
So Jane's attempt to use guilt and obligation works on one of her sons, Jamie, but they
-
fail to work on Michael.
-
Michael tells his mom that he's moving away to go to a good college.
-
So what does Jane do when guilt and obligation fail?
-
She uses pity and disgust.
-
She says to Jamie, the son who feels obligated to her, “can you believe Michael would do
-
that to his own mother?
-
He took all of my money and then left me all alone!”
-
She makes Jamie feel pity towards her, increasing the chances he'll rescue her, and makes
-
him feel disgust towards his brother Michael, increasing the chances Jamie will abandon
-
Michael or coerce him into submitting to his mother's demands.
-
But is it fair for Jane to claim that Michael took all of her money and left?
-
Remember, Jane's contract is /I will take care of you as long as you never leave me./Jane
-
was an adult when she chose to enter that contract for Michael, but Michael was just
-
a baby.
-
Jane was capable of giving legitimate consent and did, but she expected a mutual consent
-
from Michael that he wasn't in a position to give as a child.
-
And even if Michael was able to give consent, he might not have wanted to enter into that
-
contract with his mother—one where she supports him in exchange for him never leaving her
-
alone.
-
So she gave him legitimate consent to receive her support as a child, but now that he's
-
not meeting her demands, she's trying to claim that she never gave him consent and
-
that he took advantage of her.
-
That's just one example of someone playing the victim, but it can happen in many different
-
types of relationships: between lovers, family, friends, or co-workers.
-
But everyone who plays the victim has one thing in common: covert contracts.
-
What's that?
-
It's a hidden expectation of someone else.
-
Remember, I said that a person can play the victim in two ways.
-
The first way is that they can give you legitimate consent and then claim they never gave it
-
to you.
-
But why would they claim they didn't give it to you?
-
Usually because they had a hidden expectation, a covert contract, which you didn't live
-
up to.
-
And so now they want to claim they never gave you consent to punish you or to make you fulfill
-
the hidden expectation they have.
-
The second way someone can play the victim is that they can claim /you/ gave consent
-
when you didn't or were not in a position to.
-
In our previous example with Jane, the mother, she might say to her son Michael, “you were
-
never supposed to leave me!”
-
But that was a hidden expectation, a covert contract, that Michael's mother had for
-
him.
-
Michael never gave legitimate consent to that expectation.
-
So how do we stop playing the victim or being manipulated by other people playing the victim?
-
The answer comes back to /mutual consent between people who are in a position to give legitimate
-
consent/.
-
We need to be clear about what we want from others and what they want in return, and then
-
we have to mutually consent to give one another those things.
-
And in cases where the other party can't give us consent, such as our children, we
-
are only free to give our consent to them, but we can't demand things of them that
-
they aren't in a position to give us consent for.
-
As always, this is just my opinion, understanding, and interpretation of some of Nietzsche's
-
ideas, not advice.
-
If you liked the video, please consider liking the video.
-
And if you're looking for another Nietzsche video to watch after this one, I recommend
-
watching my video “Nietzsche - Overcome Shame, Become Who You Are”.
-
I'll put a link to it in the description below and in the top right of the screen right
-
now.