The Virtues of Victimhood

Epistemic Status: not sure if 'victimhood' is the right word, more like the opposite of a god-complex in a 'the meek shall inherit the earth' sense.

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Technology feels urgent to the degree of victimhood felt. Someone who feels persecuted will desperately reach for a sword or a gun to even the odds against a bully.

Victimhood has a wide range. From a solitary friendly-ambitious-nerd looking to reach out and connect with others, to a tech-elite feeling bullied by death.

Solving victimhood seems to be a good thing for the former, and feels excessive for the latter.

If eliminating victimhood is considered a sacred value of infinite worth, then the amount of technology that should be embraced is also infinite.

Thinking about this reminds of of the high status of Japanese craftsmanship in the western world.

Japanese games and society often purposely apply victimhood. Think about games like Sekiro and Dark Souls from FromSoftware, the surreal stories of Haruki Murakami, and the time scales involved in bonsai cultivation.

Unlike experiences that are commodified for a wide audience, difficult experiences create hard blockers through unrelenting skill checks. Although the process is painful, you leave the experience feeling changed.

The artificially inflicted victimhood made you feel like you've lived and finished a "chapter" of your life rather than stuck in a time loop reliving the same day.

What an single-minded focus on eliminating victimhood misses is that overcoming victimhood is the only way to achieve a sense of closure and move the story forward.

The more you can control things and remove obstacles through a simple act of will, the less that will is sharpened on the whetstone of reality and the less capable it is of dealing with the terror of a blank void.