*************
The following message is relayed to you by [email protected]
************
This is an argument that has dominated so much of the self-improvement
field, no doubt thanks in part to Hubbard's influence.
Do victims cause their own victimization? Is it right to blame the victim?
Certainly, for most of human history, most people have found it makes
more sense to blame the perpetrator. That's how justice systems work in
every nation on earth. If someone is assaulted, we punish the
perpetrator. We don't say, "Hey, it's not your fault you smashed that
guy's nose. Clearly he wanted you to do it. In fact, he made you hit
him." No, human justice has always said that people are responsible for
the actions they do to others, not for the actions done to them.
The problem is that violence and injustice traumatize its victims in a
way that punishing the perpetrator does not always erase.
You can't change what someone has done to you, but you can change your
interpretation, your beliefs about it. So if a person who has been a
victim of violence can change how they see that event, so that they see
it in a way that empowers rather than disempowers them, then the ill
effects of the trauma can be cleared.
Being victimized can make us conclude that we are powerless.
It is more empowering to be able to look at a terrible, horrifying
experience and say, "I see now that I needed that event in order to
teach myself that I am capable of surviving anything." Or "I created
that event because I wanted to learn to have far greater empathy for
other people caught in terrible situations, and that has made me a
stronger, better person."
Such conclusions, enable forgiveness, which also is empowering -
affirming that we are strong enough not to be forever harmed by the event.
However, I believe that same approach can be misused. It is one thing
for a person to reach an empowering conclusion that heals. It is another
for someone to tell them that their victimization is their own fault.
Being made wrong for something someone else did is not empowering.
Blaming the victim is often used to excuse perpetrators from
responsibility for their actions. Perpetrators, bullies, con artists,
etc. love to blame victims because it gets them off the hook.
It has been argued that many of the failings of Scientology stem from a
habit of blaming the victim. The organization is always made right and
good, and when it's not the fault is put on the victim. So when COB hits
people, he says its their own fault.
As Denis points out, if auditing doesn't help a person, it's not the
person's fault. It may not be the auditor's either. It could be that
Scientology has errors in it.
As Dennis also notes, Hubbard could not tolerate people pointing out his
mistakes - nor his lies, when it came down to it. So he made everyone
else wrong. That has resulted in a church unwilling to admit its
failings, so it blames everyone it has harmed. It takes away auditors
freedom to exercise their own judgement, and then blames them if the
auditing goes wrong. That's crazy-making.
I believe you can overcome trauma and that you do not have to have your
life destroyed by someone else's actions. But I don't think you should
let anyone tell you it was all your fault. Children are not at fault if
an adult abuses them. Bullies are not innocent. Thieves do take things
you don't want stolen. And you don't help perpetrators become
responsible people by putting blame on the victims.
On 6/21/2012 7:43 PM, David M. Pelly wrote:
*************
The following message is relayed to you by [email protected]
************
>
>
> "Calling a victim aberrated is an easy way to excuse the perpetrator
and pretend the injustice doesn't exist. If there was no pain or
injustice inflicted where does the aberration come from? Why not focus
on the abberration of the perpetrators, those who seek power by
limiting the power of others, often by inflicting pain and injustice?
Clearly, misogyny exists in their minds as well."
>
>
I am not sure who wrote the above but ...in regards to:
the idea of perpetrator being the cause of problems....
is in contradiction to Dennis' and Hubbard's doctrine..
which says the victim made all the decisions to be victimized.
I have been severely abused as a child and I have been told by every
scientologist and then by the data in TROM that I was to blame and
caused all my own suffering, all my own injustice.
In other words, I made all my own postulates to be abused.
So what are the facts????????????
I need to know the facts.
David
>
> Hi Glen
> TROM does not focus on others misbehavior because there is no
workable technology to get others to behave nicely.
>
> If i want to be a victim in a game it doesn't matter how many
criminals i change into nice people I will find some one to be a
victim to.
>
> The solution to all misbehavior in this universe is for me to find
and timebreak all the games i am compulsively playing and stop playing
them. When i am free to not play a game i will not end up being a
victim of someone elses game.
>
> Changing me is something i can do. It is a fix for the problem which
is totally under my control.
> Changing others to make them nicer is not something i can do without
force and that then becomes an overt and puts me back into a
compulsive game.
>
> The idea of "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you"
is an idea that has been around for at least 2500 years yet we still
have people misbehaving. it is a failed proposition to try changing
others by telling them ot be nice or forcing them to be nice with law
enforcers.
>
> So Glen,
>
> Keep on TROMing
> Pete
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jun 21, 2012, at 7:14 AM, Glen Strathy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > *************
> > The following message is relayed to you by [email protected]
> > ************
> > It also exists in that Hubbard quote, and in the unspoken rules -
and sometimes written laws - of many societies. It is clearly visible
to people outside the culture, but invisible to most participants.
Hence, if you're inside it you don't believe it exists.
> >
> > I appreciate your point that some people can rise above those
rules and exercise more power than what the rules would normally
dictate for them, but individual exceptions do not negate what is normal.
> >
> > Calling a victim aberrated is an easy way to excuse the
perpetrator and pretend the injustice doesn't exist. If there was no
pain or injustice inflicted where does the aberration come from? Why
not focus on the abberration of the perpetrators, those who seek power
by limiting the power of others, often by inflicting pain and
injustice? Clearly, misogyny exists in their minds as well.
> >
> > On 6/20/2012 11:18 PM, David M. Pelly wrote:
> >> Misogyny only exists in the minds of aberrated women.
> >>
> >> And no where else.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Trom mailing list
> > [email protected]
> > http://lists.newciv.org/mailman/listinfo/trom
> _______________________________________________
> Trom mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.newciv.org/mailman/listinfo/trom
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