A Cultural Climate that Forgives Weakness and Punishes Strength
Celebrating Victimhood
We hear a great deal about weakness these days. Whether they are conversations regarding the ‘oppressed’ in society or the need for ‘safe spaces’ or even the extreme of ‘needing to change public perception’ on health and beauty, it seems like society is making a tremendous effort to prop up the weakest individuals of society. This all seems well-intentioned at first and a no-brainer move towards a more compassionate environment, but this newfound effort to cushion every potential victim from any potential harm is having some severe consequences on our collective psyche.
First off, I’ll make it clear that I’m a complete evolutionist, and this applies just as much to social evolution as it does to biological development. Weak societies, just like weak individuals, need to made stronger, always. Societies must always strive to make its individuals capable, reliable, innovative, intelligent, and overall competitive in a global context. Ones that cannot, will perish. Compassion is needed to a certain extent to ensure a harmonious internal structure, but it should never be the ultimate goal of a given culture.
And just to touch upon the concept of compassion - it is the short-term painkiller of society. Compassion is only brief fix to larger systemic issues, and compassion without long-term development and painful work is, in my opinion, unethical. It’s like giving morphine to a cancer patient but withholding the option for chemotherapy. Society is just a scale higher than the physical body and concepts like ‘safe spaces’ and ‘intersectionality’ are merely band-aids to deep wounds that we all experience. A short-term relief should never be offered without an end in mind. This is the fundamental reason why I dislike public discourse that tries to artificially elevate the weak through compassion rather than motivating them to become stronger.
Let’s take one very common anxiety - being overweight. Most people will experience a point in time, whether it’s during hormonal high school or a freshman 15 phase or after marriage during a sedentary office job. Weight is a universal pain point across societies and through history, and even I myself have gone through ups and downs in correlation to my own size. Even now, I’m easily 10+ pounds over my comfortable weight due to post-marriage comfort eating and startup stress.
But if you were to approach an overweight person with only compassion, nothing really would change. At best, the ‘victim of society’ may feel a bit less self-conscious around friends and family. But a societal standard is constant and striking, and there isn’t any way to escape at least some degree of public scrutiny, either actual or internal. Again, compassion is the ephemeral balm on a systemic issue. What’s the best way to deal with anxiety being overweight? Is it transforming entire societal standards? Or shaming any and all potential ‘fat-shamers’? Or is it simply altering to a healthier lifestyle, taking control of one’s weight, and becoming more responsible in alignment with a standard? You can probably guess which one I’d lean towards.
Because ultimately it’s a question of what kind of society we wish to nurture. Do we want one filled with weak-willed people that feel no affiliation with any kind of standard of personal success? Or do we want one where ideals, no matter how numerous and diverse, are constantly strived towards? Again, long-term visions trump short-term instincts. Compassion often seems like the right route, but like most impulses, that option leads to negative outcomes.
This is why we don’t let children eat ice cream before dinner. This is why we have mandatory physical education in grade school. This is why we have standardized testing and job interview systems. We implicitly create a society that pushes us to become better, more skilled, and adapt. Individuals in this world that refuse to do those things are weakest links in our society. They should be provided with enough of a bare cushion as not to sink into madness, but otherwise they pull down the rest of a culture that should constantly be working for betterment.
Thoughts?
Your focus on strength regarding evolution is subtlety incorrect, as many have been in the past. It is adaptedness, or fitness which is what evolution optimises, not necessarily strength. This is where proponents of social darwinism fail in their argument, in that they do not actually stick to a comprehensive interpretation of the mechanisms.
If you were, you would recognize that in the social sphere, people are doing what is most advantageous to them within the culture. Furthermore they strive to improve their advantages. It's simple to say but difficult to break down, because we are the only beings on the planet who can plan really really far ahead and do things which seem not to be in our benefit (and may actually not be, if we got it wrong) which pay off in other ways. We play social games, some of which appear quite unrooted in reality, and they are! But that does not mean that winning them does not confer tangible advantages to winners.
In fact what you are talking about is something which is and has always been against the grain of our basic evolutionary tools, and that is the transcendent. That goes all the way from aspirational thinking to high spirituality.
Dinner course ordering, school discipline and standardized work are far more interesting than you make out, and far more based on the historically overbearing influence of the aristocracy, military and state, as opposed to any human centered wellness.
Personally I am a Stoic and I promote those kinds of values which are not far from the ones you espouse here. That is, except the arrogance of the strong. I think it is wise to embrace whatever people have to offer, and that can be good for everyone.
Lastly, I agree with the part of your argument which is against fetishizing weakness as somehow virtuous. However for me this also extends to not fetishizing strength. Being strong is not a virtue, it is a gift.
This is definitely an interesting way of looking at things. To clarify, when I use the term 'strength', I myself am including a great number of the characteristics you mention as well, sorry if that wasn't as clear in the writing. Strength for me is anything antithetical to weakness, and weakness I define as resistance to adapt, laziness, self-contentedness, etc., but I get where you're going with the fetishization. I also don't think being strong is a virtue, but striving to be strong is, and absolutely more virtuous than the empty claims of recognizing and respecting weakness.
Thanks for the quasi post/comment @personz!
My point is that the strength / weakness dichotomy as presented is not consistent with evolutionary theory. In fact your definition of weakness is far more akin to sickness. Weakness is better defined in explicit comparison to strength. To be clear I think the danger in interpreting your writing on the topic is that sickness should be punished as weakness instead of cured is possible, or quantised if not. If that sounds harsh, it's unfortunately the only option for all living things.
Let me be clear about something else. Disgust is the proper response to sickness. So the so-called "weakness" should be deeply uncomfortable and healthy people will and should feel instinctually compelled to get distance from them. For our large imaginative brains that also translates into social and intellectual distance, which I think is actually not that helpful. Still, very understandable and correct on one level.
Striving to be well is I think the better goal. That will encompass strength in whatever your capacity is but not made a narrow goal of it, or elevate might too high. Respecting people who are weak is totally fine. Treating the sick with compassion is virtuous. But expecting everyone to inhabit the same space as the infected is dangerous, actually dangerous. Right minded people cannot do this, and fortunately most people are right minded.
On calling my first response a quasi-post, thank you! If you look at my blog it seems like I'm not really posting much any more but I've been getting involved in detailed discussions. It's a pity that the UI doesn't in some way show epic comments prominently on your blog / profile. 🤔 Maybe there's an improvement to be made there.
We need to improve the way we look at them, and create a framework to help?
As I am Korean, I have difficulty in detoxing English.^^:
I read the article hard.
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