There is something to be said for seeing ourselves as victims…
When we imagine ourselves as victims, emotion is aroused, and that emotion may increase our compassion for other victims, or it may create hatred for oppressors, or both. Sometimes, in our horror of victimhood, we are comforted by the fact that we are not the actual victims; the actual victims are not as smart, not as innocent, not as blessed as we are. And when we look at the perpetrator, we are again comforted because we are not, could not be, that monster. But when we look at a scene of suffering and see both possibilities for ourselves, then a new horror is aroused, and that horror provides a starting point for real moral growth.
Nel Noddings
I saw Nel Noddings speak last week at the national celebration of John Dewey’s birthday and conference in Chapel Hill North Carolina. She is an amazing speaker and advocate of children everywhere.
What has always facinated me about “ethics of care” research- studies that are largely influenced by Nell’s writing about her work in schools- is how caring can be so miscontrued. I think that is the base of Nell’s thought in the above quote. What I get out of her insight is how important it is to look under our thoughts and ask why do we think in such a way? From the victims point of view, Nell says we often take comfort by seeing ourselves as morally superior to our persecuters- a comparision we are bound to win which gives us a nice social justice pillow on which to rest our weary heads.
But she goes on to say that there is still more work to be done, that we must rise up and off the comfort of feeling morally superior to understand how any comparison of one thing ( my pain compared to the persecuter’s moral demise) brings forth the other ( It is possible that my feeling of moral superiority is the same feeling my persecuter has when he/she looks at me…which makes us more alike than different.)
So, I”m thinking about all the times lately when I have felt victimized and how easy it is to say “yeah, what you are doing makes me suffer somehow, but my suffering has limits and you are going to suffer for eternity”
