The Antidote to Mental Enslavement
The cure for being stuck in victimhood is to see ourselves as responsible for making our own choices.
As we prepare to begin our study of Bonds That Make Us Free on June 22nd, I'm sharing this essay from my Foundation for Economic Education archives, which bridges the gap between our work with Marcus Aurelius and C. Terry Warner.
We will work through two chapters of Bonds weekly for approximately seven weeks. On June 22nd, we begin with the preface and Chapters 1 and 2.
There is so much suffering in the world. Bonds will help us reduce our personal suffering, and in doing so, we will help reduce the suffering of others.
Like Marcus and Frankl, Warner encourages us to remove the barriers to our true nature, which is already there and not something we have to achieve. He helps us by pointing out patterns in our mindset of which we are unaware. Reading Warner’s Bonds and then seeing yourself through his theoretical lens and in his many stories is transformative.
Your paid subscription to Mindset Shifts grants you immediate access to the Mindset Shifts U and its archives, which include our work with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
Over 2,000 years ago, the Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote, “Show me a man who is not a slave.” Seneca was speaking of mental enslavement: “One is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear.”
Epictetus, another Stoic philosopher born a slave, described how one might willingly subject himself to another. In his Discourse, On Freedom he writes,
Whenever, then, you see any one subject to another, and flattering him contrary to his own opinion, confidently say that he too is not free; and not only when he does this for a supper, but even if it be for a government, nay, a consulship. Call those indeed little slaves who act thus for the sake of little things; and call the others as they deserve, great slaves.”
The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was also a Stoic philosopher. In Meditations, he wrote, “Alexander and Caesar and Pompey. Compared with Diogenes, Heraclitus, Socrates? The philosophers knew the what, the why, the how. Their minds were their own. The others? Nothing but anxiety and enslavement.”
Conquering politicians may have ruled over millions, but they still couldn’t control their own minds.
Do privilege and wealth help one escape mental enslavement? We have only to look at all the dysfunctional behavior in Hollywood and Washington and see that money cannot buy psychological freedom.
Aurelius reproached himself: “Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses, to kick against fate and the present, and to mistrust the future.”
How to reach beyond emotional turbulence caused by our own thinking is what the Stoic philosophers taught. Their contributions are part of the great works of humanity because they reflect timeless themes.
Few of us have not suffered bitter setbacks, as Ryan Holiday, author of several books on Stoicism, observes:
So much of what happens is out of our control: We lose people we love. We are financially ruined by someone we trusted. We put ourselves out there, put every bit of our effort into something, and are crushed when it fails. We are drafted to fight in wars, to bear huge tax or familial burdens. We are passed over for the thing we wanted so badly. This can knock us down and hurt us. Yes.”
Each of us forms our identity around what could be called our “story of me.” Greg Krech observes how often these stories contain resentment in his book Question Your Life. Through our stories, Krech cautions, we create our own burdens:
Wearing a garment of disappointment, resentment and anger is a great burden. It continuously weighs us down as we try to move forward in our lives… It affects our fundamental view of life. It buries us in a complaint-based lifestyle in which our attention is consistently drawn to what is going wrong and how the world fails to meet our expectations.”
In his book Bonds That Make Us Free, philosopher C. Terry Warner asks us to reflect on this question: “Why do we embrace our miseries and preoccupy ourselves with our victimhood?”
“Experiencing other people or circumstances as having more power over our own happiness than we do,” Warner explains, is to be “stuck” in our victimhood. Warner continues, “We believe they have the ability to cause troubling feelings in us that we cannot do anything about, no matter how we try.”
When we believe other people and circumstances are responsible for how we feel and our choices, we are living a lie of victimhood.
Warner asks us to reflect on times we are most troubled. The real source of our “afflicted emotions” can be found in our “self-absorption.” Warner writes, “those times when we feel most miserable, offended, or angry are invariably the occasions when we’re also most absorbed in ourselves and most anxious or suspicious or fearful, or in some other way concerned about ourselves.”
In our self-absorption, we betray our sense of right and wrong. Warner helps us recognize that our self-betrayals can occur in small ways, as in this story of a “busy man”:
A busy man driving home late at night notices the gas gauge dropping near empty. Almost imperceptibly, yet unmistakably, he feels he ought to fill the tank for his wife so she won’t have to do it the next day. But he doesn’t.”
In the mind of this busy man, an urge arose to act from his highest values, yet he did not. This is self-betrayal.
To justify his choice, the busy man may have searched his mind for “data.” Thinking of all the things he does for their household that his wife doesn’t, he may have concluded, I’m far busier than my wife; she should be keeping the tank filled for me. In his mind, he became the victim of an unsupportive wife. His wife, not he, was to blame for his failure to put gas in the car.
In this trivial example, the busy man got stuck in his thinking. Portraying himself as a victim, he undermined his relationship and a happy life.
Warner writes, “Life becomes hard to bear only when we, as self-betrayers, cast ourselves in a victim’s role by regarding others as our victimizers and nurse our misfortunes as if they were badges of honor.”
Feelings of “irritation [escalating to anger], humiliation, self-pity, resentment or frustration” come with self-betrayal. These emotions are accusatory. Warner writes, “Only people who are doing something that goes against their own sense of right and wrong have to spend time and energy spinning out a self-justifying story.”
Our self-justifying stories create resentment. Warner writes, “To take up a hard, resentful attitude toward others is to have to live in a resented world, a world full of people who oppose and threaten us. How they are in our eyes is reflective of how we are.”
Warner warns of three aspects of self-betraying conduct: “accusing others, excusing oneself, and displaying oneself as a victim. We can’t seek vigilantly for evidence that others are mistreating us, as self-betrayers do, unless we actively put ourselves in the victim’s role.”
Having chosen the role of a mistreated victim, we may also choose to feel resentful and entitled. We may see the world as unjust and owing us something. We may believe we are broken while seeing others as advantaged and privileged.
In our victimhood, we believe we are not responsible; others are. Many politicians are happy to exploit this false belief.
What might one say to a man who grew up in a single-parent household in a violent inner-city neighborhood and attended a public school where he learned little and was bullied by classmates? This man may face racial discrimination. If he fathers illegitimate children with several women and is in and out of prison, is he responsible for his behavior? Is he not a victim of his circumstances?
Warner recognizes life’s trials and sees life beyond victimhood:
Though none of us is responsible for the misfortunes that befall us, we are, thankfully, responsible for how we use those misfortunes. We cannot alter past events, it’s true. Not having been responsible for them, we cannot take responsibility for them. But we are responsible for the effect they have upon us—for the meaning we assign to them and the way we remember them. And we can learn and grow from them.”
In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius put it this way: “It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise, it cannot harm you—inside or out.”
Warner acknowledges that one may be called “uncharitable” for believing that we are responsible for what we make of our lives. Yet, to say a person is not responsible “says, ‘You can’t!’ rather than ‘You can!’” Warner reflects on what it means to believe that a person is not responsible:
Although those who hold this view think they’re being compassionate and kind, they are only being indulgent. Indulgence is a punitive counterfeit of charity. It extends no hope at all for freeing ourselves of our emotional troubles. It takes the position that we are stuck with being the deficient vessels we think we are and are doomed to cope with our lot as best we can.”
Genuine compassion, seeing in all people the ability to take responsibility, is hopeful. Warner writes, “It is because we are responsible for whatever we have become that there is hope for us to change fundamentally. True compassion can only be found in extending this hope to others, never denying it to them.”
Look around, Warner asks, “Have you known people who seem to have made a lifestyle out of amplifying their victimhood?” Don’t stop with seeing the choice for victimhood in others. Warner asks, “Do you see any of this tendency in yourself?”
The cure for being stuck in victimhood is to see ourselves as responsible for making our own choices.
If you are not reading Barry Brownstein, you are doing yourself and the rest of us a disservice. Barry challenges you to tackle the worst of yourself to facilitate the transformation into the best of yourself.
It is hard to even describe the transformation I have seen in myself by throwing myself into the material he sets before us. I was angry, in pain physically and mentally, trapped in my thoughts. I took to it because, while I didn’t know where I would end up and I still don’t know where I will ultimately land, I thought he offered me freedom from myself. Turns out what he really offers is the freedom to be my best self.—John Real
Prof. B: greetings. I find myself opening my mail in anticipation of your writings. I take a dose of your medicine and it helps me direct my thoughts and actions. I usually read you two times; amazing what sinks in my head on the second pass.—James Pair
Love your work. We need more people studying this stuff, and working on self-mastery.