The just-world fallacy isn’t optimism. It’s fear dressed up as ethics. Blaming the victim is how people keep the illusion that the universe is a vending machine and not a weather system. The real shift happens when you stop asking who deserves what and start asking who needs protection right now. That’s where actual justice begins, not cosmic bookkeeping.
Brilliant breakdown of how cognitive dissonance drives victim-blaming as a defense mechanism. The "Cosmic Vending Machine" metaphor captures perfectly why people hav such difficulty accepting randomness in outcomes. I've noticed this patern plays out constantly on social media where folks perform elaborate moral gymnastics to explain away others' suffering while claiming their own success as purely earned. The psychological comfort of believing the universe keeps score is so powerful it overrides basic empathy dunno if thats more tragic or terrifying.
''..look at a homeless veteran or a bankrupt entrepreneur and feel a secret, smug sense of superiority rather than terror''.
As Schopenhauer called it, 'schadenfreude'. (Essays and Aphorisms, Penguin Edition).
''.....blaming victims for their misfortune.''.
Even terrible misfortunes: the parents of Madeleine McCann and James Bulger were, and still are, blamed for what happened to them. The latter, for example, for turning around to pay for some sausages and in that couple of seconds for two other children to snatch little James and then kill him in horrifying ways. (I advise anyone reading this to NOT find out these details: even I just catched a glimpse of them while skimming the wikipedia article and turned away from it).
To blame the mother of a child for turning around and pay for sausages only demonstrates what Schopenhauer noted: that we all have a base nature. Given the right circumstances, for example being shrouded in anonymity, we would probably be very surprised at what we would be capable of. Even the people we think we know so well, would probably surprise us.
Interestingly, when something bad enough happens to someone, we are either completely indifferent, minimize it or we are even glad of it. But when the exact same thing happens to us, all of a sudden we become like the
'' We believe that if we insert the coins of hard work, piety, and rule-following, the machine is obligated to dispense the product we desire.''.
And yet, it should be a given for us to insert these coins. A code of honour to follow, so that when we finally die, as it will inevitably happen to all of us, at least we have nothing on our conscience.
If only we'd understand this basic idea: that we are all here for a short time and we all finally end up in the same place.
'The Great Leveller' makes no distinction of wealth, provenience, etc etc. These are all trivial details.
The just-world fallacy isn’t optimism. It’s fear dressed up as ethics. Blaming the victim is how people keep the illusion that the universe is a vending machine and not a weather system. The real shift happens when you stop asking who deserves what and start asking who needs protection right now. That’s where actual justice begins, not cosmic bookkeeping.
Brilliant breakdown of how cognitive dissonance drives victim-blaming as a defense mechanism. The "Cosmic Vending Machine" metaphor captures perfectly why people hav such difficulty accepting randomness in outcomes. I've noticed this patern plays out constantly on social media where folks perform elaborate moral gymnastics to explain away others' suffering while claiming their own success as purely earned. The psychological comfort of believing the universe keeps score is so powerful it overrides basic empathy dunno if thats more tragic or terrifying.
''..look at a homeless veteran or a bankrupt entrepreneur and feel a secret, smug sense of superiority rather than terror''.
As Schopenhauer called it, 'schadenfreude'. (Essays and Aphorisms, Penguin Edition).
''.....blaming victims for their misfortune.''.
Even terrible misfortunes: the parents of Madeleine McCann and James Bulger were, and still are, blamed for what happened to them. The latter, for example, for turning around to pay for some sausages and in that couple of seconds for two other children to snatch little James and then kill him in horrifying ways. (I advise anyone reading this to NOT find out these details: even I just catched a glimpse of them while skimming the wikipedia article and turned away from it).
To blame the mother of a child for turning around and pay for sausages only demonstrates what Schopenhauer noted: that we all have a base nature. Given the right circumstances, for example being shrouded in anonymity, we would probably be very surprised at what we would be capable of. Even the people we think we know so well, would probably surprise us.
Interestingly, when something bad enough happens to someone, we are either completely indifferent, minimize it or we are even glad of it. But when the exact same thing happens to us, all of a sudden we become like the
'' We believe that if we insert the coins of hard work, piety, and rule-following, the machine is obligated to dispense the product we desire.''.
And yet, it should be a given for us to insert these coins. A code of honour to follow, so that when we finally die, as it will inevitably happen to all of us, at least we have nothing on our conscience.
If only we'd understand this basic idea: that we are all here for a short time and we all finally end up in the same place.
'The Great Leveller' makes no distinction of wealth, provenience, etc etc. These are all trivial details.
Gangstalking.......
Believing the world is just comforts us; accepting that it isn’t makes us human.
When we stop blaming those who suffer, the only real justice begins—the one we choose to practice.