In defence of defeatism
u/Kunigunde9467, r/Pessimism
I believe that, like looks, we can’t pick our personality traits. Our personality develops both by the chance of our genetics and by our environment, circumstances and chance. There’s no room for personal intention in the making of a personality. If you are born a sociopath, you can try to be as nice as possible, but you’ll never be like someone who’s a natural empath. Same goes for the opposite, if you are born an empath who’s really sensitive about other people’s pain, you can’t just “switch it off” and start running over people.
This is important because I hear lots of judgment and shame against people who have a defeatist mentality. Blamers claim defeatists are just lazy and lack self control and choose to be down because that way they get handouts. Far from the truth. Defeatists are usually people who, after many years of experience and observation, came to the conclusion they’re pretty powerless against the power of nature, laws of physics, and fate. They realized that fighting against natural instincts do more harm than good in the long run and they don’t have that much resources to spend in the first place. They lost hope and therefore lost motivation. They focus on surviving with the least amount of pain and prioritize short term survival over long term goals. It’s important to approach this kind of worldview with respect and empathy if we want to build a conversation that is based on understanding and promotes constructive criticism.
Comments
u/cherrycasket
This is literally a description of me. Someone recently told me that this is learned helplessness. It doesn’t matter what it’s called. If someone thinks it’s just laziness or something else, well, good (especially since I really consider myself pretty lazy). These people simply do not go through my experience (as I do through their experience), so their opinion is not taken into account by me.
u/wordlessdream/
I agree, to an extent. Our brain is clearly molded by factors outside our control like everything else about us.
Even if we have the capacity to change who we are in certain ways, my experience is that fighting against it just causes more suffering, in many instances, and it just isn’t worth it. I can try to change my personality, to become more outgoing for example, but in the end it often gets me nothing. Sometimes getting outside one’s “comfort zone” just causes discomfort.
Others refuse to accept this and call people “weak” for not doing things that cause them pain with no gain. In their view, if one person succeeds, everyone can. One of the many ways that optimism causes further suffering.
u/defectivedisabled
Defeatism is mostly a capitalist smear and gaslighting in the 21st century. The biggest red flag of this capitalist propaganda is the entire notion that competition is an inherently good thing. According to capitalists, dropping out of society’s rat race is defeatist. But it is only defeatist in relative to the capitalist’s values. Someone who has dropped out of society and is striving to be a ascetic is a defeatist when viewed through a capitalist lens but is an achiever within the ascetic community.
There is also a version of defeatism that is spread by the “humanists” i.e. people such as Musk. Anyone who isn’t in line with the transhumanist version of progress is labelled as defeatist. Such reasoning have religious origins and it is a very utopian and paradise-centric vision of the world. It is like there is some duty or mission that we have to fulfill. In traditional religions it is to serve God by doing whatever he commands us.
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