A conservative perspective for caring for victims
When victims come to mind, we tend to think about the ways in which we can help and protect them. The rules, rights, and laws made precisely with the victims in mind seems like it’s the right thing to do out of default. But this wasn’t the case for a majority of human history. Social contract theory has always recognized the importance respecting all rights of individuals including victims. After all, we’ve come together to give up some natural rights in exchange for protection and benefits to everyone. This intuition to protect victims goes farther back beyond the social contract theorist or even political theory. Social contract theorists like Hobbes and Rousseau have tried to look at the origins of governments to understand human nature. If human nature is inherently evil, than people would look to protect themselves from themselves under a single powerful government. This is the idea of the Leviathan proposed by Hobbes. If human nature is inherently noble and communal, then government would only get in the way of people coming together and be kind.
As we arrive to our liberal democratic regime, we tend think our political regime best serves everyone’s basic rights, including the rights of victims. The structure of this regime is built on the backs of centuries of political traditions and philosophers that making the case that rational and structural foundations build the basic components of governments. A well structured state is measurable and traceable; we can follow a linage that arrives as a beginning of liberal democracies from antient societies (Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece.) Often, the rights that we most take for granted are the ones that protects our most basic rights. And when we are reminded of those, we often feel insulted rather than gratitude. Because the most basic laws protect those who are most vulnerable, and because our most vulnerable benefit most from these basic laws, we’re often feel compared to those victims. These victims don’t take those basic rights for granted but they rely on them everyday for basic necessities. It has been the socially conservative thinkers, accompanied with grace and religious conviction, that look after the conditions of victims and the oppressed. The liberal attitude also look after the conditions of victims so much so that they legislate laws for victims but they concern themselves with the spreading and democratization of laws according with market principles. Basic human rights, especially concerning victims, requires, not just compassion, but a revelatory attitude to look beyond the physical conditions of the underprepared or the underclass, and balance the necessities of the community to care for them outside the market principles and economics.
The culture wars in today’s western society has reveal a fundamental misunderstanding on what is a victim and how we should care for them. We have a revulsion towards a specific kind of victimhood, one that is mental in nature. It argues that this victimhood takes advantage of the actual victim position and it does so to win favors at the expense of actual victims. This argues that the label of victims is more powerful than the actual conditions of victim. Modern society has opened the possibility of more categories of victimhood. More and more victims are born that current structures of society do not account for. Let’s explore the concept of victimness.
The new modernism or post-modernism turn the discussion the problems of victims or victimhood. Victimhood is that new great challenge that needs contradiction to overcome. After industrialization, colonization, and capitalization of the world, the focus turned to ideology after World War 2 and then shifted away from ideology at the end of the Cold War. The new trend in politics was political institutions and these institutions were mostly backed by science. As the categories of victimhood has increased more and more have shifted back to ideology to solve our problems. From the left’s perspective, modern ideology began with Karl Marx. The ideology that Marx presented greatly influenced politics and ideology that it took a new form with the French intellectuals and modern theorists. Intellectuals like Adorno, Horkheimer, Michel Foucault and Derrida had the biggest impact leading up to the 20th century. The Frankfurt School criticized the traditional structures for being too rigid and outdated. For the Frankford school, critical theory legitimized the experiences of underprivileged, the underclass or the marginalized because the current structures and traditions do not account for them. The modern structures and institutions do not adequately address the issues facing these individuals according to the critical theorists. Michel Foucault looked into the nature of power and discursive spaces through history. His examination into the nature of power placed a close relationship between power and knowledge. If one is experiencing oppression, according to Foucault, it is because one is held within a discursive space. A discursive space is one which an individual or entity defines the parameters in which power ultimately manipulates or subjugates the individual within by the use of language, knowledge, or structures. During the days of colonization, it would’ve been the imperialists and colonizers who were always on the lookout for lands and peoples to enslave. The powers are easy to define and observe because our knowledge of history is given to us but in those days, knowledge wasn’t so easily given and not everyone had the privilege of an education. During the age of industrialization, the powers were the bourgeoisie and the business owners who owned the means of production. During WW2, the powers were the axis or allied powers each one fighting for their ideological leadership. They are seen as the perpetrators of war, a tyrannical regime, or an oppressive regime. Discourse analysis seeks to uncover the ways in which language use, reflects, and reinforces socal power relations and culture values. This means that modern people, by default, do not have do anything to oppress people but inherent a discursive space. By simply living their normal daily lives, they could be oppressing people without knowing. This creates victims in all spaces where there is power. The project of the post modernist is to point out the privileges that define the power relations to their favor. The script has flipped when it comes to who should these formal structures prioritize. For the critical theorist, it is the experience of the underclass that should be brought attention to the privileged.
If discourse analysis is the attempt to have the conversation between the ruled and the ruler, but also favor the experiences of the ruled critical theory places an emphasis on those who have been historically overlooked like women, LGBTQ+ community, minorities, the poor, the trans community, etc. Jacque Derrida is the father of the deconstruction movement which opened up an entire genre of literary critisim. With literary criticism, the postmodernist have rejected grand narratives. This leaves open to interpretation any works or text that the author has prescribed meaning to. This is also known as the death of the author, which the author no longer has the definitive authority of interpretation of any text. The text is open to interpretation by its readers. This can allow readers to validate their own experiences when the text speaks to them. It has helped a lot of victims to validate their experiences. But this works at the expense of the community, who are brought together by these texts but are now lost when they lose consensus. The loss of grand narratives leads to disassociation of groups and communities who rely heavily on meaning and structure. This was the wisdom of the ancient Greeks where they knew that for a city to operate harmoniously and justly, people needed to be giving the right education to know to distinguish what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s beautiful and what’s ugly, what’s rational what’s irrational. If they’re unable to do that, then they’re unable to change things when things go bad, or to conserve thing when things are good.
Religion and traditional structures has always been the ones that has always been on the side of the victim.
Christianity in particular, has been the religion that most benefited the victim. The Bible condemns oppression and violence against another individual. It urges us to self-reflect and take in the contradictions of the human condition. The way to work through your contradictions is to examine our desires and maybe have a bit of fun with them. Incorporate a bit of serious play.
A singular authority who has the wisdom, or knowledge on how to run things, can give direction to the people who want to be told what’s right or wrong. This doesn’t mean people have to live in an authoritative or tyrannical government but, on the contrary, when people are given the opportunity to learn from what’s good with bad, they’re able to freely choose what’s best without coercion. Conservatism doesn’t mean traditional, it doesn’t mean custom or ritual. You can be a conservative and still be a critic of libertarianism. Any conservative would be critical of any regime that blames the victim. What we mostly criticize conservatives of is overlooking the well being of the victim’s mental state. That is to say the mental health of an individual. We assume that just because someone doesn’t display physical signs of distress that they must not be a victim of their political regime but, they are afforded cure and make possible the process. Mental health is out of my scope of reach so I will not comment on the mental crisis that so many people are suffering through. We’ve all been in a state where we needed professional help to. But the conservative investigation at heart places victims as the key or the answer to answering the problem of the human condition. Traditional structure has given the basic underlying rights and privileges for the pursuit of happiness. Just like there are people who can abuse the label of victims there are also people who abuse victims for just being in the state that they’re in. This is unacceptable and it needs to be called out.
The Christian revolution, along with the enlightenment and modernization of our political traditions, have placed our victims as our most prized possession. This can be largely thanks to the conservative attitude. The liberal attitude complements this spreading these tradition by making it palatable and accessible to everyone. Because of the nature of the liberal attitude, it had to destructure some of the traditiosnt o allow room for everyone who wants basic rights and recognition. But there are times that the homogenous culture can not be allowed access so it wouldn’t raise the alarm. It has worked for a while but today, it has been a challenge to balance these two contradictory ideas especially when we are digitally connected more than ever. Today, the liberal attitude towards the victim is like shouting into a megaphone. It calls out the wrong kind of attention. Victims understand that they must work through these things with the help of trusted individuals, mostly done in private. And these are private matters with trusted people handled by a professional class. We are, at some level a victim. We might have reservations to the “victim mentality” but, because of our highly individualistic culture, we have opened the door to over representation of categories of victimhood. This is how it best benefits proper victims and my main authority for this is the Bible. When Jesus speaks of The promised land, what the gathering of Israel consists are the chosen people who congregate through the teachings of Jesus.
Through the experiences of human nature and understanding the tendencies of human nature, rather than revolting against their brothers, they say decide to forgive them. This is the power of working through contradictions internally. It’s not easy, but worth it.