from Hacker News

Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous

by stanrivers on 11/28/23, 9:27 PM with 230 comments

  • by dang on 11/28/23, 11:38 PM

    Related ongoing thread:

    Charlie Munger has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38451278

  • by pjmorris on 11/28/23, 9:41 PM

    This reminds me of something a friend said that's stuck with me for ~30 years: 'The bad news about taking responsibility is now it's your fault. The good news about taking responsibility is now you can do something about it.'

  • by Xcelerate on 11/28/23, 9:58 PM

    My mother passed away from cancer when I was 11. Originally when she learned she was terminal, she thought it might be a good idea for me to attend support sessions with the school counselor. Unfortunately in this case, the counselor wasn’t that great at their job, and I came home from school talking about how I was “anxious” and “depressed”—words I had never used before. My mother pulled me out of counseling and told my father, “I didn’t put him in there to feel sorry for himself about the situation.”

    She also told my sister and I before she passed to never use her death as an excuse to go through life miserable and sad—there were too many things to be happy about and we should give life purpose.

    So I agree with the gist of Charlie’s idea of acting like you aren’t a victim even if you do happen to be one.

    That said... I also think that due to either genetic predisposition or extreme environmental factors, there are rare cases where trying to take a positive attitude does not help and can in fact make things worse. Trying to use sheer force of will to “power through” certain situations may lead one to ignore other options (medication for example) and the build-up of a series of continuous failures to “think positively” may result in even worse outcomes where erratic or irreversible decisions are made during an irrational state of mind. I’m not suggesting self-pity, but rather the recognition that there are just some situations you can’t put a positive spin on and it is probably better not to try.

  • by jjoonathan on 11/28/23, 9:41 PM

    This is true.

    It is also true that dispensing this particular advice is self-serving for people in power.

    In a revolution, things get worse before they get better if they get better. Revolutions come at huge negative expected value. However, appeasing powerful forces can also have hugely negative expected value. Sometimes the calculus makes sense, and when it does, you should hope that people are appropriately discounting the self-serving advice from the powerful.

  • by SoftTalker on 11/28/23, 10:02 PM

    Personally, thinking "it's always your fault" is as not nearly as important as thinking "I am the only one who can do anything (or cares) to make this better."

    Misfortune isn't always our fault. How we respond to it is.

  • by ihumanable on 11/28/23, 9:56 PM

    Somewhat the height of survivorship bias. There are a many number of people that don't adopt a victim mentality, work hard, and try to get ahead and just don't. For every Charlie Munger there are tons of working poor that get up everyday, work hard for minimum wage, then go off to their second job.

    My entire childhood I watched both my parents, who both had 2 jobs, work themselves non-stop to try to provide for us. They didn't drink or do drugs or consider themselves victims, and it didn't help one bit.

    Asking the man who wins the lottery how to live a good life and be successful often ends up with them telling you to do whatever it is that they did. It might even be good advice, but it's a ridiculous appeal to authority. Charlie Munger got all this success and he did X, ok, did other people do X and not achieve this level of success? How many people did not-X and were perfectly successful?

    It's subjective finger wagging dressed up in more appealing clothing for those that already agree with the opinions to point at and be happy about. Because at the end of the day, it allows us to blame people's misfortune on them, they've adopted a victim mentality and that's why their lives aren't working out. It allows the class that has the vast majority of wealth to deflect any critical examination of the power structure that perpetuates this state. You aren't underpaid, you just have adopted a victim mindset. You aren't exploited, you just haven't found a way to turn the challenge of paying your rent into riches yet.

  • by jancsika on 11/28/23, 10:30 PM

    I recently watched a coworker lose a job by embodying this very logic.

    I think the problem comes from the conflict between denying/rejecting victimhood, on the one hand, and realizing that one must get the fuck out of a very, very bad situation immediately, by any means on the other. From what I could tell it quickly becomes an inescapable cycle between "it's always my fault and I'll fix it"-- which implies leaving-- and "I've always been a victim and will always be one"-- which implies staying.

    There has to be a big enough window when the person admits to themselves and others that they are unable to get out of the conundrum on their own. And, ironically, that's the the moment when they start to accept help and start living without feeling like such a victim. But that window of opportunity is at odds with "it's always your fault and you just fix it," which strongly implies you and only you fix it. That doesn't leave much/any room to realize just how much you must rely on outside help to get out.

    Edit: added to the fact that apparently a lot of people also cycle between getting out of and going back to a bad situation. That makes me think it's less like flipping a bit and more like designing a high-pass filter to attenuate the victimhood frequencies.

  • by profsummergig on 11/28/23, 9:35 PM

    Charlie Munger had great advice in general. And I've learned a lot of good from him.

    But I will never get over the hypocrisy of owning a quarter of Coca Cola and constantly criticizing Americans for being overweight (he used words like "sloth").

  • by lordnacho on 11/28/23, 9:34 PM

    He passed away earlier today, which is I guess why this is here.

    He's got a point, too. To be a victim is to be helpless, and if you can choose to not see yourself that way, you can at least have some power back.

  • by wackycat on 11/28/23, 9:40 PM

    Isn't he the guy that tried to build windowless dorms? Anyone who thinks humans should live without natural light is not anyone I am interested in taking advice from. Ref: https://www.archpaper.com/2023/08/university-california-aban...

  • by mritchie712 on 11/28/23, 9:17 PM

    I try my best to do this. When I find myself blaming person X for thing Y, it's pretty easy to come up with a way to blame myself instead (e.g. I shouldn't have involved person X in thing Y to begin with).

    It oddly makes me feel better and move on with a solution instead of stewing over person X's blunders.

  • by WalterSear on 11/28/23, 11:38 PM

    IMHO, this is a crippling ideology, that crushes people's ability for self-compassion. This, in turn, destroys their ability to trust themselves, since they are so used to hearing themselves reflexively take out their distress on themselves with words like 'in any way, it's always your fault'.

    I've just spent the best part of a year in an IOP, unlearning this behaviour, and learning to acknowledge my own pain, trust myself and replacing inner criticism with self-advocacy, and I'm stronger and more effective for it.

  • by RSMDZ on 11/28/23, 9:58 PM

    I have great respect for Charlie (RIP), but there isn't much insight here.

    The crux of the article is that self-pity is never useful, but it then presupposes that accepting personal responsibility is always useful. Personal responsibility is not the only way to ameliorate the great problems of our life. In fact, for the majority of human history, the idea of pivoting away from self pity from sheer force of will without the help of family and tribe would seem impossible.

    Instead of naivly rejecting self pity, I would like a analytical approach to question like

    How do we improve our ability to reject self pity? What is the role of social capital in self pity rates? What sociocultural issues have the greatest impact on endowing a sense of self pity? How has self pity been useful for building political movements?

  • by SilverBirch on 11/28/23, 10:15 PM

    I do worry that this sort of attitude can be the sort of attitude that contributes to such a high rate of young male suicide. Extremely high expectations, no sympathy and no support system means exactly this - when you are a victim it's all your own fault and there's one way out. No one wants to hear you whine. Telling someone they should be resilient doesn't necessarily actually make them resilient.

  • by bena on 11/28/23, 10:43 PM

    Most philosophies come to this realization. Buddhism and Stoicism kind of center this whole ethos: If you can't do anything about it, you don't have to worry about it.

    Same thing is going on here. Munger is saying essentially that the past doesn't matter. The situation is what it is and the only thing that matters is what you can do to change it.

  • by stillwithit on 11/28/23, 10:46 PM

    “Self-pity doesn’t work, but if you hallucinate the pitiful state of things is your fault, it works.”

    Self pity and self blame are just euphemisms for the same emotional context of being down on yourself.

    Not really sure he says anything here, leverages swapping one term for another.

    It may be consistent within the context of human language but human feelings? How does “self pity” feel different from blaming myself for pitiful state of things as motivation to fix them.

    I’m not so sure last century’s rent seeker investors who worm tongued politicians into propping them up are dropping novel nuggets of philosophy.

  • by SuperNinKenDo on 11/28/23, 10:28 PM

    I agree with the advice up to a point, but I'd like it more if I came from a background where people can prop up entire banks by shuffling investment properties around, rather than the advice coming from there.

    It's easier to view tragedy as something you can pick yourself up from when massive tragedy aren't mere punctuation points of the constant tragedy that is your own total immiseration.

  • by debacle on 11/28/23, 10:01 PM

    Munger was born into an elite family with friends born into elite families, which is a winning strategy anywhere in the world.

  • by boh on 11/28/23, 9:54 PM

    I wonder in the 99 yrs of his life how often Charlie was anywhere near victimhood.

  • by tech_ken on 11/28/23, 9:52 PM

    > He thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well, every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something, and your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion.

    Feeling like a victim is not the same as wallowing in self-pity. Recognizing that you have been victimized in some way could easily be the first step towards taking ownership of your own circumstances and pushing for their improvement. Moreover, if you are being actively victimized it's probably not healthy in the long-term to pretend like it's "your fault", you're just going to make yourself crazy that way. Taking a clear view of the causes of your current circumstances is the only way you can act effectively, even if those causes are outside your locus of control. Playing these weird heuristic games to avoid "victim mentality" is just as deluded as drowning in "poor me".

  • by m463 on 11/28/23, 9:44 PM

    I don't understand the last story about the banking and the mortgages.

    did she take the mortgages out of the son's bank or put them in or ... ?

  • by yoyoyo1122 on 11/28/23, 9:47 PM

    Isn't this like the saying "pain may not be your fault but it's your responsibility"?

  • by CPLX on 11/28/23, 9:37 PM

    Lion to Wildebeest Community: Feeling Like Prey Is Counterproductive

    Reference:

    https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/warren-buffett-americas-f...

  • by dr_dshiv on 11/28/23, 9:58 PM

  • by nemo44x on 11/28/23, 9:50 PM

    It's disastrous for an individual to feel like a victim but it's beneficial to groups trying to build power by manipulating people into believing they are victims. Grievance studies in particular are designed to do exactly this.

  • by thenerdhead on 11/28/23, 11:41 PM

    His philosophy was heavily inspired by Benjamin Franklin and other philosophers who believed in the same ideas on self-pity.

  • by hilux on 11/28/23, 11:45 PM

    From the Wikipedia page: "His father, Alfred Case Munger, was a lawyer.[2] His grandfather was Thomas Charles Munger, a U.S. district court judge and state representative.[3]"

    This is not the billionaire white guy who can empathize with most people's situation.

  • by jay-barronville on 11/28/23, 9:54 PM

    I love it. Without even knowing about this particular quote, this has been my standard for myself for some years now. The “it’s always your fault” concept is scary to some folks—and I understand why—but it’s changed my life since I adopted it years ago.

    Generally speaking, my framework is:

    1. I’m NOT a victim.

    2. I accept that everything that happens in my life is my fault.

    3. I control the controllables; I can’t fix what I can’t control.

    4. I must be a problem solver rather than a complainer.

    5. Whatever happens in life, I give myself a cap of 48 hours to get over it—this includes being sad, grieving, being unproductive, etc.

    I have a few more points in my framework, but these are the key ones.

    Now, I want to be clear that you can, in fact, be a victim and things can happen in your life that isn’t your fault, which makes #3 seem a bit contradictory. But if you’re thinking like this, you’re missing the point.

    The point is to have a framework that allows you to progress in life without allowing room for excuses.

    When my wife first started dating me, she was skeptical of my framework—she said it seemed a bit too robotic. As we’ve gone through stuff life has thrown at us and she watches me fight through it all without ever curling up in a ball, she’s fully on board now.

    I say all of this to say: Take control of your life. You can do it and it works.

  • by faeriechangling on 11/28/23, 10:08 PM

    I’ve never been fond of this line of reasoning because some people actually are victims and deluding yourself rarely has great outcomes. I think a truthful and accurate self-perception is loads better than just insisting you are never a victim.

  • by bandrami on 11/28/23, 10:09 PM

    This has real "dating advice from Brad Pitt" energy

  • by hoangtrong001 on 11/29/23, 8:05 AM

    Love so much

  • by ChrisArchitect on 11/28/23, 9:59 PM

    (2020)

  • by jrflowers on 11/28/23, 9:33 PM

    > If you just take the attitude that, however bad it is in any way, it’s always your fault

    I like the idea of having an inspirational quote that shares a premise with a suicide note pinned to the wall, it is very motivating

  • by __MatrixMan__ on 11/28/23, 10:01 PM

    Hard not to hear this as "I'm afraid that my victims will retaliate, therefore there are no victims."

  • by swarnie on 11/28/23, 9:39 PM

    Did he ever get his university prison camp finished?

  • by feedforward on 11/28/23, 9:58 PM

    Someone tell the Israelis whining about "October 7".

    Feeling like a victim all the way.

  • by swayvil on 11/28/23, 9:49 PM

    A victim has a lot of power though.

    A victim suffers. You aren't allowed to question a claim of suffering.

    Therefore a claim of suffering is an axiom.

    Axioms are the foundation of (a certain kind of) reality.