Victimhood, Politicking, and Industry
While all cultivars have an internal power hierarchy and a mechanism for determining where people sit on this hierarchy, they all also have preferred strategies for manipulating the wider world’s mutually-agreed-upon-power hierarchies. If a workplace features people from ten different cultures, those people will still have to form some form of informal hierarchy during their interactions and each individual’s cultivar will influence which strategies they are most likely to utilize.
There are four general cultural strategies for gaining social power:
- Playing the victim
- Politicking
- Industry
- Intelligence
Playing the Victim
Let’s start by focusing on the “victimhood strategy” for gaining social power because any effective, intentionally constructed culture must be capable of defending against it. Victimhood is used aggressively by the cultural supervirus, many pop cultures, and many dominating cultivars when they hold minority positions.
Humans evolved to empathize with the suffering of others[[2]](#_ftn2) and some individuals as well as cultures have come to realize they can exploit this to force non-reciprocal resource transfer from other groups.[[3]](#_ftn3) [[4]](#_ftn4) Individuals willing to engage in this behavior should be regarded with extreme levels of suspicion, as personal victimhood narratives subconsciously promote unjust violence and intergroup competition[[5]](#_ftn5) and grant one license to escape personal blame for wrongdoings.[[6]](#_ftn6) Worst of all, victimhood allows people to hold obviously incorrect and immoral beliefs without having to be self-critical by granting those who wield it something called a “psychological license.”[[7]](#_ftn7) For lack of a better word, people who subscribe to cultures that empower victim mentalities are “toxic.”
The research cited above makes it clear that even genuine victims are better off not creating internal self-narratives around victimhood. Instead, people would be better served by framing themselves as empowered and associating with groups that facilitate such views.
Let’s be clear here: This sucks. It is not fair that groups that are already facing an uphill battle face an additional layer of hardship because using the “victim card” degrades a person’s sense of efficacy, self-sufficiency, morality, ability to contribute to society, and general mental stability. Alas, just because something is shitty and not fair does not mean it is not true. Groups that ignore this and reward members who play the victim card do not have those individuals’ or victimized demographics’ best interests at heart.
But it gets worse, as a group of researchers at the University of British Columbia highlight in their paper: “Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of Dark Triad Personalities.”[[8]](#_ftn8) Essentially, a willingness to signal victimhood is correlated very highly with Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy when controlling for socioeconomic variables. Victimhood signaling is furthermore associated with lying to earn a bonus, willingness to lie about being harmed by others in a work environment for personal benefit, willingness to cheat in a coin flip game, increased likelihood to assume wrong in others, and a higher sense of entitlement.[[9]](#_ftn9) The reason people who are willing to play the victim can be completely written off rather than “trained to be better” is that this self-contextualization appears to be an enduring and stable personality trait.[[10]](#_ftn10)
While playing the victim is an effective social strategy, an ounce of cultural sympathy for it puts you at incredible risk. This can be seen in the effects victimhood-mentality-promoting cultures have on their members. The biggest pop culture group that supports victimhood mindsets is the progressive movement. Rates of mental health problems within progressive groups are astronomically higher than in those in conservative groups. To illustrate this point: Liberal women between 18 and 29 are more likely than moderates or conservatives to be diagnosed with a mental health issue, with over half having one (56.3%). If you include men, a full 46% of white liberals in the 18-29 age range have been diagnosed with a mental health issue.[[11]](#_ftn11) In addition, adjusted for basic demographics (though not sexuality), Republicans are consistently happier and have been since Pew started taking the survey that produced these findings.[[12]](#_ftn12) (One could argue that those who are more sad or plagued by mental illness are more accepted by progressives, but this theory also has problems of its own.)
When your culture acts like a giant beacon for people much more likely to be psychopathic narcissists, is it any wonder you have trouble “keeping it together?” Cultures that reward people for acting like victims will consistently attract people with Dark Triad personalities at higher rates, and such individuals can navigate their power structures better, meaning organizations dominated by victimhood-supporting cultures end up being run by Dark Triad personalities at higher rates. It is a cruel twist of fate that—unless specific preventative measures are taken—the organizations most interested in helping the downtrodden end up being run by self-serving narcissists.
Here we need to warn of potential cultural bias. Our personal culture has historically regarded anyone who frames themselves as a victim with the highest level of disgust. This is a cultural view that has served us well in choosing business partners, selecting friends, and dating (seriously though: Don’t marry someone who likes playing the victim card). That said, our suspicion of victimhood makes us extremely receptive to statistics and data that reveal it to be toxic.
Nobody is immune to the psychological desire to play the victim. Even individuals who don’t have a predilection toward seeing themselves as a victim naturally will if they are accused of discriminating against others or if they are characterized as being relatively advantaged.[[13]](#_ftn13) [[14]](#_ftn14) (Yes, you read that right: Telling someone they are actually in a slightly more advantaged group will make them double down on victimhood mentality—something you have likely witnessed personally.) Never allow yourself to succumb to these urges, and if you do, hate yourself for it. A culture that tells people to never hate themselves no matter their actions or thoughts is a breeding ground for monsters.
Victim narrative strategies have a major flaw: They can be used externally but never internally if a culture is to survive multiple generations. In most cultures, an outsider cannot simply stroll in and insert themselves into the top of the local power hierarchy by demonstrating they are the most victimized individual. If a culture loses the ability to defend against this, it essentially installs a giant back door through which bad actors can walk.
Politicking
The second area of cultural specialization, politicking, is an effective strategy for accumulating power and is pervasive in many symbiotic cultures in which constituent players are in the minority (this strategy does not work for majority groups). Coming from an individualist culture, we cannot even begin to understand how politicking skills are effectively passed between parents and children, however we assume that it must come in part from belonging to a culture that trusts members more than outsiders, giving anyone who adopts or is born into it a built-in nepotistic network. This nepotistic network can even be a good recruiting tool, acting as a draw for outsiders to join.
We have nothing against this social strategy for gaining power; we just don’t know how cultures cultivate and train for it.
Industry
Industry is the hierarchy-climbing mechanism with which we are most familiar. Heck, when I (Malcolm) first met Simone, her “personal motto” on her dating profile was “repeated blunt force.” This value set is passed down through cultures that downplay the value and admirability of talent, intelligence, and easy success, praising work ethic instead. Per such cultural value sets, a person who archives something with little effort should feel ashamed rather than proud (e.g., “participation medals” are an insult).
Putting industry on a pedestal can produce unfortunate side effects. For example, cultures that idolize productivity and hard work can cause people to fetishize the aesthetics of looking busy all the time and being overworked—even if their busyness and stress don’t produce meaningful outcomes (as an example of this, one test reader noted a Japanese trend of showing diligence through napping in public).[[15]](#_ftn15) The best cure to this cultural ill is to frame busywork and performative working as indulgent at best and unethical, wasteful virtue signaling at worst. Someone who is stressed and overworked is not to be lauded; such stress is a sign of poor time management.
We coined the term “office theater” to describe this dynamic—which, last we heard, is now standard parlance in some Stanford business school courses. Performing office theater entails “aesthetically” working while not functionally creating much value. A common example of office theater involves staying late at the office, ordering takeout, and looking stressed and sleep deprived when going home and getting some rest would actually produce better results. Someone performing the opposite of office theater may choose to work remotely in order to avoid distractions and spend commute time working—or to work at odd hours in an effort to make the most of their personal circadian rhythm (I—Malcolm—am writing this at 2:00am, as I do my best work between the hours of 2:00am and 5:00am). The concept of turning work into a ritual rather than a thing of utility nauseates those from high industry cultures.
Intelligence
Finally, some groups use intelligence as a mechanism for climbing social hierarchies. We see this as almost as toxic as sorting by victimhood for a few reasons. First, even dumb individuals will always internally see themselves as intelligent, so this strategy creates a situation in which a person’s self-perceived value is usually going to be higher than their real value.
Second, this strategy encourages “intelligence fronting,” in which people prioritize sounding smart over being easy to comprehend. Someone culturally programmed to use intelligence for social climbing will subconsciously vomit jargon and references into writing and conversations in an attempt to reinforce their position in the local hierarchy—especially when they are feeling insecure.[[16]](#_ftn16) This ultimately undermines people’s ability to communicate important concepts and make convincing arguments (this is a major problem in the Effective Altruist and rationalist cultures).[[17]](#_ftn17)
Finally, Intelligence is certified at the societal level by the academic system, which itself has succumbed to the cultural supervirus. This means that using accreditation from these institutions to assign status within your culture provides an easy back door for the cultural supervirus to directly inject contagious vectors into the heart of your culture.
Notes:
1. Advice to our children: Just as much as you should avoid spouses that show any tendency to play the victim, you should strive to find a spouse who is industrious without complaint or expectation of remuneration—someone who inherently likes working, who sees the virtue in strategically applied productivity, and who feels deeply uncomfortable with idle time. Finding someone truly industrious is far more important than marrying someone who is hot or smart.
2. Some cultures encourage their members to climb their internal culture’s social hierarchies while simultaneously climbing hierarchical ladders in wider society, while others strongly discourage members from playing societies’ wider social games. In fact, keeping a culture’s members “down” (vis-a-vis power hierarchies in the wider world) can increase cultural fidelity, acting both as a shield and as an effective member retention strategy. This suppression of achievement (as defined by broader society) makes adherents both unattractive to other cultures that may want to poach them (to access their wealth and influence) and unable to pursue many options in the wider world (as they are largely powerless and low status in broader world terms).
Two examples of cultures that do this are Jehovah’s Witnesses, which heavily frame higher education as a wicked pursuit (with only 12% having bachelor’s degrees)[[18]](#_ftn18) and prioritize cultural in-group activities over work (see the next point about Jehovah’s Witnesses views on education below). Israeli Haredim Jews also discourage men from working and deemphasize both male and female education (we explore this group in greater detail in a few pages).[[19]](#_ftn19) This is one of those strategies that no one would intentionally choose for a culture they created but which is evolutionarily successful.
3. It is refreshing how honest Jehovah’s Witnesses are about their stances on education. The primary reason they don’t let their kids go to college is that a lot of kids deconvert while in institutions of higher education, which, of course, from the perspective of a Jehovah’s Witness, leads those kids to eternal suffering. If you believed that sending your child to college exposed them to higher risks of eternal damnation, what would you do? It would also be theologically silly to send kids to college from the mindset of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ metaphysical framework, with one of the governing members saying: “We will not need doctors or lawyers after Armageddon but we will need carpenters, plumbers, and similar construction trades.”[[20]](#_ftn20) If you think we are only decades away from entering a world ruled directly by God without governments or disease, then it would not be crazy to de-emphasize job training in domains such as law or medicine.
A Case Study in Cultural Genotypes vs Phenotypes: American vs. Israeli Haredim
One of our Jewish history sensitivity editors flagged a passing comment we made about Israeli Haredi stances on education as presenting an inaccurate stereotype. He argued that the Israeli Haredi cultivar is nearly identical to its U.S. Haredi counterpart (for which this person knows we have a soft spot) and that we should not frame the cultivars as being different from each other. This prompted us to look into the two cultivars, which confirmed our original read of the situation with data. If anything, we are presenting offensive facts rather than inaccurate stereotypes. The Israeli Haredim indeed have a dramatically lower cultural value for economically industrious endeavors than the American Haredim and are radically less educated (in secular matters, at least), but potentially with good reason.
As recently as 2016, only 50%[[21]](#_ftn21) of men in the Israeli Haredi cultivar had jobs, which rose to only 63.5% by 2020. This is radically different from the American branch of Haredi Jews, colloquially known as Hasidic Jews, where even a 17% level of unemployment back in 1974 was seen as an existential catastrophe that the entire community needed to work together to fix (with their normal unemployment being around 6%).[[22]](#_ftn22) In Israel, by contrast, 17% unemployment would be literally less than half of the lowest unemployment levels Israeli Haredim have ever experienced.
In addition “as of 2014, among those aged 25-35, just 2% of [Israeli] Haredi men and 8% of women had a college degree, compared to 28% of secular Jewish Israeli men and 25% of religious Jewish Israeli men, and 43% of both secular and religious Jewish Israeli women in that age group.”[[23]](#_ftn23) Again, contrast this with American Hasidic Jewish groups where 11% of Hasidic men and 6% of Hasidic women hold bachelor’s degrees, meaning that overall they have about a 50% higher level of bachelor’s degree attainment.
While the Israeli Haredi and the American Hasidic are theologically essentially identical, they are culturally quite different in how they relate to both industry as a virtue and somewhat different in their pursuit of higher education.[[24]](#_ftn24) They can be thought of as cultivars with very similar DNA (their theology) but markedly different phenotypes (their values, lifestyles, and ultimate choices).
This difference in phenotypes need not be encoded at the “genetic” (e.g., theological) level but could be polymorphic (where the same genes lead to different phenotypes when different environmental pressures are present). By that we mean that if you snapped your fingers and the Israeli Haredi population were in the U.S. and the U.S. Haredi population were in Israel, the U.S. population would start acting like the Israeli one and vice versa because of their new environmental pressures (government support that reduces obligation to participate in the mainstream economy, military service mandates that may threaten cultural sovereignty, attempts to preserve their culture in the face of different threats, etc.).
There appears to be an assumption that most cultivars respect groups theologically closer to them while reserving disdain for the groups most different from them—but that is actually fairly rarely the case. Most cultivars actually have the most derision for groups theologically closest to them. This is often how speciation begins to take place and is what we call “The Judean People’s Front” effect based on a Monty Python skit in which the People’s Front of Judea say that the only people they hate more than the Romans are the Judean People’s Front and the Popular Front of Judea.
In practice, most cultures judge each other based on values, not theology. We can have two groups with almost an identical theology, like the Israeli and American Haredim, and personally hold radically different opinions of each group. The American Haredim embody some of our highest cultural values like industry, sovereignty, and self-sufficiency—three value sets not shared by the nearly theologically identical Israeli cultivar. This is ironic as they are functionally the same culture per the criteria people use when thinking about culture.
Note: Why is antisemitism so much more pervasive than hatred of other successful ethno-cultivar minorities, such as Jains? Outside of some reasons already addressed, the “Judean People’s Front” phenomenon likely plays a large role. When Christianity was founded, it would have been viewed as only a slightly differentiated version of Jewishness. In order to ensure members saw themselves as distinct from Jews and to prevent members from flippantly shifting between the two communities, those early Christian leaders who succeeded in retaining members fostered animosity against this closely related culture (this is a normal part of cultural speciation). Cultural animosity—along with apocalypticism and other core points of differentiation—was therefore baked into Christianity’s foundational traditions and subsequently carried over into other cultures derived from it, such as Islam.