Try Try Try (28/4/2012)
Here’s an out-of-context part-of-a-comment take off the web.
“Depicting strong women, ‘magic exemptions,’ simply fuels the boot-strapping illusion that is strangling contemporary feminism: the assumption that the individual can overcome their social circumstances if they try-try-try and believe-believe-believe, and thus the tendency to hold the individual responsible for their exploitation.”
The author is R Scott Bakker. I don’t intend to link to the thread directly because it’s a very specific discussion and in a way quite personal to the author’s books, which appear to have provoked some rather, ah, strong views. I can’t comment on that because I haven’t read any of his books. There is a lot of context to this quote which I haven’t presented here. For all you know, without reading the entire source material, the author might be arguing the exact opposite of this. He isn’t, but he might be. You only have my word for that, after all. I don’t intend to comment on his specific views except to say that I have sympathy for a great deal of his analysis yet differ in my ultimate conclusion.
I found this statement very thought-provoking for both the truth inherent in most of it and for the way there seemed to me to be something very poisonous lurking at its heart. Again, I consider the statement on its own, without thought to the author’s intentions or motives. The sense of truth and poison are both my own sentiments. Whether they were meant or not, I have no idea.
For the purposes of dissection, I’m going to reword this statement into something that I think has exactly the same sense and meaning:
Depicting strong women, ‘magic exemptions,’ simply fuels the assumption that the individual can overcome their social circumstances if they try-try-try and believe-believe-believe, and thus the tendency to hold the individual responsible for their exploitation. This assumption fuels the boot-strapping illusion that is strangling contemporary feminism.
I’m going to ditch the last sentence – it was relevant to the source discussion but not particularly to my own thoughts and I’m in no way sufficiently informed to say what is or isn’t strangling contemporary feminism or whether the first sentence describes something that fits said description. This assumption is a bad thing will do for my purposes. I assume the original author considered it to be a bad thing, at least. While we’re at it, I’ll generalise further and replace Depicting strong women, ‘magic exemptions,’ with Depicting exceptional people, since I don’t see why either my own thoughts on the subject (or the original for that matter) are specifically and only applicable to strong women. Could be any exceptions to the prevailing social environment.
Depicting exceptional people simply fuels the assumption that the individual can overcome their social circumstances if they try-try-try and believe-believe-believe, and thus the tendency to hold the individual responsible for their exploitation. This is a bad thing.
Does this change the meaning of the original statement aside from generalising it from the specific issue of the portrayal of women in fantasy to the depiction of any exceptional person in any fictional setting? I don’t think it does but you’re welcome to disagree. And I do believe there’s a lot of truth to this statement. The effort and belief of one individual, no matter how vigorously and relentlessly applied, will often fail. We are all single individuals in a vast multitude, and that simply can’t be discounted. And yes, I do think there is a tendency for people to blame the failures of others on they didn’t try hard enough. They didn’t believe in themselves enough. I am certainly very guilty of that sort of thinking. It has a sense to it. A self-empowerment is implied – it wouldn’t have been like that for me. If that’s what I’d wanted, I would have tried harder and succeeded. Ultimately, if I really want to be, unlike you I am in control of my destiny. Because it’s a pretty frightening thing to have to confront the reality that actually no, you’re not.
A somewhat trite but nevertheless relevant example: My six-year old wants to play football for Barcelona in the Champions’ League one day. Maybe, if he were to dedicate his entire life to achieving that end, maybe he could achieve that. However, there is a clear (if a little fuzzy) limit on the number of six-year olds who can one day achieve that ambition no matter how hard they try. Other things will come into play over which they have no control. Luck. Who they know. Where they live. Their parents wealth and support. Many other things. Ultimately, simple genetics. I can see that in my own family. None of the rest of us could, no matter what we did. I won’t. I could never have the necessary speed and stamina ever again. Failure is inevitable. I’m fairly sure that no one single person, no matter how hard they try and how much they believe, can single-handedly end bigotry, racism, sexism, any kind of -ism you like.
So I’ll buy a couple of things as being truth here: the tendency to hold the individual responsible for their exploitation is a bad thing. Yes. Yes it is when you can try as hard as you like to get out of a situation and still fail through circumstances over which you have no whit of control. That can happen. I think it happens a lot. And even if they haven’t tried as hard as they possibly could, I will argue that it’s still a bad thing. I would suggest, as a general rule that is might be better to aim any assumption of responsibility at the exploiters than at the exploited until evidence to the contrary is received. It can be, I accept, surprisingly difficult sometimes.
And finally the poison. the assumption that the individual can overcome their social circumstances if they try-try-try and believe-believe-believe is a bad thing. Yes. I’ll accept that as a truth. The assumption is a bad thing, because endless trying will often still fail and no amount of simple believing in anything will achieve very much. Huge applications of effort and belief will still mostly fail to change the world and there’s nothing we can do about it because that world is big and there’s a great deal over which we simply have no influence or control. But the poison is the never-stated implication that try-try-try and believe-believe-believe are bad things in themselves. No. The assumption that success is inevitable with enough effort, that it is likely or even possible, that’s bad. Blaming people for their own circumstances because they didn’t try hard enough? Also bad. But the trying and the believing themselves are not, and for two reasons I can think of. Allow me to cast this statement another way by inverting it:
the possibility that the individual can overcome their social circumstances if they try-try-try and believe-believe-believe is a good thing
Surely! If we can acknowledge and accept that mostly we will fail through no lack of our own effort, surely it’s still better for even a mere handful to succeed? Shall we all meekly take our lot in life as given to us at birth and none of us strive for something better? I choose not. And the second thing this sentiment fails to acknowledge is the power of numbers. There are many things that one person alone simply cannot change, but if everyone tried at once then it would be easy. Yet if no one tries, what then? Nothing changes.
If I have a personal philosophy of life, it’s been to shoot for the moon as often as I can and to accept that I will miss every single time and to shoot anyway and be pleased by how far my arrows actually reach.It’s worked out well enough up to now. And this could be about feminism, as the original source was, or it could be about sitting down and writing that book that you can’t quite settle to. It could be about changing the world or changing yourself. Either way, the point remains the same.
Accept that there are many things you probably can’t change no matter how hard you try. Seriously get your head around that immutable probability because that’s what the world is like. Then try anyway.
April 29th, 2012 at 9: 59 am
I’m not entirely sure I agree. Blaming people for their own circumstances because they didn’t try hard enough is not a bad thing. There may be some people who try exceptionally hard and still fail, but the majority of people in sub-standard circumstances will be there because they didn’t try, they instead made the choice to not make a real and collected attempt to succeed.
I completely agree that you should shoot for the moon as often as you can, and my argument is that most people will not follow their philosophy, and their life will suck not because they are incapable of improving it, but because they didn’t try. Therefore, holding the individual responsible for their exploitation is not necessarily a bad thing, as in the most case you will be right, and it is in fact that individual’s fault.
April 29th, 2012 at 10: 30 am
“Depicting exceptional people simply fuels the assumption that the individual can overcome their social circumstances if they try-try-try and believe-believe-believe, and thus the tendency to hold the individual responsible for their exploitation. This is a bad thing.”
I agree with this. This is the same thing that is happening with social security in the US. The people who say it isn’t needed are basically saying that “if you weren’t so lazy, and had applied yourself you wouldn’t be poor, and you shouldn’t expect the people who make an effort to pay for your laziness”. This is of course in most cases a false statement. So yes, I see that way of thinking as a way of suppressing individuals and giving them the blame for circumstances they have no control over.
This doesn’t mean that people should not try to overcome their circumstances. But we must be realistic enough to know that many will not succeed, and in those cases blaming the individual is giving up on changing the way society works. Ignoring that our capitalistic society is built on many people working long hours and still only barely making enough money to get by, is in fact itself a failure to try to achieve something better as a society.
The ultimate tool of capitalist oppression is blaming the individual instead of the system. Not everyone can be a millionaire business owner, someone has to get payed less than they contribute for those at the top to get rich.
April 29th, 2012 at 12: 24 pm
Edwin: I think it’s wrong to make any default assumption that someone is in bad circumstances is there because they didn’t try hard enough not to be without understanding how their circumstances came about and what they’ve done to try and improve them. For any given individual it may be true or it may not.
Weirdmage: See, I agree with everything you say and I still find the opening statement poisonous. It is indeed NOT OK (in my view) to simply blame people in a generic way for not trying hard enough. But does that mean we shouldn’t write and tell and read stories of exceptional people, both real and fictional, who, through extraordinary effort and belief DO rise above what for most of us would be insurmountable circumstances? I think not. I’ll keep my stories of a selfish and elitist systems being crushed by their own short-sighted biogtry, but I’ll keep my stories of people whose tireless efforts to change or overthrow them – or merely to better themselves – meet with some (perhaps unlikely) success too. Inspiration and hope are powerful things.
April 29th, 2012 at 5: 33 pm
There is at least one important philosophy which encourages the adherents to give up their aspirations (the “elimination of desire”): Buddhism. For many people, it would be a sensible approach to life.
However, it is hard to make a good story out of a hero stoically accepting his/her unhappy circumstances.
Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” shows that it is possible, although some readers were alienated by the heroes’ lack of rebellion.
April 30th, 2012 at 8: 46 am
No. What’s the purpose of blaming someone for their circumstances? To encourage them to improve them, surely. If you don’t blame them, instead say that it is the product of society or some such, then they have no encouragement to rise up against the oppressors, and instead call on others to do it for them. You can’t not blame them because a small number of people do try and still fail, because it will be their fault that they are oppressed. True, there is a slim chance that that particular individual has tried to better themselves, but look at it this way; in all cases of exploitation there are a small number of people taking advantage of a large group. How does this come to be? Because out of that large group of people suffering, only a very small number actually attempt to improve their circumstances, and these are outnumbered by the oppressors, so they fail. The exploited people’s failure to act is the single cause of exploitation, and not blaming them for this is foolish.
April 30th, 2012 at 12: 25 pm
@Edwin
What you are advocating is victim blaming. A very dangerous practice that is usually done by those committing the crimes, or by those priveledged few who has never been in a position where they didn’t have control over the situation.
That you use the term “True, there is a slim chance that that particular individual has tried to better themselves”, makes me think that you have no idea of how it is to live in a difficult situation.
The problem with oppression is that the majority group is almost always the middle one. Those that are neither oppressors or directly oppressed -the so called silent majority. In the case of capitalism, this is the Middle Class, and upper Working Class. People who live comfortably, and don’t want to “rock the boat”. It’s the silence of these people who perpetrates an oppressive system.
Those who are really oppressed usually are too busy surviving on a day to day basis to start any kind of rebellion. It’s the ones living comfortably who have the time, and power, to fight the oppressors, but they usually just sit on their ass and do nothing. Either ignoring the problem altogether, or turning to victim blaming so they don’t have to face the fact that oppression is going on.
April 30th, 2012 at 6: 46 pm
My own view is far less ambitious. I think that it’s unfair to blame any given individual for failing to improve their circumstances without knowing how hard they tried to better them. Some people try very hard and fail because the obstacles in their way are simply overwhelming to them. Others don’t try at all. Broad sweeping generalisations are always flawed. Necessary, perhaps, when one it talking of governments, but not in ones own dealings with individuals.