Well, it seems sort of obvious. From the point of view of the workers, the capitalist system is founded on the notion that most people can’t organize themselves for productive work without subordinating themselves to an elite, the capitalists (or the capitalist state or associated institutions). They’re theoretically helpless. However, many people do manage their work without bosses – single proprietors, partners, cooperatives. The helplessness of the worker is learned through the schools, the media, advertising, propaganda, and defeated, subjugated elders. It could be unlearned. Many benefits might follow.
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This helplessness is one of the way both the left and right in the US make a self fulfilling prophecy for the ‘welfare queens’ disguising or confusing the concepts of cruelly withholding care for fiscal responsibility and fairness.
To obtain any state benefits a long trail of bureaucratically analysed and tracked injury, helplessness, and tragedy must be established.
It creates a situation where many who could have been rehabilitated and return to the work force are instead battered and suppressed to the point that they are physically used up by the time assistance arrives.
To make matters worse any attempt to return to productivity will risk the years of work required to get on the dole for an unknown long term outcome.
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In the 70/80’s there was a French cartoon “les shadocks” featuring stupid creatures and absurd proverbs. One of them was “if there is no solution, then there is no problem”. Several interpretations can come to mind, but I’m pretty sure it’s about helplessness
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Best way to unlearn helplessness? A lot of people swear by Al-Anon, which is for people from alcoholic families. Generally speaking, whenever we hear about the generic problems associated with having an alcoholic parent, alcoholism never gets mentioned in the subsequent lofty academic discussion.
Humans are not dogs. The concept of learned helplessness has entered the realm of pop psychology, and brings with it the not so subtle stench of victim blaming.
Other forces are at work in a situation where a person is stuck in a relationship (including work, school, romance, etc.) that has a power imbalance, dynamics of bullying, etc. In a relationship where violence is present, the victim is chronically blamed for “provocation”, for not reacting the violence in a different way, even for being hurt by the violence (“sticks and stones…”). The problem is not “learned helplessness” - it is a problem of an abusive person person abusing ! Things like intermittent reinforcement - where the abuser is helpful and friendly, sometimes, neutral sometimes and abusive sometimes keeps a victim confused and hopeful. Traumatic bonding (the bonds that are formed with an abuser are conversely stronger than the bonds formed with a non abusive person) is another outcome which keeps people strongly stuck in an abusive situation. This also does not consider forces like - sometimes there are no other jobs or schools, locally, or things like citizenship, or financial dependency, or even family.
Here’s a good paper which punctures the “learned helplessness” theory:
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Well at least it mentions alcoholism!
I don’t think I would say it punctures the idea of “learned helplessness”. I think it adds some nuance to a very complex issue, and adds the dimension of “taught helplessness”. But then, I’m not a psychologist. Interesting though, thanks!
Good for you… it didn’t go down like that for everyone.
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Yeah, I think that’s much fairer.
It’s the party with the upper hand taking advantage of various cognitive biases and so on; accuracy here is important.
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It is an interesting paper. We live in a social order deeply imbued with – and structured around – domination and exploitation. Domestic violence, usually against the physically weaker parties (women, children, the elderly) is one expression of that fundamental principle. As with many other forms of it, there often seems to be not only resignation but consent, even active encouragement, on the part of the victims, a kind of permanent Stockholm Syndrome. In the case of our economic relations, as another example, we have capitalism, where the victims often appear to become enthusiastic about their subjugation. And in relations between larger communities, we observe war and imperialism, which could not be carried on without the vigorous support of the very people who are most victimized.
It’s self-evidently true, just like the government forces us to wear seatbelts as a form of social control, even though it totally doesn’t help because I heard that my cousin’s roommate had a car accident and he died even though he was wearing a seatbelt.
You don’t have any choice but to agree when faced with the Shadowy Conspiracy argument. It’s just a fact of the internet.
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Here’s what gets me about learned helplessness. People seem to always want to be in your cheer section before you try something, and chastise you for being negative or defeatist, but if you fail, suddenly they all say they knew it was a bad idea and you should have known better. Being chronically ill, I’ve had to learn that people just love to tell me to jump into things as if I’m healthy, that I’m just used to acting sick and would be fine if I gave it a try - but then yell at me for over-extending myself and making myself sicker. I don’t doubt learned helplessness is a thing, but I look at anything about it with a jaundiced eye because so often that peppy optimism that says I just need to think differently just means I’m going to be shoved into the water and then asked by the one who shoved me why I’d do something so stupid as jump in the pool if I didn’t know how to swim.
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Tremendous Share. Opens up so many lines of dialogue regarding the individual and cultural behavior.
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