Learned Helplessness - 2 views
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If, over the course of your life, you have experienced crushing defeat or pummeling abuse or loss of control, you learn over time there is no escape, and if escape is offered, you will not act – you become a nihilist who trusts futility above optimism. Studies of the clinically depressed show that when they fail they often just give in to defeat and stop trying.
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Do you vote? If not, is it because you think it doesn’t matter because things never change, or politicians are evil on both sides, or one vote in several million doesn’t count? Yeah, that’s learned helplessness.
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Another great bubble bursting from David McRaney at You Are Not So Smart. "The Misconception: If you are in a bad situation, you will do whatever you can do to escape it. The Truth: If you feel like you aren't in control of your destiny, you will give up and accept whatever situation you are in."
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I wouldn't consider this the whole story. There's certainly a bad extreme to fatalism, but there's an alternate wrong in supposing that all things are achievable through fiat of will. A weakness of Classicism and PoMo may lie in resigning oneself to fate or the whims of complex systems, nut Modernism certainly had problems not only with those who successfully asserted their wills, but also in the psyches of the many who were unsuccessful supermen and were left to conclude that they must be inherently worse people.