Bradley Campbell || The Rise of Victimhood Culture

we have Bradley Campbell on the podcast. Doctor Campbell is a sociologist interested in moral conflict, clashes of right and wrong, and how they are handled. Most of his work examines genocide, which normally arises from large scale interethnic conflicts. Recently, he has also begun to examine the much smaller scale conflicts of modern college campuses. His latest book, co authored with Jason Manning, is called The Rise of Victimhood, Culture, Microaggression,

Safe Space, and the New Culture Wars. Thanks for chatting with me today, Bradley. Thanks for having me. Yeah, well, we got lots of discuss and this is a topic that we haven't fully represented on the Psychology Podcast yet, so I'm really excited to be able to talk to you about some of these issues that are very front

and center in the cultural wars today. Would you say they are more fund and center today than in past generations some of the things you write about, Yes, I'd say this is most of the stuff we're talking about is something that's fairly new or at least a new form of it. Okay, Well, let's start with your just briefly, your work on genocide, because you've studied the sociology of genocide. That's how you started off in your career. Is that right?

That's right? Yeah, So me you could talk a little about I know that's a wide range of things you've studied, but maybe some of the essential points you've tried to make. Yeah. So the genocide work ties into my work on conflict college campuses, and that it's both about moral conflict. So that's kind of the broader subject matter that I've studied

in all my work. So moral conflict or clashes of right and wrong, which is something it's really broad in that we would think of a moral conflict as occurring anytime somebody has a grievance against someone else. So and this would just be so anytime in sociological terminology would be anytime somebody defines somebody's behavior as debiant. Right, So, anytime you have a grievance or see disapprove of someone's behavior, there's a conflict. And then the idea was, well, how

do people handle conflicts? And so then that is there's a huge range of behavior there too, handling of conflict. This could be scowling at somebody on the bus who's talking on their cell phone too well. They could be avoiding somebody who's been annoying you lately, a friend, you know, not talking to them as much, not hanging out with them as much. It could be quitting a job where the supervisor is giving you a problems. It could be firing an employee, or it could be an act of violence.

Like most violence, whether it's homicide, usually arising out of arguments or assaults, most of them come from conflict. Theyre a way of handling conflict, and that includes large scale violence like genocide. So I had drawn from the work of Donald Black who's a sociologist at the University of Virginia, and he has for a long time studied the handling of conflict, initially looking at law, whether people turn to law to handle their conflicts, like what do they call

the police? Do they sue someone? And then what happens do the police make an arrest, is the person convicted of a crime, or does somebody win their lawsuit? So this was the kind of thing that a Black had looked at. He started looking at law and then expanded it to look at other ways of handling conflict. So I approached genocide initially from that perspective, thinking like and the idea was that one way of explaining handling of

conflict is with the social structure. So the social characteristics and relationships are the people involved, are they high and low high or low in status, or are they relationally close, like are they friends or are they distant like they're strangers. So you know, for example, if you're assaulted by a stranger, you're more likely to call the police than if you're assaulted by a friend. Or if you're raped by a stranger, you're more likely to report it than if you're raped

by a friend. So these kinds of relationships, whether people are relationally close, whether they're high or low in status compared to someone else, matter for how conflict gets handled. And so that was the approach that Donald black could use. And I initially applied that to genocide in my dissertation work and then my first book called The Geometry of Genocide, which is with University Virginia Press. And so they're looking

at these large scale ethnic conflicts. So when people have grievances against an ethnic group, you know, do they handle them with genocide? And how much genocide do we see?

So genocide there is just ethnically based mass killing. Ethnically based mass killing could occur on a small scale, So it could be you know, people mastering Indians in the California in the eighteen fifties, you know, so there would be a theft of ranchers cattle and then the ranchers would get together and go solder some Indians and it might be like to kill ten or twenty or thirty Indians in an expedition. But then that would be a

that would be genocide. It's ethnically based mass killing, a low level genocide on up to something like the Holocaust, where you have this very systematic program of extermination resulting in the killing of six million Jews across Europe. Degrees of it, but I looked at it as ethnically based mass killing and trying to understand the things that were associated with that. So I think, you know, without you know,

getting into every aspect of the argument I looked. I was looking at genocide as a result of a certain kind of social structure, So where social distances between groups are high, where there's a lot of inequality, it occurs at it's extreme, when they're very power full ethnic groups who have grievances against less powerful and distant ethnic groups. But this framework can explain a lot of kind of

interesting things that we see in genocide. Why I wrote an article on contradictory behavior in genocide, for instance, so of other people had begun noting too that the idea of people simply as rescuers or killers and genocide didn't account for people who took on multiple roles. So there had been a lot of work like on rescuers during genocide.

What makes people be altruistic? What leads them to sacrifice their lives for others to rescue if they're a member of the perpetrator group, saving the lives of members of the victim group. And there was a book called the Altruistic Personality, right, So a lot of me by Samuel Older and paral Olner. And this was a really psychological approach looking at how personality factors lead to these things.

And it's not that these kinds of explanations are wrong, but they don't out for all the variation that you see. So people may people who are rescuers who rescue some members of the group may also act as killers. So you have this extremely different behavior. And rather than say like, well there's this group of killers who have this personality and this group of rescuers who have this sometimes they're

doing it's the same people doing both. We saw that a lot in the Rewindan genocide, for instance, where you might have somebody like one man was hiding four tootsias in his home to the tootsies where the target group and the Ruandan genocide, and this was a Hutu man from the perpetrator group citing four toot seas in his home. And then another Tutsi man stopped his home task for directions and he promptly turned them over to the mobs of killers. So he's helped to kill this one man

while helping rescue others. So you have these cases where people are acting both as perpetrators and rescuers. And you know usually it's that kind of pattern. They're hiding their friends, they're saving their people who are close to them, and targeting and participating in the killing of those who are more distant. You even see like high level perpetrators, like one of the architects of the Rwandan genocide, who had

a Tutsi mother. Their want of genocide is a little peculiar because ethnicity passed through the mail line, so you could have a Tutsi mother and Hutu father and you'd be a Hutu. And so he's the Tutsis were targeted and he took The movie Hotel Rwanda was about Paul Recessabagina who saved a lot of Tutsis in a hotel. But this man, this perpetrator, took his mother to Paul rose has Sebagina and at this hotel where he's rescuing people and said, Paul, I give you my cockroach, which

was their slur for Tutsis. You know, in bringing her here, he's orchestrating a genocide against Tutsis. So you see this kind of behavior and it fits that kind of pattern where where people are rescuing those who are close and killing those who are distant. So those are some of the things that I addressed with my initial work on genocide. In this kind of apply, of course to other forms of violence can to be looked at in the same

way to totally. I thank you for going through that because it made it even after even after reading your book, it made it very clear to me this link between these two programs of yours. Now, this is exciting for me as a psychologist to talk to a sociologists because we don't talk to each other that often these different fields, and I think that's unfortunate. So this interesting interplay between personality and motivation and then environmental, large scale societal influences.

You know, all these things are interacting in lots of ways. You know, even with the instances, the examples you told me of these individuals show these contradictions, you know, there probably still was some not a fully explainable, but some set of personality characteristics that helped increase the likelihood that they would even show those contradictions. So let's talk about the campus culture. And this is what you call, well,

not that I shouldn't call it the campus culture. Coach called the victimhood culture, because not all campuses are one hundred percent victimhood culture, right, But you're saying this is a growing sort of culture on campuses. Can you first define what that culture is and then just how prevalent is this in this day and age? Okay, so what the culture is, first of all, in this extreme form on campuses, but not of course among everybody on campus.

It's the far left activist and it's especially something that we've seen more of in recent years, like in the past ten years, even less than that, some of the idea is becoming more prevalent. So we talk about things like the idea of microaggression and trigger warnings and safe spaces, and this has all come to public attention in the past few years. And these are manifestations of what we're

calling victimhood culture. And we call it that in contrast with two other kinds of moral cultures that we talk about, honor culture and dignity culture. And so those aren't our terms. Other sociologists in history have talked about honor cultures and contrasted them with dignity cultures that replaced them. But the idea would be that so just like you know, you might have manifestations of a victim of culture, you have

particular manifestations of, say like an honor culture. One kind of one way of handling conflict in some honor cultures is the dual. And this is a particularly kind of it's an example that really kind of shows the logic of the culture. So you might have in the in the American South before the Civil War, or even in the in the North earlier on. So you might have a high statusman who has been offended by another high

status man. He slurred his character somehow, and so the Alexander Hamilton, well, the Hamilton vir Duals is an example of that, right, that's and that was eighteen oh four, so that at that time they were these things were still happening in the North in the United States. So in that case, Burr thinks that Hamilton has been slurring his character repeatedly. He's probably right about that, and so

he finallyallenges them to a duel. When he first, you know, asks him to disavowl statements that he's made in that kind of thing. When Hamilton won't, it ends up challenging him to a duel, and so they then go and fire pistols at each other. Hamilton ends up dead and so it's something that seems kind of bizarre to modern people. I think, like, how was that going to solve anything? So you've been offended by somebody, so let's go fire guns at each other, and then that I mean, burr

could have died, nobody could have died. Does how does it address the problem. But in an honor culture, it's a very one's reputation in the eyes of others is important, and one of the things that's especially important is your

reputation for bravery physical bravery. And so by subjecting yourself to demonstrate not only that you're willing to engage in violence, but that you're willing to risk death, you demonstrate that you belong in that kind of social status right that you have, that you have honor, physical bravery, and the other things that are associated with it. So this is kind of you know, not all honor cultures fight duels,

but often other kinds of violence. So you might see in the eighteen hundreds in Greece there were these knife fights where a man who had been slurred maybe another man. In one case, a man walks into a bar and tells another man that he's a fool and a braggart. The man responds, I'd rather be a fool and a braggart than the lord of a house full of magdalens or prostitutes. So then they draw their knives out. Yeah,

so it's fighting words, right. So then they draw their knives out and one man slashes the other's cheek, and it's over. And that's a type of duel as well. Right, it's kind of an on the spot act of violence agreed upon by both parties. But you have also feuding in tribal societies where plans might exchange killings back and forth, or even modern game war and honor cultures, the idea is that you don't let your self be insulted or taken advantage of that, you respond to violence with violence,

or you protect your life and property. But you also might be required to respond to certain kinds of insults with violence if you're going to maintain your honor. So aggression and response to insult is not only acceptable, but it might be necessary to keep your social standing. In honor cultures, also, people end up so people end up being very touchy, sensitive to slight, so that they are quick to perceive insults. They don't want to look like

a coward. Like they have no honor if they are letting things go that are serious insults, and then they might also be quick to insult others, like the two men in Greece going walking, one man walking in a bar and insulting the other. That also kind of demonstrates

that you're not afraid. And so there are certain characteristics in even despite a lot of differences in honor cultures, but there is aggression and response to certain kind of insults, touchiness or high sensitivity to certain kinds of slight, willingness to insult other people in and you know, the idea is that you handle conflicts yourself, you don't go to the law or the third parties. And the culture that replaced honor has been called dignity culture by historic and sociologists.

And the idea here is that instead of being based on a kind of status, which in honor cultures is honor or you know, physical bravery, the idea is that every human being has this inherent worth or dignity. So dignity is the idea everybody has value. And because you have this inherent worth as a human being, the idea is you don't need to care what others say about you, so you might indignity cultures. Parents might tell their children sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will

never hurt me. And the idea is it doesn't matter what the words people say, just ignore them, right, So that as you shouldn't be sensitive to slight. Instead be thick skinned and don't respond with violence. If somebody is violent to you towards you, then you go to law, or you go to authorities, but you don't need to even handle that yourself. And so you have an opposite kind of moral approach along several kinds of dimensions and

dignity cultures. Don't be sensitive to slight, go to third parties if there are serious offenses, Let minor things and merely verbal things go. So this is partly because I had and Jason Manning, my co author of the new book. Both of us had been studying moral conflict a lot in violence. The literarely on violence. There's a lot about honor and dignity, you know, because honor cultures tend to

lead to a great deal of violence. What we started noticing on college campuses were these situations where students were highly sensitive to insult. And so this reminded us of honor cultures, you know, initially thinking well, that's not culture of dignity. But also they were portraying themselves as victims and advertising their weakness and their need for help. They

were appeeling the third party. So there it was very differ different from an honor culture because the idea was, you know, in our culture, you want to you're strong and you can handle your conflicts. And in this kind of new culture that we were seeing emerging, people were saying that they were in need of protection. So we saw things we were interested in, the idea of microaggression, for instance, So this was a term I hadn't heard

until twenty thirteen. It's been around a while, but almost nobody had heard of it before about then or even later. But I was paying attention to some stuff that was happening at Oberlin College, partly because I had had an interest in hate crime hoaxes for a long time. These

situations where people might fake a hate crime. A lot of times it was on a campus, and there was usually then a big response to people were quick to believe it had happened, and I was and then kind of to forget that this was even a thing, that there was a hate that it could be hoaxes. The next time, what would happen. So this seems sociologically interesting to me. For a long time, so I was kind

of following some stuff at Oberlin. There was some graffiti and with offensive things and stuff that looked like it might be a hoax. It did later turn off that these work. It's not really clear exactly what they were doing, but they were liberal students who were trying to get

a rise out of people or something. But at the time there was a big uproar at Oberlin and during that time somebody spotted what they thought was a ku Klux klansman on campus, and it turned out to be a woman wrapped in a towel, I think, But I talking to Jason Manning, my co author, who ended up meeting my co author on this stuff, we were just

kind of amazed. Like at Oberlin College, which is known as a pretty leftist environment, people thought that there was like a chapter of the ku Klux Klan or what and they shut down classes and stuff because of this, and it turned out not to be true. But during this time I was watching all this, we also then heard of what was called Oberlin microgre It was a website Oberlin Microaggressions, where people would post microaggressions that had happened to them. So the idea was that there were

these microaggressions, little small offenses, verbal slights and things. They were called aggressions because they saw them as harmful to them, their micro because they're small. But the idea was that they add up over time and do damage to people. And so students were posting things there, like one student overheard a professor at the gym, I think, saying, oh, I'm glad my husband and I both have blue eyes,

so our child will have blue eyes. And the student said, you know, I saw this as offensive and said I don't want casual racism in my professors or you know, and these were the kinds of complaints people were making, and so we were just fascinated by this, thinking, you know, what was exactly was going on here that in this environment that was not even you know, there was not a con conservative kind of environment. This was over in college.

You would think this is more like an anti racist environment. But people first of all thought that there were serious acts of racism like klansmen walking around. Second that are a serious organized racism and then second that there were concerned about these minor offenses. Now it seems sociologically interesting to us because it seems very plausible that people are

concerned more about minor offenses when they are last major ones. Right, So in the same environment where people are most concerned about racism and see it as bad, they're more likely to find smaller acts of racism, and they begin to interpret even tinier entire things as acts of racism. And so it began to be interested in this. But what we saw there is like you have people who are sensitive to slight to the extent that they're even pointing

out and listing microaggressions. So that's like an honor culture. It's a different kind of slight, but high sensitively, but they're not handling with them with violence. They're complaining about them publicly, and as we see, like in a lot of other cases, appealing to university administrators to do something

about it. And so it was combining elements of honor and dignity culture diverging from both, and we ended up calling it a culture of victimhood, So victimhood culture, and because victimhood becomes a kind of moral status in this culture, just like honor is a kind of moral status, and an honor culture, it's honor or physical bravery, reputation for physical bravery that's important. Being seen as a victim accords

one kind of status. In these victim cultures, you get partisan chef people taking your side, and especially in among activist circles on college campuses, this being labeled a victim was giving status, and for this reason then the opposite of victimhood becomes stigmatized, just like cowardice is stigmatized and honor culture. Privilege is bad in a victimhood culture, and so you know, if you have privileged, then you at least need to acknowledge it. Being blind to your privilege

is very bad. And also it makes sense then the victimhood becomes a status that some people will falsely claim victimhood as we see what we see in hate crime, foxes and other things like this, and they're quick to perceive it. We also see this not as even though this culture is that it's extreme on college campuses and in certain environments, and it's also something that in certain ways spreads elsewhere. So you see even you know, certain aspects of victimhood being adopted by the right by, even

by people who oppose the culture. And you know something that some psychologists have called competitive victimhood, where in moral arguments, people come to us to arguments become who's who's the biggest victim? It's the biggest Well, you know that's really neat important that you identify this trend and try to understand this trend is important as well. If I stand back as far as possible and look at this as objectively as possible from many different perspectives, I think that

we probably can. There's another book there that we can identify called the anti PC culture. You know, there's another culture that's cropping up on the far not even though I would just say I would not say the far, I would just say the right. You know that is very triggered by the victimhood culture. Now, can you tell

me like what you think healthy activism looks like? Like, can we talk about distinguishing real there are real victims, right, Like, I know you're talking about a victim hood culture, but there are victims. You know, there are people who are rape, there are on campuses that does exist to some degree. There are people who are lots of things that would genuinely classify them as victims, and they wouldn't and they're not motivated by the higher status. They didn't ask for it.

It's not like they asked for it, you know, like so that they could have higher status. How can we have a nuance view of this where we kind of separate various things. I mean, it gets really complex, isn't it. Yeah, well, one thing is that yeah, I mean there are always, you know, victims of various kinds. And the response is, first of all, kind of you know, the sociological question of when do people have different responses, and then sort of the moral like what should our responses be? It's

kind of we're interested in first of all. It's like when we talk about even honor and the victimhood would be the same thing. It's a matter of degree, the extent to which it becomes a kind of status. So you know, at the extreme, you know, like what people call honor cultures is it isn't because in those cultures people value bravery and we don't. Right, It's not like in modern society we think, oh, yeah, it's really great

to be a coward. That view might be more common than it is in an honor culture, but bravery is still a virtue in other cultures, and the cultures that people call honor cultures, brave has as a virtue has

come to kind of overshadow other virtues. So for example, like it would be the worst thing that you could do to be considered a coward, so then you have to take these great measures to show that you're not, and uh, you know, and so kindness and other kinds of things might be compromised on as long at least least at least I show I have honor, right And it's the same like victimhood as a kind of status isn't something that is peculiar necessarily to victimhood cultures either.

I mean we do see extremes like in honor culture. Certainly in some kinds of honor cultures. You know, victimhood may be stigmatized. Right, so even like a you know, a rape victim, you can see variations of this might might be looked down upon for having been a victim. But it's kind of more common for victims to be accorded at least a kind of status just in the

sense that people want to help them out. Right, if you see somebody as a genuine victim, you want to take their side in a conflict against their oppressors, you know, so that itself is a kind of status. And again what we so we would call victim and culture is where that kind of status has kind of overshadowed others, where being a victim suddenly, you know, might mean then that you can't be criticized or or you know that or being considered a victim means that you know, you

have different speech rights than others or whatever. Right, So are there victims there are in terms of how we might go about about it, I mean, I think, I mean, there have been certainly social movements in the past that we're concerned with oppression and victim and helping victims that weren't using the logic of what we're calling victimhood culture here. The civil rights movement in the United States was you know,

drawn from dignity culture. I mean, the idea was that, certainly Martin Luther King and that kind of element of it, the idea was that we all have dignity here, and blacks are being treated as if they have dignity, right, So it was it wasn't appealing to sort of a

new set of values. So much as saying that the values that are not being consistently applied, and so that meant, for example, you know, you know, so it took you know the form of trying to you know, not denigrate whites and trying to bring about more peace and reconciliation and peaceful protests. You know, there are a lot of elements of that, but it was very much drawn from from dignity culture. And again, like it's not as if there's some pome moment in the past where this was

dignity culture and this was good. We're talking and about moral ideals that are out there, right, and so there's just some extent realized but not completely. And there are lots of variations and honor cultures and dignity cultures. But what we see with some of the campus movements is people really appealing to a different set of value. And I think you're right too about the anti PC reaction on the right or you know, some some elements of the right. This is something we talk about a little

in the book. You do you talk about conservative Yeah, yeah, And we would have talked about it more probably, you know, if we were writing it like right now. We started this stuff earlier but I mean, so the first article was published in twenty fourteen, and I think like some of that reaction, as with Trump and the rise of the alt right or the prominence of the alt right anyway, is more more visible now at least, so there is. Yeah.

So when we think of reactions to victimhood culture from you know, the right, but could be from other elements to there are there's. First of all, there is kind of the clash between dignity culture and victimhood culture that we talk about, so that's the main clash. But then there are reactions to victimhood culture that are also departing from dignity culture in their own ways. And there are two of those. Really. One is simply to embrace a

kind of victimhood yourself. They can overlap too, but one is to embrace a kind of victimhood yourself, to say, no, we're the real victims here, and it's a kind of conservative victimhood. And then another is to reject to sort of just kind of to almost be offensive, embrace offensiveness.

So if the PC crowd or the campus activists are sensitive about things and things you say, we'll just go ahead and say people talk about triggering the liberals and that kind of stuff, like deliberately, and I think that's something I mean, certainly, the alt right is not a movement that is drawn from dignity culture. It's another kind of react where you're seeing, you know, it's not about the dignity of all human beings, it's about you know,

whites or men or something. And I think, like you know, you said, it's not just like the far right, but just kind of the right, and I think that's true to some extent. In the last election, you saw some

of that reaction to PC culture. So you would have even during the Republican primaries, Donald Trump would say something offensive or somebody would bring up something offensive that he had said in the past, and his response would be, oh, there's too much political correctness out there, and it seemed to get a kind of traction where people would then sort of ignore the statement. And it's almost you'll sometimes

see defenders of some of the campus victimhood culture. I tend to not use the term political correctness because it gets confusing about what it is, but you'll see people saying, well, a political correctness is just people being polite, right, And you know, we've seen on campus. It's not just that, but it's almost as if in this reaction, it's almost like, well, anything you say is offensive can now be called oh if you're just being too sensitive and politically correct if

somebody argues with it. So you get this kind of an if. It's a kind of polarization on each side where you know it was previously bad to be offensive and also but also you know, considered you know, not considered too dignified to take offense constantly at very small things or unintentional things. And then you get on one side now obsession with unintentionally even unintentional slights harming people.

Speech some kinds of speech is violets. And then on the other side, at least some elements of it, you get this idea, well, we can say whatever we want it and be offensive as possible, and you're just being too sensitive if you object. So those kinds of real I mean, I find them, thinking morally about it, I find both of those reactions to victimhood culture that also

depart from dignity culture as a problem. Either to embrace in a new kind of victimhood or to embrace offensiveness to itself, or to combine that in some way, which I think you also see, and I think like it's not helpful, and neither side is going to you know, by pursuing that kind of strategy of rejecting dignity is going to bring about more peaceful social relations, which I think what you your and' but I don't think that's

their goal. So, you know, I think about this from a psychological perspective, and it just like screams at me, like what's going on? Like, you know, there is a fundamental need for self esteem that humans have. We have lots of other needs, right, but that's one need. And it just seems like people are in there different echo chambers and there are differences in terms of what actions

will give them the most status within their own echo chambers. Now, the ANTIPC culture, you get a lot of status if you go on Twitter and you make fun of a liberal or you or you fight a liberal or you fight well not not any liberal, but the particular you know, the victimhood the liberal that you're talking about, and then the other side right that you get their own status, you know, the kind of stuff you're talking about from being for saying like, you know, I was hurt in

some way I'm a victim, but it just seems like a humans capable of more than either of those options, Like aren't humans capable of like not being so concerned with their own self esteem? And the thing is, you know, the people those who I personally find that those who are the most thoughtful about these conversations are those who

are not on Twitter. It depends on where you're at, too, so I mean when you're you know, we write mostly about college campuses and there it's the it's the victor Well that's kind of changed a little too, but it's certainly the victimhood culture that it's not that it's dominant, but it's what university administrators will give into, right, It's not yea, you know, they're not giving into and following the complaints of the conservative crowd. I mean, they're not

the milo anopolisis and stuff. I mean sometimes you know, they protect free speech rights, but they're implementing the agenda of the activists in a lot of ways. Microaggression training programs, being able to list you know, microaggressions on student evaluations

and investigating professors over it. I mean that's kind of just well, right, Jonathan Height would say, they're enabling psychopathology, right, and that that's an issue too, is like are they help even helping the people that you're purporting to help. That's another issue. You know, Lukiana and Height argue that they're not, that they're creating depression and anxiety and these kinds of things. So you know, there's a good argument that it's actually not even helping the students that you're

supposed to be helping. It's based on no kind of actual evidence, like that microaggressions are causing these problems. You know that it's almost amazing. You've seen this with implicit bias too, like with other kinds of things that there's very little, there's no no kind of evidence for, but are being implemented on campuses, in training programs and other other kinds of things. And that's and so that's a problem. It's not and that's because campuses are you know, people

are on the left, liberals or leftists. So I think, like you know, from ten one of campuses, you know, I think what people always say is, well, what about the right and the broader culture and especially how if Trump is president and stuff, And that's all true, but that's not what I mean, those people aren't dominant on dominant on the campuses, and aren't the ones who are threatening free speech on campus and who are are really kind of undermining the purpose of the university. I do

think that. I mean, it's true that some of the like the conservative clubs and stuff, who bring in somebody that they were bringing in Miley Annopolis. I don't guess he's not three more, but especially him, but uh, you know, the kind of bringing in people who are deliberately to be offensive. But again that's I would prefer they didn't do that. But those are groups of people who are

powerless on campus and constantly denigrated. And it's unfortunate that you're you're seeing that kind of polarization because what's getting lost is really the the ideals of dignity that we talked about right to actually kind of, you know, instead of just just responding to you know, the victim culture with more victimhood or or with offensiveness, to try to, you know, to embrace these ideals of our common humanity

and giving each other the benefit of the doubt. You can always take offense at that people's words and things, and everybody kind of can experience lights and stuff, and that's why we kind of know to get along with others. One thing we do is we drop a lot of things and we you know, you don't pay attention to it. So it's a recipe really, I mean, it just kind of constant conflict to encourage people to look for offenses. And that's what's happening, you know, on both sides to

some extent. Yeah, Maso says something like Abraham maslw the psychologist, is something like when all you have is a hammer, all you everything looks like a nail. So you know, if we're only you know, looking through the lens of victimhood, then we do miss out on goodness and others. Right now, this nity culture, the word dignity, well why I call it like love culture. Like when you describe dignity culture

meals like that sounds good. I'm down with. I think we need more of this kind of dignity culture in our society. And you know, I joined the Heterodox Academy that Jonatha and Height runs. And I don't know if you've heard of it and their mission, but something that

you might actually be interested in joining it. But I joined it because you know, there are a lot of very thoughtful individuals who are making very valid, rational arguments why campus speech is being You know, there are real issues that do you point out in your book, and there are real issues that people in the heterox Academy point out that I agree with. You know, that we can't be hypocritical. We need if we want to have a dignity culture, we need to have to a culture

for everyone. So that is a good point, and conservatives make that point, and I agree with their point when they make that, But it does seem like there is value in separating, you know, like I keep going back to this, but like healthy activism versus psychopathological activism, but kind of activism that is, you know, motivation seem to be really important here. I study a trait called vulnerable narcissism,

and I've been publishing papers on vulnerable narcissism. It's a form of narcissism where you feel entitled to attention from others because of some vulnerability that you have. But it is correlated. You know, we have this paper coming out soon on the psychopathology of vulnerable narcissism and it is core with the lots of you know, reduced well being

in life, greater depression, greater anxiety, etc. Etc. This is not good for those individuals that score high on that, and usually that trait develops as a result of real childhood trauma, you know, its something that does develop as a rational response to protection, you know, for defenses, defenses, defense mechanisms. But bringing that into the equation, it seems like there is importance in contrasting vulnerable narcissism characteristics from

genuine compassion, genuine people who are motivated. There are activists who are motivated for growth oriented reasons. They want to make the world a better place, not only their group or their own people like them. So do you agree with that distinction? Yeah, I think I think it's important to distinguish healthy activism from these other kinds, and that makes a lot of sense about vulnerable narcisism and stuff. I do think. Well, something you said too is I

think is relevant. Like that we're talking about, like, you know, the idea that when you have a hammer, all you see is nails. Yeah, this is part of the problem is that there's a victimhood culture is a kind of morality that looks at things almost solely in terms of oppression and victimhood, and so that's why it's power, and that's something that exists, right, but it's not all that exists,

and it's not the whole of morality. And I think we've talked about something, you know, just I mean, that's not that necessarily that good of a term for it, but we think we're thinking of it as moral emaciation where you end up kind of losing. So you know, there might be all kinds of other virtues and vices right for you think and you come to define everything in terms of oppression victimhood. I think some of the activists have almost lost any kind of moral language that

doesn't involve that. So for them, you know, when when you say, when you try to bring up these other issues, it's kind of makes no sense if you're like, well, no, but aren't these the good people and these the bad people? Are these are the victims and oppressors or you know, even free speech and stuff, and you even see it.

I think you see it with other other things too, like you know, if if something is, if something on campus is you know, I just thinking like one of the uproars was over, like I want to think I remember which collegist was at but there was a statue of like a man in his underwear and this was and they end up you know, protesting it and taking it down because they were people were saying they were triggered.

It looked, you know, looks like a rapist. Would seem to a lot of outsiders as a kind of silly response. But when I was thinking, when I was watching it, well, the statue is like really tacky. I wouldn't want it on my campus either, you know, but I can imagine seeing like, you know, we're the statue or a man in his underwear. I mean, it's but they couldn't just say that, right, like, no, get this crap out of here. It had to be if it's something we don't like,

it must be oppression, right. And I think like some of the stuff in the Me too movements, who I think, I mean, I'm in general for it. I mean something like Harvey Weinstein is somebody who's actually like universally agreed as nasshole, yeah right, and doing like you know, groping and raping and these kinds of things. And there's a lot of that kind of behavior that you know, for a long time then have gotten away with it and some off for that, But then it does seem like

that with some some of the behavior. You know, there's a big variation in what people have objected to, but

you see things like that. You know, there was as easy and sorry who got article about him, but you know with a woman complaining that you know, she had been on a date with him, she went back to his apartment and he was, you know, pursuing sex with her, and you know them not happy, and there were second I mean, if you read the thing, you could see, well, well okay, I can see why she doesn't like him, right or like he was he had this agenda he uh, I mean I think like the older moral language would

be to call him like you know, a cat or something, you know, like somebody but who even the disapprove of his behavior and saying well I don't want to go it, you know, get out here, I don't want to go on a date with your your your lecture or whatever. But it was of course again that he was uh you know, sexually assaulted. Is that I think was used in and uh so it's again kind of looked at

it as a kind of oppression. So I think some of that is like losing the moral language to disapprove of something if it's not active oppression, and that's you know, an oppression is is like a severe offense. So that's you know that that's a problem too. I think with the activist it's not that there is insincere some I mean, obviously, if somebody is lying about something that occurred, like you know in the hate crime hopes, is those people are

insincere in trying to come status. But most of these people are perfectly sincere. This is the way they think the world works. That this is you know, they think that people are being constantly oppressed through microaggressions and uh and these other kinds of things, and they're perfectly sincere about it. And I think like, and there may be and once these terms catch on, I can see other people adopting them and take maybe not trying to you know,

be as extreme about them or something. But the ideas themselves are a problem. I think, like if you and uh so, I think I can help the activism has to reject this kind of victimhood ideology to some extent too, or it's going to create those kinds of problems with depression and conflict and anxiety and those kinds of things. Also, I am a member of Heterodox Academy also, and that's an organization that is, you know, a good influence and campuses to the extent that it's I mean, has any effect.

I think in particular, Jonathan Height, who's kind of instrumental in starting it, has been talking about this since twenty fifteen as well with the cobbling of the American Mind article, and so I think their work is important to Lukiana

and Height. They have a book coming out and they'll be on my podcast as well, John and I think they approach someone from a different angle, and I think their book is broader than the campus stuff, but the approach is kind of the you know, what are the psychological effects of this and looking at how it leads

to depression. I think sociologically though, we would see it like going back to like moral conflict, that if you're thinking about what kinds of environments are conducive to peace and peaceful relations and not just lack of violence, but actual harmony, and what kinds are not since activity to slight they same time you see in honor cultures or

something there's high sensitivity and complaints to third parties. For minor offenses is not something you know that can can ever lead to harmony, right, there's no stopping it, right. I mean I've had a lot of people say, well, I've talked to a lot of people and they'll say, well, why isn't this a problem? They'll give examples that I understand.

You know, they'll talk about, well, you know, things that might be considered microgram And again, just because some of these things happen and are offensive, doesn't mean that the concept of microgression is a good one, right, Like it doesn't mean I would defend everything somebody says that, you know, if somebody if make slight someone's ethnicity or or these

kinds of things. I mean, some of the examples that are given of microgression seem to be very I mean, like the idea that asking someone where there's where're from microgression. You know, it's sort of normal conversation. But if somebody does say well, I'm from North Dakota and you say, no, where you really from because the person is Asian or something, I mean that still maybe it depends on who you're

talking to. I think that's I wonder too, like a lot of these things, is this your is this your boss, or is this like the cashier or something? Right like, it's uh, you know that there there needs to be a certain level of generosity, but some of those things are are certainly offensive. That doesn't mean it's a microaggression in the sense that is used. It doesn't mean microaggression is a good concept. It doesn't mean that it actually

has to harm you to have hurt it. But it's perfectly fine if you just want to say, yeah, it would be nice to teach people, you know, to avoid certain things that commonly offend people, right like, you know, if you know that you know, minorities take offense when you think of them as somebody who doesn't belong here, right because you're saying, no, where are you really from?

Or something that don't make sense. But to do it, you know, rather than just simply talking about what people should say or how they can talk about better, but actually stigmatizing it and calling it a kind of violence and aggression and encouraging then people to notice it and take offense at it and not to let it go when it occurs. That's something that seems to be a

recipe for never ending conflict. It's not like you would ever get to a point where the microaggressions would stop, right, because anything can be interpreted as a microaggression if you're encouraging people to do that, So there's no way it could ever have any success. If success is meant to like produce like racial harmony or something, it can only lead to either constant conflict or a situation where people stop interacting because there there's too much offense, you know,

too much taking offense and people are prayed. And I think, because I think you mentioned earlier, it may not be their goal to have harmony. Certainly not the extreme activist seem to thrive on the conflict. Do you think there should be more forgiveness in the world for our common imperfections as being human. Yeah, I think there should be more forgiveness in the world in general. But I don't even think forgiveness is something that can be extremely difficult

if it's severe offenses. I don't even see how forgiveness is even hard when you're talking about unintentional words, right, I mean, I think like people constantly say things. I mean I wonder sometimes like how much interaction people have been with There are always people saying like things that are are you know, tacky or inappropriate or rude me.

You can go example ectrics. Anybody could pile examples of this, and usually we let it go because we know that we are we are for one thing, we say things that are you know, we don't always say the right

thing for another thing. I think this is interesting too, is that if you're quick to take offence because somebody has said something that is socially inappropriate, you're really making it difficult for people who you know, any kind of neurodiversity, people who don't pick up on social cues as well, right, or people from different cultures you know, who also might not pick up on all the cues and know exactly what's offensive. So you have to have people you know

coming in from other countries. So if you have diversity, you're going to have a lot of like awkwardness in uh in conversations and stuff, and without without a kind of like charity or or forgiveness where you're where, where you're letting most things go and trying to be understanding of what people are trying to say, what you know, rather than taking offense without Without that, you're not going to have, you know, any kind of harmony Bradley, Thank

you so much for chatting with me today. You raised a lot of really thought provoking and important points and thanks for the work you're doing. Thank you for having me. This was good conversation. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast

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