I agree that victim mentality is useless, but reminding oneself that you were a victim of certain things isn’t.
Outside of, maybe, a pure objectivist, reminding yourself that a certain system or group is against you can serve as a good driver of rational actions, i.e. you can use it to tone down your empathy and act in a more self-interested way towards that group.
Of course, the key word here is “self-interest”, the problems you rightfully point out with victim mentality is that people often act upon it in ways that aren’t self-interested, where they go into depressive or aggressive spirals that are of not help to themselves and at most (though seldom) just serve to hurt their victimizer, though often at greater personal cost.
I agree that victim mentality is useless, but reminding oneself that you were a victim of certain things isn’t.
Outside of, maybe, a pure objectivist, reminding yourself that a certain system or group is against you can serve as a good driver of rational actions, i.e. you can use it to tone down your empathy and act in a more self-interested way towards that group.
Of course, the key word here is “self-interest”, the problems you rightfully point out with victim mentality is that people often act upon it in ways that aren’t self-interested, where they go into depressive or aggressive spirals that are of not help to themselves and at most (though seldom) just serve to hurt their victimizer, though often at greater personal cost.