Resilient Victim?

I hope this post does not come across as too off-the-wall, but I suppose one of the uses of blogs to air those types of thoughts and ideas.

I was thinking about terminology and the term "resilience" (and resilient/resiliency) and the term "victim". I was wondering where to use them together in describing a person or an institution. I did a Google search for the two terms and did find a number of instances. However, the pairing and use of the two terms does not seem comfortable to me. It is not due to their dictionary meanings, but I think to my sense of what they imply and embody.

To me, a victim has been successfully attacked, assaulted, violated, hurt and harmed. The degree of harm may vary from mild to severe/catastrophic, but the act or event that caused it was successful. Resiliency is bouncing back and that may entail deflecting the harm, absorbing and mitigating it, or turning it into an advantageous situation. Metaphorically, the arrow pierces the victim and bounces off the resilient party.

I see the phrase "resilient victim" used and just strikes me as odd...that they would either have to be one or the other. If the person were strong or resourceful enough to continually repel the attacks or the effects of the attack, then I need a name for them other than "victim". They are a resilient target, for sure, but they haven't succumbed to victimhood.

Clearly anyone can be a victim. A successful act of violence or a natural catastrophic event can create victims in a hurry. Thus I don't want to imply that being a victim is always a choice or signals something lacking. Not always. But people, and to a greater extent institutions, have a choice in how resilient they choose to be.

Darryl Moody
Resilient Corporation

Comments

[Larry Glover]

At the risk of sounding a bit off the wall, and appreciating some company, I suggest there is a way to hear the phrase 'resilient victim' and have it make perfect sense. Most of us in fact probably know victims who, one way or another, just keep 'bouncing back' for more victimization; domestic abuse clinics are full of such.

Truth is, there is something in the human psyche that, once an identity or 'self' is created, we tend to seek its confirmation again and again; whether that particular identity serves our highest purpose and potentiality or not is often immaterial. This same dynamic functions in businesses and organizations, and in national policies too.

"Stay the course," and "This is how we do things here," are not just attitudes of persistence or determination. They can also be the resiliency of familiarity itself, of current beliefs and worldviews against challenging information. These attitudes, for example, are essentially the economic strategy that has resulted in cars with gas consumption mileages that do not reflect our national interests....

It is tempting and common to use the word(s) resilience and resiliency... in only their positive connotations. I suggest however, that all human psychological defense mechanisms are 'resilient' by nature, and that their nature often serves a self's short term homeostatic functions rather than our capacities for change and transformation. I also suggest that our models of resilience will become both more interesting and accurate as we integrate this 'shadow side' of resiliency into them.

So the phrase 'resilient victim,' in my mind does carry a certain kind of paradoxical sense, in the way that many businesses 'resiliently' become self-victims to strategies that once served them but that no longer do. Given the rapidity of change in our world however, I believe our challenges include the one of learning the skills and arts and technologies of transformation. Now that takes a different kind of resilience, something closer to that referenced in your recent post, Resiliency and Thriveability.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment. I am enjoying your blog, and I appreciated your response to my post, Resiliency Invitation and Challenge.