Powerlessness

A mindset of powerlessness is most difficult to understand if you aren't powerless. It leads people to accept an unfair lot in life.

The symptoms of powerlessness include:

• People feel like victims. ("It's not fair but we can't do anything about it.")
• People believe that they cannot influence "the system", which usually means that they don't know how decisions are made and implemented. ("The politicians and bureaucrats don't listen to us." "There's nothing we can do about it." )
• People accept their powerlessness, and might even believe it should not change. That is, they become acculturated to their position. ("Everybody in our ethnic group is a slave. Always has been, always will be. We couldn't be anything else.")
• People are controlled by others who deprive them of rights. ("The old men make all the decisions. We women just do as we are told.)

Powerlessness is only perceived in some cultures; people simply need to be taught their rights and their role in the decision-making system.

But powerlessness is real in some cultures, where marginalized people are deliberately kept in place by government law, bureaucrats, large companies, traditional law, or social stigma.