Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Re: Re: responsibility, sensitivity, the usual stuff Message-ID: <2398@pyuxd.UUCP> Date: Mon, 13-Jan-86 19:20:10 EST Article-I.D.: pyuxd.2398 Posted: Mon Jan 13 19:20:10 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jan-86 06:19:00 EST References: <2338@pyuxd.UUCP> <438@dsi1.UUCP> <439@dsi1.UUCP> Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week Lines: 135 >>> The claim that anyone who DOESN'T take charge of the feelings/emotions (as >>> these people have) is "responsible" for their predicament is a total >>> fabrication. Clearly, as shown in the analogy above, you cannot be >>> "responsible" for not knowing what you've been *taught* just the >>> opposite of. [ROSEN] >> If it's "their predicament," then how can they not be responsible for it? >> If someone acts on feelings/emotions, he/she is still responsible for his/her >> actions. As far as what you've been taught, you become responsible for that >> knowledge the moment you accept it. [LEE HAGERTY] So, if you were taught "lies", you are "responsible" for having learned them, for having a teacher (e.g., parents) who taught them to you. It was your "choice". You could have chosen not to accept the fundamental things you were taught that formed your weltanschauung. Pray tell, how? "No, daddy, it's wrong to drink alcohol and beat up mommy and say that such-and-such group is inferior and be dishonest..." Sure, they may "know" this cognitively, but in those formative years in which parental behavior can build wrong minds twelve ways, it may become such an ingrained part of behavior that is ACCEPTED unconsciously as the "norm" that there is no motivation whatever to change it. Are such children (later adults) "responsible" for what they have become ingrained with? > Responsible: .... 3. Being the source or cause of something. 4. Capable of > making moral or rational decisions on one's own and therefore answerable for > one's behavior. [JEFF ARMSTRONG from American Heritage Dictionary] Indeed. Now, explain to me in what way you can be deemed as the "cause" of that which you have learned from childhood on. How you can be deemed "capable" or making moral/rational decisions when you've learned to do just the opposite. How exactly are such people supposed to "know" what you are lucky enough to have found out: that there are possibilities of taking charge of one's life, when they have learned just the opposite? > In this society there are plenty of institutionalized rationales for denying > responsibility. In the extreme they are represented by the so-called > "twinkie defense" of Dan White in San Fransisco. Recently there have been > a spate of lawsuits against hosts/hostesses, tavern owners, bartenders, etc. > on the claim that they are somehow to blame for accidents/injuries involving > drunk drivers. While this serves to fix responsibility in a manner of > speaking, it really only serves the idea that "if you are drunk, you are not [followed by still more assorted breastbeating about "denying responsibility": sorry, Jeff, that's what it sounds like to me...] Great! Far out! Incredible! I agree, learning that you can choose to be "in charge of your life" and exercising that perogative is probably the best route to take in life. But that STILL doesn't make a person "responsible" (by ALL the definitions you give above) if what they have learned in life is just the opposite, that they ARE among the "caused" rather than the (potential) "causers". You seem to work from an assumption that everyone ipso facto IS responsible, which I don't buy. Hey, if someone learned to act a certain way because that's the way his/her parents acted around the house, and because that was all he/she saw in the world, then who was AT FAULT? Who was the cause, and thus the person "responsible"? The parents? But what caused them to behave the way they did? And what... "Hey, I can't find anybody responsible for what happened! GOD DAMMIT, SOMEONE MUST BE RESPONSIBLE!!!!!! IT HAS TO BE!!!!! SO WHO THE HELL IS IT???? ... Well, I guess it must be me. I'm responsible for my parents teaching me what they taught me, and their parents, and so on..." Do I make this line of thinking sound ridiculous enough? God knows, I'm trying. :-) The whole line of thinking seems to be based on a wish that someone or something MUST be responsible for what happens. If the definition of "responsibile" is as you say above, "capable of making decisions and thus answerable for one's behavior", then by definition those who have not learned what it takes to be capable of such things cannot be deemed responsible. In a world that fails to teach such self-reliance and independence, choosing instead to encourage conformist tailwagging and DEpendence, there is no blame to be placed upon those who haven't had the good fortune of those who managed to learn what they did. And that's another thing. It seems more and more to me that the ones who speak so loudly about this "responsibilitarianism" are the ones who have had precisely such good fortune, as well as many other fortuitous circumstances. Almost as if to say "Hey, how can I feel 'responsible' for my life's good fortune when my parents gave me all this money/help/stuff/etc.? I know, I'll just choose to believe that ANYONE could have done what I did, and that way I can rid myself of this middle/upper class guilt! I mean, they're RESPONSIBLE for their predicament just like I'm RESPONSIBLE for my good fortune." Yeah, JUST like you're responsible... The egotism is earth shattering. Ironically, the claim is made that other people could have somehow learned to do other than what they learned, when in fact the reason many of the "responsibilitarians" are now "in charge of their lives" is because they LEARNED to do JUST what they learned. The difference being that *they* were fortunate enough to have learned differently. I know this sounds harsh, but whenever I hear one of these people claiming that each person is fully responsible for his/her life situation solely (it seems) for the purpose of THEIR pride and consequent (supposedly unintentional) disdain of those who were less fortunate than they were, I feel like SCREAMING! And the funny thing is, that this "responsibilitarianism" is often in fact a SHIRKING of responsibilities. Take for example the logical conclusion of this belief when applied to child raising. "Hey, my children are individuals, they are RESPONSIBLE for their own lives. It doesn't matter what I do in front of them, or what sort of example I set for them, I can live my own life the way I feel like it, not caring about the creations I *am* directly responsible for, and if they turn out to be psychopaths, they are RESPONSIBLE for it!" An addendum: > Very well put. The problem is that many people treat their own personal > beliefs as though they were "facts" instead of beliefs. Failure to be willing > to question one's own beliefs does not absolve one from responsibility for > their own place in actual reality. [GREG WOODS replying to ARMSTRONG above] Again, this is just another of those assertions that "SOMEONE MUST BE RESPONSIBLE" (and it might as well be me when things are going good, and others when their lives are going bad... :-) . Indeed, this belief in "responsibilitarianism" is hardly a fact, it is merely an assertion, a demand/plea that the world have some ordered deliberate direction about it beyond complex interweavings of simple cause and effect. In the past (and still today) people postulated that this order should come from a deity who directed and determined absolutes and was the willful ultimate cause behind everything. Now, supposedly having outgrown the childish wish for a parent figure in charge and recognizing the contradictions in believing in both absolute "right"/"wrong" and "supernatural" (whatever THAT means) causation, some choose to shift the focus of cause/responsibility from the wished-for infinite to *themselves*, to the individual as the prima facie cause of the whole of that individual's life. However, it would seem that, despite our wishes to the contrary, no one and no thing has the degree of willful control over the flow of the universe that we might desire. The world runs on, and the best we can do is to control what we can (which means, if we get to learn how, to make the most rational decisions we can make in life to get what we want and need), defining our own purposes in life rather than allowing others to do this for us. But as long as there exist people who have a stake in doing such "purpose defining" for other people, and who also happen to have a hold on facets of the education process, we will have people who are not only *not* taught this, but (worse) people who are taught the exact opposite. -- SYBIL: "Basil, you KNOW what I'm going to do if I find out YOU bet the money on that horse." BASIL: "You'll have to sew them back on first..." Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr