Personal Responsibility - Is It Me or Is It Them? - Playing the Blame Game...

[Burner of the East]

Personal Responsibility.

A concept that is easily shrugged off by the most incompetent and irresponsible of people.
And a concept that is embraced by those who are willing to own up to their shortcomings.

At what point would you consider that whatever happened or happens to you is 100%, totally your own fault? Considering that each and every person in this world has different circumstances and situations in life, what criteria or standard would you hold to judge whether or not someone brought it upon themselves completely or in part? Would you blame yourself entirely? Would you put partial blame on yourself? Or would you conveniently absolve yourself of responsibility?

Allow me to provide several examples:

1. You were driving under the influence of alcohol. Your group of friends brought you to a flamboyant party at a local bar. Not wanting to miss out the glory of high school life you decided to give in to peer pressure, even though you are the designated driver of your group of friends. While driving 60mph/97kmh on the town roads to drop off your friends at the doorsteps of their homes, you were blindsided on the righthand side by a passing truck in an intersection with no traffic lights. Two of your friends died upon impact. The other two were inflicted with serious injury, one resulting in coma and the other resulting in permanent blindness in one eye. You, by some miracle, were able to escape without serious injuries. You only had cuts and bruises on your right arm and leg. Who or what is to blame for the death and injury of your friends?​

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2. You are an artist involved in the anime and furry community. In a fit of blind rage with a thirst for some sort of justice, you went on to Twitter and created a thread decrying the injustices and unfairness of treatment and respect within the communities you have involved yourself in. A rando on Kiwifarms takes note of your sperging and creates a thread about you. A close friend in the community tips you to the aforementioned occurrence. You then create a Kiwifarms account, using the same name as your internet handle. You then proceed to defend yourself and explain the reasons why you went on an autistic tirade about people disliking or having unwarranted amounts of disdain towards the anime and furry community. Of course, the thread posters proceed to shit on you milking every bit of reaction out of you. Some try to reason it out with you, but you completely disregard whatever advice or help they tried to offer. Later on, you discover that the people in the communities you involved yourself in have shunned you out for your involvement and shameful display in the no. 1 cyberbullying website known as the Kiwifarms. Who is to blame for your tarnished reputation and eventual exile from the communities you love?​

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3. You are a company employee, a wagecuck if you will. You have discovered that the higher ups in your company is withholding benefits and has denied any request for a raise. The company has been on the decline since the CEO handed over responsibility to his son. You have begun finding new avenues for opportunity. One day, you simply had enough of their bullshit and decided to quit on the spot. Before you left the company doors one last time, you caught wind of rumors about the current CEO hoarding all those benefits and falsifying reports about employee satisfaction. You decided to gather evidence through a colleague of yours, who is not only your best friend but a buddy who has walked with you through thick and thin. After having gathered hard, unchallengeable evidence, you decided to take it to court. The company lost. However, the current CEO decided to absolve himself of responsibility and refused to offer compensation. The employees went on strike until they eventually quit. The company went bankrupt and those who have left have been struggling to find a job. You haven't found a decent job yet but you are still able to live a relatively comfortable life with the amount that is left in your bank account. However, your colleague isn't faring well. In two months, your colleague was divorced because he wasn't able to provide enough for his family of four. After the divorce, your colleague went down a spiral. Starting with alcoholism which gradually led to drug use. Who is to blame for the situation that your colleague has found himself in?​

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And so, with the examples provided, it is time to discuss. It's time to play the Blame Game.

It is important to keep in mind that nothing is ever painted in black or white with the exception of truly deplorable and heinous acts such as rape and child abuse.

 

[Great President of McHell]

Can I blame all 3 on the Jews?

 

[Ultrapenguin]

Spoiler: In regards to the actual prompt

The idea of "fault" in a concrete sense is absurd and childish.
I see it as much closer to gambling.

If you are offered a bet where you have to roll 3 dice and anything above a 3 would win, most people would take that bet.
So if you roll a 3 and lose, was it your "fault" you rolled a 3? Yes and no, you threw the dice, but how much does that mean? People will probably be sympathetic towards you, if you didn't take that bet people would probably call you crazy, but that doesn't speak to whether or not you were "to blame" for losing, only for taking the bet.

If you have to get above a 9 and you take that bet though, and you lose, people are going to be less sympathetic, but they'll probably still be somewhat. Plenty of people would've taken that bet depending on what's at stake.

If you have to roll an 18 to win though, and you take that bet and lose, people are going to be extremely unsympathetic. They will think you're a moron. In fact even if you win people will probably still tell you you're a fucking moron.

Morality isn't a topic to be treated with any kind of academic rigor, because it just confuses things. If someone does a thing, and you don't like the thing, and you have a compelling reason to believe they are likely to do it again, then you should address that; the same goes for yourself, especially if you're someone with behavioral issues/bad habits. It's simply a matter of making an educated assessment of the probabilities involved on any given path.

That said, #2 is a little suspicious sounding. That doesn't happen to be about you, right?

Because if it is, who's "fault" would it be? Idk, that's a silly question. On the other hand someone has to be a real chump to "love" communities where they just casually unperson you as soon as they stop thinking you're cool. Fucking why do you like them if none of them like you? So you can tweet at disgusting furry porn artists on Twitter or on whatever gross sites you people find your jerkoff art on? What's so great that you're desperate to be involved with these losers?

There is nothing to love about these communities, they're hives of lowlives and outcasts and anyone who gets involved with them is accepting the risk that comes with it. It's easy come easy go, subcultures like furries will accept just about anyone who allows themselves to get involved in their grimy fetishistic nonsense, but they'll drop them just as quickly. These are not people you want as your supposed friends.

So imo it wasn't anyone's "fault", but you'd have to be ignorant and reckless to not see the likely possibility of that outcome.

Of course if it's not about you just pretend I'm being hypothetical.

 

[Haim Arlosoroff]

1. We are all fuck-ups, but if the friends didn't notice my drinking until they were too far-gone then it was my fault. It depends on how high-trust the society was, decades ago it would have been the driver's fault regardless but their friends wouldn't have wanted them to drink. Today? Its everyone's fault because failing trust means you have to verify everything and have a backup plan to either walk home or cry to your parents that the designated driver drank for a guilt-free ride. As a parent, I would be mad enough at the driver to want the kid to call me. I would drive mine home guilt-free, and let the other parents' dead kids die where and when they wish to. Assuming I didn't know the parents of course.
2. You are to blame for your tarnished reputation and eventual exile from the communities you love. Maybe the community is also to blame depending on how dysfunctional in general they are. That might have limited your options in some way, shape, or form.
3. Crap-sack universe that one, jaaayyysus.. The CEO, but the family should have had savings or an understanding that divorces don't make a money tree. Unless the woman initiated the divorce tactically to qualify for welfare, which the man should have agreed to then under the understanding that money for the children is more important than his pride? The alcoholism and the further decline sure wasn't a way to keep his pride after all that. I suppose the gender-less colleague is to blame for that? Although it sounds like something a man only would go through/put himself through. I'm not real comfortable with my answer though.

Fiat justitia ruat caelum- justice must be realized regardless of consequences. The law of the land may absolve or blame as it wishes, only the ignorance and stupidity absolves totally and anyone else interacting with a complex malicious system has some of the blame. The gullible rot the democracy, the poor create the super-rich through their spending, and the desperate cross the Rubicon. Evil is not an additional element in someone's soul, but something refined and purified through subtraction. The school-shooter had less going on in his life, the psychopath has some groove marked down on the surface of his brain where we have additional connections, and the rapist or the compulsive-thief has no self-control. We are all marked by evil, and must try to discover moralities, philosophies, and socializations against it. Otherwise it gets out, and we are to blame for it.

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