Only YOU can prevent bad things from happening in your life!

[PublicEnemy#1]

[rose-colored-coolaid]

[rose-colored-coolaid]

[PublicEnemy#1]

[WestSideBilly]

[PublicEnemy#1]

I think the problem we have in society is that too many people are willing to dismiss their own culpability when something bad happens to them.

Take the meteor hitting the baseball park...

If you were there and got killed, you are culpable because you chose to be at the ball game at that time. If you hadn't been there, you wouldn't have gotten killed. Some of you would state that no one is culpable for the ACT of the meteor hitting the park (assuming it wasn't aliens throwing giant meteors), but, for the people killed, they made the conscious decision to be there, so they are culpable for getting themselves killed. The meteor hit, everyone who was there in the place it hit made the decision to be there, so they are all individually culpable for being killed by the action of going to the game on that day.

The risk was small that the event would happen, but the risk was always there that, at some point in time, in some location on earth, a meteor would hit a populated place and wipe some people out.

coolaid is right in maintaining that most people consider the risk slight enough that it doesn't disrupt their daily activities and that's fine, but it doesn't absolve you of culpability in getting killed.

Consider all natural disasters that result in damage to property or death. The effect of the disaster is the damage and death, correct? The cause is the natural disaster.

You may not have control over the cause, but you do have control over the effect the cause may have upon yourself.

Consider a shooting that results in you being shot. The effect of the shooting is a bullet in your body. The cause is a person firing a gun at you. You may have no culpability in the cause, but you are culpable for the effect, a bullet in your body, by placing yourself at the scene.

You made the conscience choice to be at the scene when a cause happened that resulted in the effect of being shot. If you hadn't been there, you would not have gotten shot

Again, you may not have control over the cause, but you do have control over the effect upon yourself, namely being there and getting shot

Consider a car accident where someone runs into you. The effect is your car being smashed, the cause is the person running into you. Ultimately, you could have avoided the effect if you had been five minutes earlier, correct?

Legally, the person running into you may be assessed fault by the court as the cause, but the effect on you would never have happened if you had chosen a different time or route.

You made the decision to be in that certain place, at that certain time when the cause took place, so the effect that you experienced as a result you are culpable for. You had the free will to make a different decision, a better one or a worse one. That decision may have rendered the effect on someone else, it may not have happened altogether, or a bigger effect could have occurred, resulting in a trip to the hospital, etc.

Either way, you alone made the decision to be in a certain place, at a certain time, when a particular cause happened, resulting in a negative (or positive) effect for yourself.

Every decision we make is made of our own free will. If we make the decision, how can we not be culpable for it? Who else can be culpable when we make the decision?

Just because a cause comes along as a result of that decision that results in a negative effect for us does not absolve us of culpability for making a poor decision.

[PublicEnemy#1]

[WestSideBilly]

No, I get your point. It's an absolutist viewpoint. But it's not representative of reality.

I ask a girl out, she says no, I end up sad for a day or two.

- I made a decision to ask her out, believing I had something to offer.
- She made a decision to say no, based on her assessment of me.

Who is at fault for the outcome of me being sad? We both are. I absolutely am - I put myself in that position, and overestimated myself. Maybe I could have dressed nicer, ate better and worked out more often, etc. But she is also partly responsible for the outcome. There is no absolutes in this game; maybe she already has a boyfriend or is a lesbian and I just didn't know. Or maybe she's a stuck up bitch, or doesn't like nerdy white guys, or maybe she's just holding out for someone better.

In isolation this is a bad example. But if the same thing happens over and over, then it's worth looking at. Your hypothetical hands out to the .Gov person might blame the girls 100%, in which case he's just a narcissist. Inability to see one's flaws leads to a lot of negative outcomes. Most normal people would realize they either need to improve themselves or ask out different people.

Much the same can be applied to jobs, school, everything. There are a lot of decisions made by other people that have direct impact on the outcome. We as people have control over much of the process, but not all of it.

The extreme event examples you've given are vastly different. Getting killed by a meteor is misfortune; nobody (well, almost nobody) would blame someone else for that. The "victims" of Hurricane Katrina put themselves into a very vulnerable position - below sea level in an area that has been hit by hurricanes as long as people have lived there (and presumably much, much longer). They (as a group, as well the government entities which allowed/enabled them to live there in the first place) hold most of the fault. But there isn't a place in this country that isn't susceptible to some form of major disruption - earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, severe thunderstorms, hurricanes, drought, blizzards/avalanches, etc. Should we as a people just shrug our shoulders and say "sucks to be them, I'm smart enough to not put myself in that position!"? I prefer to think not.

[rose-colored-coolaid]

[PublicEnemy#1]

[PublicEnemy#1]

[Alan]

The flip side of being responsible when bad things happen to you is that you get to take all of the credit when good things happen to you. Just like people like to think it isn't their fault when bad things happen, people also like to think good things are always a result of skill and hardwork and being special. It helps people avoid guilt when they are better off than someone else because, hey, they could have had the same thing as you had they only worked harder or smarter and made better decisions.

Because humans have a tendency to under-emphasize our role in bad things and over-emphasise our role in good things, it is very good self-discipline to bias our personal beliefs in the opposite direction.

However, that bias can be taken too far. Saying that you are always responsible for everything bad that happens to you is as absurd as saying that you are never responsible for everything good that happens to you.

[rose-colored-coolaid]

Good point Alan. Perhaps, we all need a little more humility in our own efficacy. Or, we could all trust "The Secret".

[lamont]

[lamont]