Responsibility

[quatona]

ya'll are focusing too much on the job example, and not enough on the base concept I was trying to explore. sigh.

Well, I tried. I tried to communicate that trying to determine the "responsibility"/guilt/blame/fault/authorship for a certain event to rest on one single person is the attempt of oversimplifying an incredibly complex reality.

 

[heart of peace]

At what point does responsibility for ones self and circumstances begin (and end)?

I hear people say "blah company did this and this and this to workers".... but didnt' the worker accept the job? Or are they a victim of circumstance and therefore is there a moral or ethical obligation of the employer to "do better" for them?

This is just an example.

I find that many people like to offload responsibility for their lives on others... while I subscribe to the idea that I am largely (if not totally) responsible for everything that happens in my life, and even with a literal gun to my head, the choice is still mine to make (and consequences to accept)...

Anyway... where is the line? is there a line? what makes something more one person's fault than another?

In general, I always try to see where my responsibility in a situation lies. I know I can change me and only me, so I spend more time meditating on how I ended up in a situation that ended up hurting me and how I could avoid said situation in the future. This does not mean that I do not hold the other party accountable.

Regarding what makes something more one person's fault than another, it depends on the situation. Usually the offending party is more to blame as they are the persons actively seeking to harm another.

I don't have much patience for the victim mentality as I spent too many years growing up in and around it. It's debilitating. It does nothing to glorify the Body of Christ.

 

[Crazy Liz]

Doesn't the person holding the gun to your head also bear some responsibility for what you do in that situation?



What do you mean by a line?

Why is it important to determine who is more at fault than someone else? As I see it, relative fault might have something to do with blame, but not with responsibility.

not really. it could just as easily be an animal as well. say.. you can face the wolf who wants to eat you, or jump off the cliff and possibly drown. is that more "responsibility neutral"?

I don't understand. A person who uses coercion or threats to get another person to do something bears no responsibility whatsoever for the result of such treats or coercion?

 

[heart of peace]

If I smother an infant to death in an attempt to quiet its cries while hiding with 100 other people from an invading force do I bear the same responsibility for that as if I smother an infant to death because I couldn't take the screaming anymore and put a pillow over its head in an attempt to quiet it?

In either situation the infant is dead, in either situation I would be the person who caused the death, in either situation it wasn't my intent to cause the death.

I am confused by this, any normal functioning person woud know that smothering a child's face would logically close off any source for obtaining oxygen. Cutting off a person's source of oxygen logically leads to death. How can someone claim that the intent was not to cause death when a logical person knows that smothering a person leads to death?

 

[Crazy Liz]

I'm not advocating exploitation. I'm just saying ultimately we ALL have a choice, regardless of what is presented. I hate that "I had no choice" thing. You did. You made a decision (even if you chose not to choose).

A person may have a choice, but having a choice does not necessarily mean nobody else shares responsibility for that choice.

The person who forced them to make the choice bears responsibility also, do they not?

 

[Crazy Liz]

the extenuating circumstance would change the punishment but not the responsibility. different.
you are responsible for putting your hand over the mouth and causing death in either case. whether that deserves punishment is what is debatable... not whether you did it or had a choice in it.

The circumstances do not REMOVE responsibility, but they may implicate OTHERS also in responsibility, no?