Victim Blaming vs Personal Responsability

Aren't they separate elements of the same thing, such that parking your car in a bad spot doesn't make you a victim of theft, it makes you someone who parked your car in a bad spot.... the thief made you a victim of theft. So I'd say to focus on each element in an appropriate way and learn the relevant lessons from both. I don't think one has to explain the other, or be a cause for it.... unless the victim is a victim of their own decision making pure and simple. Mixing the two seems silly otherwise eg; I'm going to eat this fish hook... ouch!! I'm a victim of the fish hook, the fish hook made me do it, where did I find this fish hook anyway.... I wonder what it tastes like
:blink:

rugadd wrote: When do you switch from "You were mistreated." to "You should own up to being an idiot and learn from it."?

It all comes down to the fart scenario. If one intends for a fart to be discreet...usually the fart will go unnoticed. There does exist the occasion when a fart goes unintentionally noticed and then embarrassment happens. This is the root of the idea...why should one feel embarrassed when exhibiting a perfectly natural expression of food eaten. Perhaps our society has relegated natural occurrences to a level of inhumanity. One may think to themselves...I just ripped one and someone hear it. Therefore this "person" may consider myself and my person nonequivalent. This is a common and terrible though which is created by "the idealist". I could go on..just re-read this passage...think about it...come to a conclusion



...experiment complete.

Poop happens. Then you wipe, move away form the stank, and get on with life.

Brenna wrote: If someone breaks into my car, am I responsible for parking my car where they could happen upon it and decide to break in?

Not exactly, but more of the blame is on you if you knew that parking place was prone to that sort of activity and didn't lock your doors.

steamboat28 wrote:

Brenna wrote: If someone breaks into my car, am I responsible for parking my car where they could happen upon it and decide to break in?

Not exactly, but more of the blame is on you if you knew that parking place was prone to that sort of activity and didn't lock your doors.

Who doesn't lock their car doors anyway?
(Except for everyone on American television ever.)

the completely random car break in is rare

i didntget into it before but since it got brought up again let me say that probably 95% of every car break in has one or more of these elements

1) the car was unlocked

2) something valuable inside of the car was visible from outside of the car (to be fair sometimes this is just the airbag or something you cant easily hide but MOSTLY its a gadget or a jewelry item or wallet/purse ect)

3) the car is a type favored by car thieves
i rememberthere was a time when all you needed for a certain type of car was to get a few minutes inside of it with a screw driver

4) youre parked somewhere that a thief has a good chance of being left alone
this idea includes "high crime" area but is not at all limited to them
in fact the assumption that a particular area is safe from theivery is an assumption which has made a lot of thieves a lot of money

5) youve been personally targeted by someone who youve interacted with

the completely random thief who has just decided theyre going to break in to the first random car they see no matter what is very rare

it does happen, usually drugs alcohol or teenagers and most usually a combination of at least two of those things

OB1Shinobi wrote: the completely random car break in is rare

i didntget into it before but since it got brought up again let me say that probably 95% of every car break in has one or more of these elements

Citations?

i dont really know the exact numbers

the fbi keeps a data base of all kinds of crime statistics for anyone that caresto look

but truthfully, would it make a great difference to find that the correct statistic was only 90%?

or 85?

or even 75%?

if the point still stands that completely random car break ins are much more rare than break ins which happen as a result of a criminal seeing what looks like an opportunity does the exact statistic change the essential reality?


what if we were to say that fifty percent of all break ins were totally completely random

wouldnt that still mean that 50% of them happened as a result of one or more of the things on that list?

or maybe you even are thinking more factors which i have not included

that would still mean that fifty percent of all break ins would have been avoided with the correct forethought

sl the point im making is still solid

and again its not about a victim being wrong

its about a jedi being commited to understanding the implications of their decisions

its about accepting that the world we live in has got certain predatory elements to it
and the very act of being alive marks us for death

theres an eagle circling each of us right now at this moment
and hes looking down at each of us personally and judging the angle and the ease of approach, deciding...

some eagles have a hunting range of almost fifteen miles (10,000 acres - i think thats 15 miles ?) and can go "several days" between kills

if you live in an average city theres a good chance that between right now and "several days" someone with 10,000 acres of you is going to die

or have their car broken into

all you have to do to qualify as prey is be alive

you dont even have to leave the house

some eagles can fly in through the window
some can walk in through the door
some have been hanging out at your place all your life and you probably havent even thought of it

most of them just wait and watch
and pick the easiest targets with the best chances of success

in fact theres no telling how many eagles have looked at any of us how many times and thought "maybe..."
and the only thing that saved us was that they saw a better looking rabbit in a more open field just down the way

the precise statistics are imo not the important issue
the important issue is taking responsibility for the truth that life is cares a lot less for any of us than we do of it

to it we're all pretty much equal

and that means we have to take responsibility for being alive in a world that will allow us to waste away to nothing or be carried off to nowhere without ever worrying if it was fair or whose fault it was

OB1Shinobi wrote: i dont really know the exact numbers


if the point still stands that completely random car break ins are much more rare than break ins which happen as a result of a criminal seeing what looks like an opportunity does the exact statistic change the essential reality?

Made up statistics aside.

What is the difference between a random break in and a break in where a criminal sees an opportunity?

Surely there is only one kind of break in? The one where a criminal made the decision to commit a criminal act, resulting in a crime and a victim of the crime.

agreed, yes.

when we look at the situation from the perspective of the moral judgement of the people involved in the phenomena then we dont get much farther than its "wrong to break in to cars"

and i agree that its wrong and that theres no justifying or excusing it-from the perspective of it being a moral issue

but there is always more than one perspective to ones relationship with any issue and maturity imo is a matter of acknowledging the validity of them all

so i dont mean to come across as negating that the criminal is wrong

i just think that theres more to the picture

the idea i am shooting for here is to ALSO be able to view human beings
and human life in general
from the perspective of seeing ourselves simply as natural organisms living within a natural system

i often comment that this represents one of our biggest challenges and imo misconceptions as human beings right now

there is this assumption that we are somehow superior and seperated from the natural system which created us

not only is this untrue imo but its impossible

we cannot live as organisms isolated and void of an external system

we cant grow food out of out ears for instance

or float around in deep space without any clothes

so even if we leave one system for another it still required to have the context of a system -

we REQUIRE a system

and we are a part of one if we acknowledge it or not

we havent left anything behind except our perspective

our gadgets and our impact has grown way out of proportion to our perspective, (but thats a divergent topic)

anyway, if we think of ourselves this way ALSO,
as organisms within a living system, then we can accept that our system includes an inherently predatory element - just like every other natural system we know of

while humans have few natural predators
humans PREY on EVERYTHING - including other humans

lions and tigers and bears - oh my!

i used to joke that we pretty much killed off all the lions - or mostly
so we had to make new ones
we call them war
dictators
empires
drugs
cigarettes
fast food

criminals

a thing about natural systems, the once they develop they are basically self redlgulating (or at least we have indication lf this here on earth)

they create their own problems but they also solve their own problems

one part of the system goes crazy and causes trouble for other parts: in time the system corrects that problem by eliminating it altogether, returning it to its original proportions, or integrating that problem into itself creating an updated version of itself, a newer, more IMMUNE system

so anyway if we view these things from this - what i feel is a deeper more insightful angle, then we naturally come to the understanding that we as organisms are responsible for protecting ourselves from the predators of our natural system

i see this as being a more empowering view than simply saying "the thief is a bad guy and i am a victim"

the idea of being a victim is something we made up

from the perspective of this is the good guy and this is a bad guy and we're just poor innocent victims that the bad guy came and did something bad to us- well then we dont have to accept any responsibility in the scenario, but we also dont get to challenge it or overcome it

we're just a victim who was victimized

from the perspective of a PREDATION EVENT

first we empower ourselves by realizing we are in a world
with predatory elements
most of us do not realize this so we cant prepare for it
but when we acknowledge it we not only have a context from which to prepare for it but also to recoger from it

since any predatory encounter we survive is by its nature a victory for us, because we survived it

this is an empowering thing
it turns victimization into growth and perspective
.
its like getting bit by a shark and living to tell about it

if you ever get bit by a shark and the most significant after effect is bit of scar tissue - youve won - BIG TIME
youre likely tougher for the experience

youre also going to be more thoughtful about the ocean

if you dont let the event keep you out of the water and you handle the anxiety it produces in a healthy way - by being better prepared for sharks in the future, then not only are you likely to never get bit again but youre also better prepared to empower your "tribe" to not get bit as well