Blame vs. Responsibility

This woman lives destitute.  She did not choose this life, the
Powers That Be forced it on her.  We, as a society must take
responsibility by not only offering help, but we must fight for this to stop.

Scenario #1:  Johnny is  jumping on the bed, Jimmy sitting on the floor playing with his Tonka Truck.  Mom is in the other room, ironing clothes.  Johnny jumps into the lamp, knocks it over, and breaks it.  Mom comes in, asks, “HEY, who broke the lamp?”, Johnny exclaims, “JIMMY DID!”.  THAT is blame, that is Johnny blaming somebody else for something he did.

Scenario #2:  Johnny is  jumping on the bed, Jimmy sitting on the floor playing with his Tonka Truck.  Mom is in the other room, ironing clothes.  Johnny jumps into the lamp, knocks it over, and breaks it.  Mom comes in, asks, “HEY, who broke the lamp?”,  Jimmy says, “Johnny did”.  THAT is putting the responsibility where it belongs.

The two scenarios should never be confused with each other.  Add to either or both of these scenarios, let’s say the lamp fell onto Jimmy and broke his leg, resulting in him not being able to do some things – some of his chores, , maybe he stays home from school for the first few days.  You cannot blame Jimmy for any of this, it was Johnny who caused Jimmy to have his leg broken, and Johnny who caused the subsequent inadequacies that Jimmy is now displaying.  There is politics in this.  Conservative thinking people, as well as blind followers who only know how to parrot what they hear, will say, “Jimmy is a lazy sumbich, he doesn’t do his chores, and he skips out of school.  Non conservative thinking people will say, “Jimmy needs help because he has a broken leg, so, let’s help Jimmy”.  Conservative people will say, “Hey Jimmy, get over it, buck up and do whatever it takes to do what is expected of you”.  Non conservative thinking people would say, “Hey Jimmy, what can I do to help?”.  I don’t have any political leanings, but in this case, conservative thinking people are non compassionate, even inhumane, while the non conservative thinking people are the complete opposite.  In this case, the conservative thinking people are causing great damage to society, because when you take this to a bigger scale, conservative thinking people will try to convince everyone to shun Jimmy, they will bully, lie, lobby, and whatever they feel it takes to prove to themselves that Jimmy is nothing but a lazy bum who walks around with his hand out wanting free stuff.

So, now that we can hopefully see the difference between “Blame” and “Self Responsibility”, it may be easier to deal with certain situations – our own as well as other people’s.  Johnny caused the damage, so Johnny should be responsible.  This is the only honest assessment of blame vs. responsibility that can be taken from such scenarios, and any attempts to convince you otherwise can rightfully be replied to with, “How ‘bout you take your Polly-want-a-crackering B.S. and suck on it”, or something similar.  I’m of course, kidding, but you get the idea :D .

There are two parts to being responsible for your actions.  The first is what you are morally responsible for.  This means that you are offering to pay for whatever damage you did – to anyone and anything – if you break it, you buy it.  The other part is who is realistically responsible – who , in reality, will be paying for the damage.  The sad part is, much more often than not, the people who intentionally inflict grief and loss on other people rarely pay for their own acts, and almost never pay for the damage they inflict.  The good news is, these types of people have been paying for their own stuff in a different way for a very long time – ever since they made the decision to inflict pain and suffering on themselves by such malicious behavior.  In that part of our life, we all have a choice, we can be honest, considerate, and compassionate, or we can be selfish, rude, and malicious.  One of the laws of the universe applies always – which is what makes it a law of the universe :D.  That law is that when you choose malicious behavior, you, by reciprocal proxy, and by direct cause and effect, inflict pain and suffering on yourself.  When you choose to be honest and decent, your conscience will be clear, you’ll sleep well, and you’ll be happy – of course, there’s more to it than just this one simplistic part, but it’s good fundamentals, a good start towards being happy.  The lesson is, when you cross paths with a jerk, you can honestly know inside yourself, that you don’t need to do anything to remedy a situation where the jerk is trying to bully you, or to get something from you via manipulation.  If you calmly remove yourself from the situation, the jerk will continue to pay for his own self inflicted suffering.  We will need to deprogram ourselves from all the bad input we’ve gotten – via Hollywood (Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, and Superman movies), and via every medium, everywhere we look (more on that at another time).  A side note:  In today’s world, it’s dangerous to “Stand up for yourself” when confronted with a bully.  Laws are always on the side of the instigator – mostly because he or she has premeditated and/or preplanned the whole thing well in advance.  He will have a gun under the seat in his pick ‘em up truck, or a tazer, machete, something, OR, he will have his lawyer on speed dial, and he will have your face, your vehicle license plate number, and whatever else, on video – many times with the help of surveillance video in whatever establishment where he put his plan into action.  There have already been many times where the instigator will taunt a person, get busted in the face, speed dial his lawyer, and, before you know it, the guy who thought he was simply standing up to a bully is in prison for 60 months (that’s FIVE YEARS).  Add to that, there are incidents of “Road Rage” (as well as Grocery Store Rage, Parking Lot Rage, and Facebook Rage), many times a day in this country, where standing up to a bully ended up in the unsuspecting victim being shot and killed.  Think about that – is getting into it with some lowlife in the street worth your safety, your freedom, or your life – I’d say not – I’d say if you’re going to risk any of that, it should be for something big, something worthwhile.

In these scenarios, the “Cognitive Behavioral Therapist” will tell you that you are responsible for your reaction.  Well, horseshit.  Any person who goes out in public and tries to bully other people – they are the ones who get to wear (morally) any and all reactions that they themselves incite.  Now, don’t confuse that with who, in reality, pays.  Recently, there was the incident where some loudmouth was in a theater disturbing the other patrons by being on his phone.  An ex cop in the row behind him asked him numerous times to take his phone to the lobby.  He also went to the management and reported it to them – nothing was done.  After several more verbal exchanges, the loudmouth reached toward the ex cop, at which time the ex cop pulled out his gun and shot the loudmouth and killed him.  In my never to humble opinion, the loudmouth is morally responsible for what happened to him.  The sad reality, is, though, that the ex cop is now in prison, and will probably be there until the end of his life.  Please don’t take this as my saying that you should shoot a person if you don’t like what they’re doing, what I am saying is that if you are the one doing the bullying, and you get your ass shot off, you wear it.  The law says otherwise, but it’s common knowledge that the law has nothing to do with what’s right or wrong.  This, my fine friends, is one of the biggest dishonesties in society today – the fact that it’s dictated to us that we cannot have a reaction that is not sanctioned by our beloved government, or we will surely pay dearly for it – and worst of all, most of us believe it so we can be thought of as good little law abiding citizens (that’s the dishonest part).  As for alternatives, as for what would have been a much better thing for the ex cop to do, was to move somewhere where he wasn’t within earshot of the loudmouth.  Here in this piece, I’m not trying to make the point on what the ex cop should or shouldn’t have done, my point is, you bully, you get hurt or worse, you are responsible.  If ever my philosophy should take hold with a reasonable percentage of the population, such situations would rarely, if ever, happen – because the loudmouth would know better, and any subsequent reactions would have no reason to be.  One step at a time :D .

So, be responsible for what you do, what you create, what you incite, but never for anything you did not cause, or for anything you have no control over.  I’ll cover this subject in more detail as I go, complete with many examples of what we should and should not be responsible for.  For now, be good, or not – your choice.