should you have the chance?

My buddy asks....this question...to me...

I think that if you live a fucked life..because of you rown doing...you should have your all the help possible to improve your life...if you still fuck up..that's life...your own fault,,,

what do you think?

that is a tough question. I always feel that people are accountable for their actions. If they fuck up, I think they deserve another chance. If they keep on fucking up, that means they are not disciplined. They need continuity in their life and they should just join the military by then.

that is the only thing I can think of.

Sorry, this isn't a specific flame, it's just a subject I 'get worked up' about. Personal Responsibility is a major talking point of conservatives; the term accountability is also now in vogue.

My "problem" with it is that it's only half the picture. What could be the other half? Personal power is what. And you can bet that most of the people lecturing about Personal Responsibility wouldn't dare utter a word about Personal Power. Because they want to keep all the power; they want others to be accountable to them. They want others to be responsible enough to lock themselves in the cell and toss the keys to the guard.

People who "fucked up" (and this number includes me as well) don't need to be told to drop trou and bend over. They need to learn how to cultivate their personal power, their control over their lives, and active participation in their environment.

Only when they do that will they understand the idea of responsibility, because at that point, it will be as natural as brushing their teeth.

As for "being given another chance", it's a non-issue, since it's passive; "being given" is the soul-eating verb. The newly-empowered "accountabiliton" must TAKE another chance. The deal usually involves "cleaning up" one's act and the messes one has made, but that price is usually pretty low compared to weakness and despair.

I think that most of us sincerely want the world's losers to become empowered. It's just that there are so few people who have anything to gain from it, that they'll tell you to be a model prisoner and hope for early parole.

Nobody should "be given" that chance. Neither should be the expected to "earn" or "deserve" it. But there ought to be someone to encourage them to TAKE the chance. It may not be as simple and easy as staying in the cell, but it's a much better existence.

Thus ends my rant for the morning.

--bkl
So sez I :-)

is the only way to improve your life. i don't know aboout "being given another chance". See, that depends on somebody else. they might decide to. I've been fired, for example, yet another company was willing to give me a chance. On the other hand, suppose that you betrayed a friend, and it wound up costing you. Should that friend trust you again? I migh, migh, mind you, forgive such a person, but he would wait a long time before I trusted them again.

I think it is the same with opportunity. If you getan opportunity, and blow it, how many more are you entitlted to? Should not some of them go to other people who can make use of them to improve their situation in life?

Not every thing bad in life happens becasue the BFEE willed it. Sometimes we just have to make the best of our situation, and work for it to get better. Sometimes that will involve short term sacrifices.

This really goes to the core of why it's so hard to be dysfunctional in society. I've always heard, and continue to hear about "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" and "dragging yourself out of the gutter". Everyone is dealt a set of cards in life, some of the decks are stacked on your favor (a full deck of aces?) some of the decks consist of two cards, it just depends on chance. What if you weren't born with boots in the first place? When i hear people talking about this type of thing it kind of irks me because not everyone has the capability to realize their position in life and what they need to do to improve it. I've done quite a bit of thinking on the subject of "when do you stop blaming people for acting in ways that were effective coping techniques in the past?" I haven't really come up with a definitive answer because the question seems to be changing all the time and it's very hard to cut people slack when they are hurting your or contributing to your own misery while avoiding their own. I've struggled with this, and continue to do so in my own family as i'm sure many others do.

Assigning blame is not always a constructive way to help someone. I have come up with an analogy that i think fits the way i feel about it.


You are driving down the highway alone in the middle of the desert and your car breaks down. You stop and open the hood, and see that the engine has basically blown up internally. you have a pair of pliers and a coat hanger in the car, obviously not enough to do anything to help your situation. Then what do you do? Sometimes just knowing what is wrong with you doesn't seem to help the situation much at all, other than a little relief in the knowledge.


Not everyone has the capability to fix their own particular issues to a degree where they aren't destructive to themselves and others. It's not that therapy, or counseling, or just talking it out with a close friend makes you dependent on another person, but it does allow you to find or claim the rest of the tools to fix your car that's on the side of the road.

I know this viewpoint won't be popular with many people, explicity with those who haven't had to deal with a severely dysfunctional situation, but i feel it's a fair representation of a signifigant portion of people who "can't get their shit together". This does not in any way EXCUSE people for their actions, but it does give some insight as to how or what they may need to do in order to stop them and realize what purpose they serve in their own life.

i'm kicking this because i hate typing all that stuff and having the thread slide off the page to be lost in eternity..

:kick:

dysfunctional people in society. The mentally ill. Society should find ways to care for them. there are others who never learned the basic skills for coping. some of the m must be locked away for the good of others. Murderers, rapist, thieves. Others can be taught. all children should have access to a good education.

But in the end, there is only so much that society can do to take care of people who will not take care of themselves. that much, however, much it may be, should be done. After that, each person whould have the maximum freedom to work out his own fate.

We won't all be rich, God knows I'm not. But we can all have enough, if we are willing to work for it.

with the sayings "Judge not lest ye be judged in turn".

People f**k up because (pick any or all of the following depending on the person):

1)they're unlucky; they never seem to "get a break" - once they overcome one problem, there's another one that crops up out of their control.
2)they don't have the education, experiance, or coping skills necissary to adapt to unfamiliar circumstances. They literally can't see situations develop, and live in a reactionary manner.
3)they're limited in their understanding of social skills and don't know how to make and use networks to their advantage - or fall afoul of the wrong people through their "attitude".
4)in their community, they are "different" or the wrong social class; no matter how hard they work, they don't get the level playing field.
5)they're too proud to ask for help and try to take care of problems themselves.
6)they ignore problems, hoping those problems will go away - either through exhaustion or procrastination.
7)they are masochistic or adrenaline junkies who have the psychological need to live on the edge of disaster.

Some of these things are easily fixed, some aren't - and to think that "just because I don't have a problem with a particular issue" means no one else could be crippled by that same issue is pure selfish bunk. Everyone deals with problems in their own way - and hopefully, they can learn from them. But if they can't - who are we to judge?

Haele

Now I know why things don't go well for me. I suppose that I should work on the changable ones. It's all so overwhelming sometimes.

judging others, but how much responsibility they should expect other people to have for them.

At some point, individuals will say, "enough" to other individuals, and as we are seeing, at some point some elements of society are saying, "enough" to other elements of society.

where is the dividing line, how far should society go? How would Iknow? that's what politics is about.

Someone once said 'Life isn't fair'. Yet many forget that other little expression which says something along the lines of 'Life is what we make it.'" So why isn't it the way we romanticize it to be? What must we do to make a fiction a reality?

I prefer thinking of how good life could be if all of us living made a concerted effort, rather than being nice wind-up unquestioning toy citizens for our respective 'governments'.

That's the only way I'm going to answer your question. EVERYBODY in life has problems, whether created by self, environment, or combination of two.

Let's work on finding solutions, not blaming problems. Western society often looks at symptoms, rather than problems. I think finding solutions is far more effective and helps far more people.

Especially when NOBODY is given a manual when they pop out of the womb. And not everybody can figure it out how to be successful in life and success is also based partially on a concept called luck.

My own fault in life is not in bringing about that awareness to people. But then, I never knew how - until now.

Indeed, many gay people live fucked up lives. Is it their fault they are gay? How about perceived to be gay? YOU are being very generalistic when, in fact, there are many types of situations where the cause of the person's life being fucked up was based on society's wrongful bias.

I've got several more thoughts on this issue, but I'm tired. But, in short, it's a matter of situation and it is VERY RARELY the utter fault of the person who got into that bad situation.

Society needs to improve itself, but I'm only seeing a society more concerned with maintaining its status quo, particularly on the part of the people with the most influence. And the status quo is a very unhealthy one, even for the planet itself. A planet we cannot escape from...