Blame

I was recently thinking about the theory of blame. People are so quick to use it, yet there seem to be so many mitigating circumstances in which blame can be misplaced. The only problem is these circumstances are open to interpretation, and not always agreed on by everybody involved.

Evolution of Court perhaps.

I am interested in what everybody thinks about moving blame?

Take this as an example, a 10 year old boy sexually abuses a 5 year old boy. Who is to blame for the sexual abuse? If these are the only facts that you have at your disposal, immediately you would decide the boy was to blame, am I right?

Now, you discover that the 10 year old boy has been sexually abused by his father for the majority of his life. Evidently, the boy is unaware that his behavior is wrong. Now who do you blame?

So you begin to think about the fathers circumstances…

And so it spirals. If each persons actions are influenced by how others have affected them, decisions that other people have made, etcetera, where does blame end? In fact, where does it begin? :confused:

alas, blame is also tied on to a little thing called responsibility. The 10 year old boy may not have been taught this was wrong, but the man that is his father, has no excuse for notknowing it is wrong, even if he himself was abused. Responisbility, and personal responsibility is what keeps the blame from spirling to the fact that nobody actually controls what they do. Because, we as humans can control for the most part, what we do.

“Man is but a reed, but it is a thinking reed.” Pascal

It also depends on individual points of view. If I as an individual feels that to abuse a child is not wrong, then I simply wont blame the father!

So, if you refuse to blame the father, then who will you blame? Is blame a never ending spiral in wich it can always be applied, yet can never be applied?

lamouton, how can you as you say “absoulutely refuse” to blame the father, with no knowledge of the circumstances?

What if, per say, the father was mentally handicapped, had been abused all his life etc etc etc?

HEY WHY NOT!
You’re movin in on my turf bro, get the hell out or else!

Just Kidding.

Coincidence has it that I have been promising to write an Essay on Blame and Punishment for the longest time and still haven’t got around to it. Yet here you are talking about blame already. Don’t worry about a thing, keep talking about it, I was only kidding about the above berative phrase.

If you want something interesting to read regarding Blame and Punishment, check these out:

couns.msu.edu/self-help/blame.htm
bu.edu/wcp/Papers/TEth/TEthSank.htm
futurepositive.synearth.net/2002/10/06
ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-yearbook … owski.html

The above links really helped me develop my thoughts and arguments against Blame and Punishment. If you read them, let me know what you think.

What’s your take?

Well, accountability often depends on the ability to respond and awareness.

How much of an ability to respond did the 10 year old have? Not much.

How much of an ability to respond did the adult have. More than any 10 year old child. Even if the adult was abused, one he reached a certain level of maturity he then had a stronger ability to respond to his experience of abuse. So if his response to his experience of abuse was to then abuse others, he is accountable for that choice. He could have responded differently.

Awareness contributes to maturity. A mentally retarded individual may lack sufficient awareness to be considered mature. Therefore he or she is differently accountable for his or her actions.

Awareness is one area that must be examined when deciding if a young person can be tried as an adult. What level of awareness did the individual have concerning the consequences of his or her choices? An individual with a child’s body and an adult’s awareness of consequences can fairly be judged as if he or she was an adult.

A ten year old with little awareness of the consequences of his action has little ability to respond. His response to situations is mainly habit driven. There is little active choice making. He cannot be held fully accountable for his actions. Whoever trained the child in the bad habit is probably responsible. Unless the ten year old was trained in the bad habit by another immature person who had little awareness of consequences of their actions. Then it goes back to whoever trained that person in the bad habit.

Usually a child eventually becomes mature enough to be held accountable for his or her own choices.

Hey Magius, sorry abou that, I had no idea I’m new ay, not completely schooled on etiquette etc. Lol. :slight_smile: I love this site though, it seems that I’m not the only person in the world that overanylses everything I come across.

:laughing:

Blame’s always been an issue for me, because I am in foster care and have a lot of difficulties with my mother. Being constantly blamed for everything all your life, and then moving into a situation where no one blames you - and you blame yourself purely out of habit - is difficult to adjust to, and got me thinking about who is to blame in any situation and who determines this and if there is ever any body any one will agree on?

Self blame is another thing that gets me, from one end of the spectrum to the other. I, for example, have an awful habit of shouldering guilt and blame. The fact that I am completely aware of this, does not motivate a response, purely driven by habit. (In response to Xanderman) Which leads to a totally different argument, in which habit and circumstance can often override responsibilty and logic completely, regardless of awareness. My mother, on the other hand, never blames herself for anything, and suffers no conscience for this. Is it possible to hold yourself at fault for nothing?

The 10 year old boy situation was only used as an example, it seems to have spiralled a bit? I dunno

Oh, and what determines the correct maturity level for accountability?

first off, I never said “absolutely refuse” if there are indeed extinuating circumstances, such as the father being mentally disabled you move on to another level, who left that child with the mentally disabled father? As a side note, I’m well aware of the cognitive abilities of 10 year olds (working with them all summer in a daycare program 40 hours a week will fill you in on that real life joy). It’s true that they very much are victims or products of how they are reared. Often a child who encounters abuse will be abusive, but they still have an understanding that this is wrong. It’s very hard to explain, except that other children display this to them, they are taught through media, social norms outside the home. That’s beyond the point of blame though. Blame it seems does end up being an endless spiral, with the very root and seed being that humanity is an existance of chaos, we are a flawed species, and the blame falls therein. Seems a little bit to apathetic maybe, but what are we supposed to do? Forget blame completely? Is there justice without blame?

Hey why not,
nothing to be sorry about, I was being serious when I said I was joking. You haven’t broken any etiquette. It was actually good that you made the thread, cause it reminded me that I gotta devote some time to the essay.

Although I have never been under foster care, I do know what its like to be able to forgive everyone except myself. I’m still working on that. The weirdest thing of all is that I don’t believe in blame or punishment. Sometimes one’s beliefs and their actions don’t coincide until that belief has really settled into ya. I guess that makes me a hypocrit for the time being. :frowning:

I too am aware of my own disability and yet it goes on. Maybe it’s like you were saying in response to Xanderman, habit and circumstance can override resposibility and logic regardless of awareness.

It is possible to hold yourself at fault for nothing. Al Pacino, in the movie Devil’s Advocate says “Freedom is never having to say you are sorry”. Now please don’t misunderstand me with what I am about to say, I’m not saying your mother is a Psycho, but according to modern day Psychology, a person who has no guilt or remorse (hence doesn’t hold themselves at fault for anything) is exhibiting a symptom that Psycho’s hold.

What’s your take?

Al Pacino’s quote makes sense. But I don’t believe that it’s a good take on life.

In order to never have to apologize, you would either never make mistakes or have no conscience. To never mke mistakes would be boring, no lessons would be learnt, a true sense of right and wron would never be properly developed. Without conflict is no passion for any beliefs or moral standards. This is not freedom! This is either a twisted form of oppression or a mindless mundane freak.

To have no conscience, well to quote your Magius, is bordering on psyhotic.

I believe that habit can override responsibilty and logic, thats how addictions are developed.

Is self-blame an addiction?

So in turn, is it something to be weaned off… or will it forever spiral if you can’t l learn to control it, much like an addiction?

I dunno, what do you think :unamused:

Everyone with enough awareness does have the ability to respond to his or her bad habits. With awareness you can choose to break a habit. Any bad habit can be broken, with sufficient effort. It is by no means easy to break a bad habit. It can take significant work.

The motivation to break a bad habit is a different matter. It does take awareness plus motivation to break a bad habit. Motivation is not out of our influence. We can choose to motivate ourselves.

But its easy to be unmotivated from taking on a difficult challenge.

In a short time frame, habit and circumstance can have a strong influence on behavior. But what could the individual have done before that event? That is where accountability comes into play.

This is the very problem that every social scientist faces; how to we measure it?

How do we measure maturity? We use age in some circumstances.

Sometimes it takes a judgment call. In making a determination people use their evaluation skills to discern maturity.

You can try to evaluate how well the individual under question understood the consequences of their actions. If you are fully aware that terrible consequences will follow, but you do it anyway, then you are probably accountable. Then again life is complex. They may be mitigating circumstances. These must be taking into consideration when making an evaluation.

Part of maturity is the relative ability to take life seriously.

By the age of twelve I had practically emancipated myself from my home after my girlfriend killed herself. I had written a book. I had moved hundreds of miles away from everyone I knew and have seldom looked back.

My brother is 21, he lives at home with his mother and spends his life making crass jokes and seeing if he can get his hair to reach his waist before he cuts it (literally - his life goal).

Defining maturity by age is about as exact as defining a societies sanity after locking away the psychotics.

sweetest_insanity,

Emancipation at the age of twelve is extraordinary. That is quite atypical for 12 year olds. Likewise authoring a book.

It sounds like your circumstance would benefit from a judgment call instead of the use of age alone. Age is not the final measure of maturity, just a potential tool.

The book was pretty crappy by my standard of writing today, and i had practically emancipated myself, not legally. But in spite of me being extraordinary (:stuck_out_tongue: jk) my point is that there are people who are mature at 10 and there are people who are still floundering when they are 50.

There must be a better way to make assumptions about peoples maturity rather than simply on their age.

Swetest Insanity,

You point to the very crux of the problem:

If we make ASSUMPTIONS about the relative maturity of others, then we can make mistakes. Instead we can get to know the other person. That is a better method of knowing the maturity of the other.

I agree with you about this: "…there are people who are mature at 10 and there are people who are still floundering when they are 50. "

May I ask, how old are you now?

17