----- Original Message ----- From: "Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 9:33 AM Subject: Re: I never thought I'd say this
> Gautam Mukunda wrote: > > --- Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >>Oy. Could this be ANY more polarizing? > >> > >>I cannot equate "contributed to" to "blame?" > > > > > > Why not? > > Because they mean two different things. The blame game drives us apart > from one another -- how else do terrorists justify their actions but > with a self-righteous conviction that we are to blame for their troubles? > > Decide that the other guys are to blame and that I have the right, if > not the obligation, to straighten them out by wiping them off the earth, > if necessary -- that's the path to hell, paved with hubris. > > > Well, when people are crashing airplanes into > > buildings or, say, shooting a couple of hundred kids > > in the back, I'd say that the unhealthy thing is > > telling yourself that there _isn't_ someone to blame. > > That sounds to me like another way to obsess about blame. I'm not > willing to rent out space in my head to terrorists, which is how I see > giving in to the blame game. When I fail and yield to that thinking, > I'm surrendering my nothing less than my freedom, yielding to the > fantasy their behavior is forcing a certain response from me. > Ultimately, it's like I'm a little kid, justifying hitting Tommy because > he "made me angry." I know that I can choose more freedom than to just > react. > > > No, I don't think so. If you are so committed to > > refusing to blame people that you think the _wrong_ > > actions of the United States "contributed to" 9/11, > > you aren't being morally mature, you're just > > abdicating your position as a moral being. If you > > can't make a judgment _then_, then you're not > > rejecting narcissism, you're rejecting _morality_. > > In my experience, self-righteousness is the very worst sort of > immorality because when I practice it, I kid myself into thinking I'm > being good. In contrast, virtually every other kind of misbehavior > lacks such ingrained hypocrisy, despite rationalization. > You see it as refusing to blame people, I see it as disengaging from the > kind of thinking that turns me into a slave to self-righteousness and an > addict to personal power. I think that you and Gautam must be talking about very different things. Let's walk though an example. Lets say a man breaks into a house and rapes a women. We ask the question "why did this happen?" To a small extent, we might say the woman contributed to her own rape by not having a good enough lock on her door. Not in the sense of blaming the victim, but reviewing actions for improvement...how other women can learn to keep themselves safer. Then again, he might have obsessed on her, and broke in even after she took reasonable precautions. There is no doubt that the rapist has responsibility for the harm to the women. Speaking religiously, I wouldn't consider myself able to determine if it was a sin or not. He may not have had enough control of his faculties to determine right from wrong and therefore didn't really sin. But, whatever the inner truth that I cannot get to is, he did rape the women. Once there is sufficient evidence, I would support arresting him. If he resisted arrest, I would support the police using appropriate force. (We can debate what is appropriate for a fleeing suspected rapist in another thread.) If the evidence is sufficient to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt, I would support putting him away for a very long time. None of this were not make sense if he was not, in a way no-one else was, to blame for the rape. While we can talk about many different contributing causes ( e.g. including the city failing to replace the lights outside of the woman's home, or the neighbor who didn't call police when he heard the man break it) none of them are to blame as the rapist is to blame. Further, we can say that rape is wrong. It doesn't take self righteousness to say that it is wrong for a man to rape a woman. One isn't self righteous to say that it is worse to rape a woman than it is to gossip about someone behind their back...just because its the other person that rapes, and its oneself that gossips. Rape causes a lot more harm than gossip. I really don't think you would argue with this logic, Nick. This is the type of blame that I'm almost positive that Gautam is talking about. This leaves the question of in what sense is it dangerous to attach blame for actions? In the sense I gave, it seems like a very reasonable part of establishing justice. Even with mercy, I don't think you would consider it reasonable for people to rape without there being significant consequences. It makes sense to jail the rapist and no one else. So, in what sense is it wrong to blame the rapist for the trauma experienced by the woman he raped? Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
