Responsibility is out, Root Cause is in
MorgMcA said 05/08, 01:55 PM
Responsibility is a pre-modern ecclesiastical term regarding individual free will which neccessitates that people make bad mistakes because they are bad. Rather than using such an archaic term we should use Root Cause, which places ultimate responsibilty where it properly belongs, on (1) a regressive socio-economic system, (2) a heartrending childhood of deprivation and abuse, and/or (3) a psychsomatic problem beyond the individual's control.
for example attorney Sue Fork Ash, representing a colledge president in the nation's capitol charged with making obscene phone calls to a police officer's wife, aptly defended her client by stating that he in fact "suffers form a molecular imbalance exacerbatd by stress"
Hadrian said 05/09, 07:09 AM
The word responsibility is surprisingly modern. In all modern European languages, ???responsibility??? only finds a home toward the end of the 18th century. This is within debates about representative government, that is, government which is responsible to the people. In the etymology of ???responsibility,??? the Oxford English Dictionary cites the debates on the U.S. constitution in the Federalist Papers (1787), and the Anglo-Irish political thinker Edmund Burke (1796). When John Stuart Mill writes of responsibility, in the middle of the 19th century, again his concern is not with free will, but with the principles of representative government. At the end of the 19th century, the most notable thinker to speak of responsibility is Max Weber, who propounds an ethics of responsibility for the politician.
Therefore, it would be safe to say that prior to the 20th Century, there was no such thing as an irresponsible person, only an irresponsible government.
Free will allows us free agency to make decisions both good and bad. The notion that we are bad precludes the option of free will. The Root Cause of this badness would be the original sin, would it not? Decidedly pre-modern!
MorgMcA said 05/10, 03:48 AM
although the word "responsibility" may be a recent word, the concept is archaic. after all, Hercules was given the 12 tasks to complete as punishment for drunkeness. there was a punishment affixed to his bad behavior because he chose to be bad, which is absurd because noone in their right mind would actually choose to be bad. now if these people were a little more enlightened they would have realized that Hercules was drunk because he was trying to escape the pressures put upon him by his half-mortal state. because of his half-mortal state, Hercules was cast out from amoung the gods and forced to live a life among mortals, by whom he never quite could get accepted for one of their own. He was victimized by the regressive socio-economic system that was ancient greece and the their relationships with the gods. Had people simply realized that this was his root cause, a cause that lied outside his ability to control, they would have understood his pressures and treated his problem and not injustly punished him.
Thank heavn that by 1960 we realized what was going on when Francis Gary Powers had his death sentence reduced to 10 years imprisonment due to the backwardness of his society
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Stress can cause molecular inbalance? Wierd. I agree with your points Morg, but doesn't the responsibility(sorry can't think of a better word) usually lie with the person making an illegal choice though they know it is illegal, not their upbringing? I do concede that abuse victims will continue that trend of abuse but they do know it is wrong.
KittyCatRep | 05/08/08
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LOL.. Morg, this sounds like a conservative making fun of liberal views on criminal behavior. It actually sounds a bit like the concept of Determinism, which (if valid) would relieve us all of individual responsibility for our actions, as there is no such thing as actual free will.
DonkeyDude | 05/09/08
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Wow! I always thought you were a Hume enthusiast, Morg, but I was leaning more toward Brit Hume than David...
IamFry | 05/09/08
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DD, you have a keen eye, though i have to give some credit to Victor Gold and his book. Iam, i'll have to look into these two Humes, I'm not familiar with either.
MorgMcA | 05/10/08
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I HAVE BEEN ACCUSED OF CHEATING MY BY A SORE LOOSER. PLEASE SUPPORT ME IN MY DEBATE WITH CHESTYPULLER! I WANT TO SAVE MY REPUTATION!!! THANKS IN ADVANCE!
gopdiva | 05/10/08
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DonkeyDude proposes that we don't vote before the 6 arguments have been heard. I support him and would like everyone to join us. This will make sure that people complete their debates and not avoid finishing their debates when they are trailing in votes.
POST | 05/14/08
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Hello Hadrian, where'd you go? please don't start another debate about unfinished wins.
MorgMcA | 05/14/08
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MorgMcA: I'll give you the forfeit win due to my absence from the debate. This site is not working well enough for me to bother spending time on. I invite you and those you know here to participate in the discussions on essembly.com. We have a shortage of conservatives. If you do come over, let folks know we've been debating here and I invited you to the site.
Hadrian | 05/19/08
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Please keep it clean. Bad words will get filtered, and offensive comments will be removed.
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MorgMcA | 05/08/08
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