I agree with both!
 

Hi,

I think I can see both points of view, actually.... Both Sandy's and Gordon's....

Maybe it depends on what sort of "social work" experience you have had.... (In my case, that's none, but I'll carry on anyway....)

For example, if I think a possible guy who comes from the "bad" end of town and as a kid, who sees people making money from selling drugs. He might even be learning this from his parents.

Thinking he's discovered an easy way to make money, he gets into the act too.... It seems possible to me that, particularly in his younger years, he may not realize the full "badness" of what he's doing.... His parents might even be teaching him that it's "good". And this activity could land him in jail.

Well, I sort of see this as possibly conforming with what Sandy is trying to say.... When I think of this example in mind, and read what Sandy had to say, it seemed to fit....

On the other hand, I also understand I think what Gordon is trying to say, which is about the idea of victimhood....

I think if you see yourself as a victim, it can help you to stay in your circumstances. A victim is someone who sees the cause of their trouble being *outside* of themselves.

Having a victim-type mentality means that you won't work on improving your own situation by working on yourself, because you see the problem outside of yourself. And this is the sort of thing Gordon was getting at....

The IMMENSE importance of responsibility.

I think this may have come about because I think Sandy and Gordon are probably thinking of different examples when they discuss this....

As I've said before, it is okay to disagree, and sometimes it may be due to semantics and possibly miscommunication....

Dien

Victim? Victim? BANG, NOW!!! You're a Victim. :o)
 

Dien,

There are NO victims (watch all the knit-pickers ask me about two and three year old kids whose parents...).

Victims are the result of our democratic-socialist economy of equality.

One thing leads to another and before you know it, everyone's got an excuse and nothing is anybody's fault.

I'm a "responsibility for the responsible" type of guy.

If you did it, you did it you did it. There are NO excuses. YOU were in full control... and your past influences make no difference as they can just be used as an excuse.

So what if you grew up in a family of dope pushers... YOU are the one who still decides whether or not to sell the stuff. You have a brain. Use it!

Of course, the problem is,

Most People Never Use Their Brains And Choose Not To Think.

Instead, they become Mindless Robots. Drones. In a cave.

And worse, they think they're not like that.

BUT,

Try to take them out of their cave and they'll fight you all the way.

Did you see all the democratic-socialists protesting the forum in Aust? Did you see how they carried on in the US earlier?

These people don't want the world to change, to grow. Society is NOT for them. They know they won't fit in unless they change.

Far better to make everyone else change to suit them.

(Good thing I'm not in the Olympics track and field... I can't stay in my lane)

I find this one of the most odd forms of victim-society... the Bobbit episode...

She was found NOT GUILTY of cutting off her husband's penis. Something to do with some kind of "abuse".

BUT... and here's the kicker... he was found NOT GUILTY of this "abuse".

So no one was guilty... yet here was a man whose penis had been removed from his body.

How odd.

Anyway. So everyone can go around blaming things they do now on the influences of their past.

HOGWASH!!!

It's an excuse.

EVERYONE has the ability to CHOOSE... regardless of their past influences.

THINK and CHOOSE and TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.

Instead, they opt to CHOOSE NOT TO THINK and PASS RESPONSIBILITY.

Still a choice either way.

Touchy area... religion...

Take the child... brough up all its life in an environment of a certain religion.

Most people stay in their little religious rut choosing to accept what they've grown up in.

BUT

Some people don't. Some THINK and CHOOSE a different path.

Yet both people will have had the same environment. Both with the same past influences.

One breaks free, the other chooses not to.

One takes responsibility the other doesn't.

I like the movie The Truman Show.

It kind of reminds me of the tarot...

The fool, the hanged man, etc., are all symbolic of the PATH of our life.

The man who steps out of the cave for the first time and who progresses along the PATH OF LIFE. It's all in the story behind the tarot.

It's a little unfortunate it's been twisted into a fortune telling thing.

The basic story is good. And you'll find a lot of the tarot reflected in The Truman Show.

(note: I'm talking about tarot and tarot cards based on Greek mythology)

And here we come to something else that's interesting... Greek Mythology.

I don't believe for one second the Greeks thought their mythology was real. I believe, the Greeks knew a thing or two about memory. Namely, the more odd a story is the easy it is to recall.

We can all remember those jokes about an elephant sitting on your fence and other such silly things, but not the funnier jokes. Why? The elephant on the fence is odd. Out of place.

A dog with three heads, a woman with snakes for hair... all odd and all remembered.

Unfortunately the meaning behind those odd tales has been lost to the majority.

I believe the the American Indians have tales based around a character known as Coyote Man - half man half beast much like Pan.

Now where was I?

It boils down to making choices.

Either we choose to react a certain way to stimuli or we choose to react a different way. The stimuli doesn't control our actions, we do.

Whichever path we're on there'll be some kind of obstacle. Some are large and some are small. But all are inert in reality.

How we choose to deal with those obstacles is what matters.

Do we take responsibility or pass it on to and blame the obstacle?

A while back a council worker walked down the side of my house, opened the back gate, walked into my back yard and was attacked by my trained guard dog.

Whose fault is that?

His, or mine for not putting up signs all over the place saying there was a guard dog?

It was HIS fault and he knew it and said so to me. In fact, he apologised for doing it. (good thing I don't live in sue-happy America, eh? :o))

Then I hear the story of a man who was renting a house in the US. In the middle of winter, in a northern state, he watered his footpath. Later, he walked on it and slipped on the ice which had thus formed.

Instead of thinking himself silly for watering the footpath and thus making the ice in the first place, he sued the landlord for not warning him it could happen. Huh?

How about the guy who got drunk, went and got his gun, loaded it, hopped into his car to go and rob a 7-11, crashed on the way there causing the gun to fire and kill him?

Whose fault?

You and I and anyone with the smallest hint of common sense would say it was HIS FAULT.

Nope, court ruled it was the gun makers' fault for not providing a fool-proof safety device.

How about the girl, who suffered from chronic asthma... she chooses to visit Australia's most polluted city (Sydney), chooses to go into the CBD into a nightclub which allows smoking. When she has an asthma attack she BLAMES the club for it and embarks on a campaign to have smoking banned from that club (a club she'd never been to and would never be going to again cause she didn't live in tha city). HUH?

SHE chose to go to the most polluted part of the most polluted city and to go into and even more heavily polluted environment. Was it her fault?
Heck yeah. But not according to her it wasn't. As far as she was concerned, it was everyone else's fault.

Our democratic-socialist society THRIVES on no one being responsible. It's the only way the ne'er do wells can be made to feel good about themselves.

I'm all for that... but people have to be responsible for their actions whatever they may be.

We are NOT equal, though the democratic-socialists would have us think otherwise.

The only thing we all have in common is our humanity and the hours in the day (except those who have mastered the art of time travel).

HOW you use that time is Your Choice and You Are Responsible for it.

Michael Ross.

P.S. spend some time in a shopping centre just watching the human theatre. It's very interesting.