Nobody is asking for a free pass, but mental healthcare and just a general recognition of the lack of free will that we all suffer in this deterministic universe does require us to think in terms of consequences that might actually work to make the world a better place.
I’m other words, when has saying, “be better” ever persuaded anyone?
It’s all about attitude. You can’t choose your trauma, but you can choose how to see it:
- A normal experience that you “got over” and refuse to allow yourself (and by extension others) to say is or was “that bad,” may even lead to believing that it’s “your turn” to inflict it on anyone who arbitrarily deserves it
- A horrific experience that you never want another child to ever go through
Luckily, I grew up with parents who saw it the #2 way and raised me with love
You cannot always understand or even know your own trauma and in many cases, not all for sure, as you didn’t see it as trauma or completely suppress it and hide it from even yourself
No, but it should inspire compassion and patience. Childhood abuse literally changes the structure of their growing brains, you don’t fix that in a day.
Learning changes the structure of growing and non-growing brains. So does trauma.
“Just because you got burned doesn’t mean you get to go around setting everyone else on fire.”
A quote I remember often.
The thing about trauma is that it hijacks the default mode network and makes everything look like a threat. The word is hypervigilance, and it filters everything you perceive through the lens of danger.
So when “hurt people hurt people,” it’s not usually because “I’m in pain so I must make others suffer.” Often it’s because they see a phantom of whoever hurt them in the past, and it’s overlaid on every interaction they have.
The default mode becomes defensiveness and self-preservation, and often the impulse is to preempt any potential pain by reacting to it before it even happens.
Therapy can help, but blaming people for their trauma and treating them as a fundamentally bad person because of how it manifests in their behavior doesn’t.
Good luck with that. It was never really about fault, but responsibility.
A captain can do nothing wrong themselves, have their ship be scuttled, and be liable for it.
Without this, society would simply not function.
Really, because it seems society is constructed around mitigating liability for the people at the helm while passing blame down the cargo nets to the poop deck.
Maybe a literal ship captain is responsible for his ship, but what about the owners of the shipping company? I’ll pop the champagne the day they’re held accountable for their reckless profit-gouging policies.
To be clear, that applies to shareholders and executives of any major corporation, not just maritime shipping.
On the smaller scope, I’d agree in theory that accountability should be about responsibility rather than mere fault, but we live in a backwards world. Our entire justice system is designed around assigning fault and administering retributive punishments.
A more just system would find who is at fault only as a means to identify who is culpable and to what degree, and the corrective actions would be assigned proportionally, with the primary aim being restorative or reparative justice. Sometimes punishment and/or confinement may be necessary, but it shouldn’t be the modus operandi of the entire justice system, nor the default course of action.
Especially when you consider how blame is doled out in society; it tends to roll down the social hierarchy until it lands on the lowest possible candidate who can’t manage to shift it onto a subordinate.
They say the leadership assumes the risk/responsibility. They also say wealth trickles down. They say a lot of stuff that’s utter bullshit, just to justify their own positions.
Absolutely humans are deeply affected on conscious and unconscious levels by all kinds of things that are out of their control - both experiences and brain chemistry. Absolutely it is a privilege afforded to only a few to have access to the support and resources needed to become aware of their situation and create deep change for themselves.
It’s also true that if you do a bad thing you did a bad thing. That does NOT mean you are a bad person, it does NOT mean all the things you can’t or couldn’t control are your responsibility, it does NOT mean that you even were fully aware of what you did.
But if you do a bad thing you are responsible for what you did. YOU did it. It is your responsibility to get on a path that will allow you to recognize and change that behavior.
It is nobody’s job to be perfect or beat themselves up for mistakes. It is everyone’s job to work towards being better - to themselves and to the people around them.
Part of that is understanding that you are responsible for your actions. You may genuinely not have been capable of making a better choice at the time - but if you did it = it’s on you to own the mistake.
I’d argue it is everyone’s job to be perfect, as trying for anything less, means choosing intentionaly to not care if you would potentially harm someone.
It’s great for us all to be the best we can be, and to always be working to improve.
“Perfect” is an abstract idea - it’s not really applicable to something as complicated as a human. Not just because it isn’t obtainable, but because we definitely would never be able to agree what the criteria are.
No, but understanding how a shitty childhood can often lead to a shitty adult can help prevent it.
Yes and maybe you’ll be able to bring up some compassion for shitty people when you understand them a bit better
Same for age, wealth, status, gender, education, height, weight, hair color, surname and any other inane metric yould care to list. People just need validation and respect, yet don’t recognize it’s a two way street. Not difficult.
I’m glad my childhood raised me to be a pathological people pleaser utterly terrified of anyone’s disapproval. Nobody complaining about these sorts of people
One day you’ll emerge, fed up with being steamrolled by everyone. There’s a strong assertive raging badass inside of you who won’t take shit from anyone.
Not yet. But when the day comes when you decide you don’t want to live like this any more, you’ll get a lot of “you’ve changed” and “why are you being so cruel to me” from the people who have grown accustomed to your lack of boundaries.
correct. I got this a lot from what used to be my family when i tried to start regulating my interactions with them. eventually they switched into passive-aggressive mode because they feel like boundries are oppression, and that treating me with respect was a bridge too far.
