Freedom or Anarchy?

The accumulation of psychobabble from psychos is enough to make me throw up just a little in my mouth. He’s crazy…no he’s not crazy. I sleep better at night knowing that these judgments will ultimately rely quite heavily on the assessments of those who make it their life's  work to study extreme behavior and its causes. Expect an about face when some realize that asserting him to be crazy or a madman is a defense. There's also a curious element of circular definition that has him doing what he did because he was crazy while anyone committing such an atrocity has to be crazy. But I'll not blather on about that because it's not really the purpose of what follows.

I’m trying to parse the precarious reasoning of those who start out by saying something like "I don't believe Palin and her ilk responsible." Many say “I believe…” without explaining why they believe it. Does "responsible" mean entirely responsible or not just a little responsible? With something for which it's common to say something like "But everybody knows that..." nothing stands in marked contrast more than the fact that opinion is quite varied and superficial. This really warrants a closer look.

 If we get an axe and 1,000 of us each take one hack at a tree and it finally falls who was responsible? If there’s this broken, devastated person sitting on a ledge thinking of jumping and I yell “you worthless son of a bitch!” then he jumps then by this logic “I was not responsible”.

Law, custom, and tradition passed down through the ages, in all their wisdom, do have something to say about aiding and abetting — if you knew what was planned or what might happen and you help then you are responsible and the crime is yours as much as it is assigned to the one who carried it out. 

In my youth I once knew a boy named Brad. He was a big lunk of a farm boy and very slow. You would never have wanted to mess with him should be become angry. That would have been very risky. But some kids used to tease him in ways he was not bright enough to see for what it was. One favorite of some of the meaner kids was to tell him something like “Oh man, you should hear what Joe said about you!” then sit back and enjoy the thrashing of Joe. They knew what would happened and they helped it happen.

One take on the matter has it that that Brad is accountable for his own actions and no one else. They fail to recognize the complexity and how something would not happen without seemingly negligible contributions from a confluence of sources. In reality this is how most things happen but that’s just too hard for them to get their heads around.

Waking up with a clear head this morning I think I'm starting to see the light. It goes directly to our varied definitions of responsibility. Some interchangeably use "had nothing to do with", but what these folks are really referring to is direct involvement. Responsibility is something altogether different.

Of course it was not a rabid talk radio hatemonger who pulled the trigger. We all know that. So most of these expressions signify an emotional longing for where blame and punishment should be directed and say little about cause and effect and how people might be influenced, however partially.

I find two things particularly ironic here. First, there seems to be in the minds of some a hard, fast and infallible firewall that exists between each individual that prevents there from being any possible connective influence flowing from one to the other yet we guard our kids against the influence of things ranging from pornography and violence to sexually ambiguous cartoon characters lacking bumps in all the right places like Teletubbies and Sponge Bob. It is customary but somewhat arbitrary that the first day of the 18th year signifies entrance into adulthood, a rite of passage by which everything changes all at once but I know quite a few adults who remain in arrested adolescence. Aren't we placing way too much stock in adulthood? Sure we must have laws but Jesus taught that the spirit of the law is more important than the letter. Keeping oneself just on the inside of some legal boundary does not necessarily make you a good person.

Secondly, inasmuch as some make the firewall argument without further elaboration I suspect they enjoy dialog being reduced to a vote in a curtained booth like the guy in the last 30 seconds of the attached video. But what if science and teaching were like that? The doctors all get together and they just vote. There'd hardly be motivation to research anything. This "firewall crowd" intrigues me inasmuch as their expressions of how humans are beyond influence and are the solitary influence of their own actions reveal much about their own unspoken desires. Denial of their own responsibility and "responsibility" as euphemism for "direct involvement", despite the consensus that conviction is imminent and incarceration is certain, only serve to highlight the need for responsible citizenry.

Nonetheless, the life vs. capital punishment issue will be a matter of supreme importance to some but perhaps less than usual given that those who were shot we likely opposed to capital punishment.

Stuff rarely happens for just one reason. In fact, nothing happens if not for multiple reasons but we fail to recognize this if the goal is only to place blame rather than to gain insights into cause and effect. Responsibilities and duties of citizenship have been enumerated by civilizations dating back to the time of the ancient Greek and Romans and earlier. What is new and less traditional is todays fervor to be free from all of this. I wonder whether those who needlessly direct violent metaphor at those with whom they disagree would not find a way to deny others the cherished freedom of speech that allows them to continue with impunity. Freedom as a tribal totem and intoxicant not tempered by responsibility is anarchy.

Methinks we are sick puppies and badly need to get a grip on.