1: A young, well off woman loves expensive jewelry and posts updates on Facebook about each new acquisition she makes with pics of her wearing the jewelry to various venues around town. She is accosted as she leaves a nightclub one night by thieves who know she has jewels at home. The thieves force her to drive home and they clean out all her jewelry after beating her into compliance.
2: A gung ho young Marine fighting overseas is unwavering even in the face of high risk assignments and always offers to take point. He is shot in the third month there and maimed for life.
3: A young woman wants to study medieval literature and obtains a masters from a noted college along with six figures of college debt. She cannot find a job in her field and has to get by with dead end clerical jobs. She bitterly complains to her friends about her poverty, indebtedness and the injustice of it all.
4: A middle aged man with a wife and child loves cooking and starts a small restaurant. He does not really know the business end of what he is doing as well as he needs to and after chewing up the family savings goes broke after a year and his family loses their home.
Bad things happen but they tend to happen more often when you make risky or foolish decisions. Things common sense will tell you are risk prone behaviors.
Are all the people above to “blame” for the negative results of their decisions and behavior?
People who don’t take risks also don’t have big successes.
As to your first example what are your thoughts about Kim Kardashian who in the last few days lost $10 worth of jewelry in an armed robbery? My thought is that it was probably a positive for her: the jewelry is undoubtedly insured and she got front page headlines across the world–and the Kardashians thrive on this.
Asked another way, your question is “Are people responsible for the consequences of their actions?”. The answer is “Yes, almost always and regardless of whether the outcome was good or bad”. The only reason I qualify the answer with “almost” is to cover those rare occasions where the outcome is completely unforeseeable - for instance, say the woman in your third example, ten years after graduation, is killed in a sudden government purge of medieval scholars. Similar things have happened in the past, and it would have happened precisely because of her earlier decision, but the woman would bear no blame.
Please say this isn’t intended to be another *‘when a woman takes the risk of dressing like that she shouldn’t be surprised when something bad happens’ *thread.
I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a thing in this thread in that context until you brought it up assuming by ‘something bad’ you mean sexual assault. The example would have been just as valid if it had been a man known for expensive watches and carrying large sums of cash. The example just works better with a woman because jewelry is pretty much universally recognized as expensive and portable.
I don’t understand why it’s important to assign blame. What bad consequences will happen if we stop blaming people when bad things happen to them. The bad thing has already happened. Blaming the person to whom the bad thing happened isn’t helping anyone. Here is the response to your cases, out of order:
1.) “I’m very sorry that happened, Kim. That must have been a frightening experience. I hope you are OK. If you want to talk about it let me know.”
2.) “I’m very sorry for your loss. your son was a hero and a good man. I’ll try to live up to the example he set.”
4.) “I’m sorry things didn’t work out. That really sucks.” [possible offers to help may follow, if that’s feasible.]
3.) It depends on the person.
a) “I’m sorry you’re going through a rough patch right now. We’re all pulling for you.”
or b.) “I’m sorry your going through a rough patch right now. We’re all pulling for you. But I need to tell you that It’s difficult to hang out with you because all you do is complain. I know things are rough but we all have our problems, some even worse than yours. I just thought I’d let you know since you were wondering why some people had started to avoid you.”
See? Easy!
Of course in story 1, there is blame to be assigned. Namely to the criminals, who will hopefully be caught and prosecuted. (Assuming the story isn’t a publicity stunt.)
And I’m pretty sure it’s the first thing I thought when I read the first scenario in the opening post. The argument is just used way too often for it not to leap to mind. I honestly thought this was just a way to say the same thing without stating explicitly.
My thought is that being physically dragged out of bed, threatened with firearms, tied up, mouth taped shut, and dumped in a bathtub by people shouting at her in a foreign language is a negative that might far outweigh the “positive” of monetary compensation for stolen baubles and some publicity. I don’t know of anyone who “thrives” on that sort of abuse.
The thing I look for in evaluating the foolishness of a certain behavior is how esteemed that behavior is by people in general.
So number 1 is easy for me to judge as foolish. Very few people would encourage someone to brag about their jewelry acquistions. Someone who does this is stepping way out of the bounds of normal behavior and beating their own drum. When you find yourself as the lone individual doing something, maybe you should ask yourself why that may be.
Number 2 is also easy for me to judge…as not foolish. Almost everyone praises members of the military for their bravery. People are encouraged to sign up and fight for their country. Yes, it is high risk–but it’s the kind of high risk behavior that people idealize.
Number 3 is in the gray zone. The overeducated Starbucks barista has been a meme for a long time now. People who take on six figure debt to study esoteric subjects do so knowing that just about everyone is expecting them to be unemployed post-graduation. They convince themselves that “everyone is wrong”, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been warned. Yet, we do hear of people who take this risk and end up proving everyone wrong. And there is tremendous value placed on education for the sake of education, and pursing passion above money. So while I’m tempted to say Number 3 is foolish, I just don’t know. It may be that her family was foolish by giving her wrong advice.
Number 4 is in the gray zone, but leaning more to the side of “foolish”. I know people get miserable working for the Man and want to do their own thing, but once a kid is in the mix, you shouldn’t just “do your own thing” without a solid plan. And everyone should know this. But it is also true that being one’s own boss is put up on a social pedestal. A person may take a stab at it just because they think that’s what they are supposed to strive for, as a smart, capable, hard-working American. So the implementation of the idea was foolish, but the idea itself wasn’t.
And this is why not as lot of people are a good fit as small plane pilots, soccer referees, or solo sailors.
The buck stops here.
You chose to do it.
If it goes wrong, that means you were wrong.
No one else to blame.
Right or wrong but right now.
No getting to think about it and fix it tomorrow.
Got to love that place to like being in that place.
This is the riskiest. Those thieves won’t be able to sell any of that jewelry for more than 5% of what she paid for it. They are facing serious jail time, if caught, for a pitiful earning.
There’s responsibility and there’s “blame” and there’s guilt and sometimes the risk just catches up with you 'cause your number was up.
No. 1: blame and guilt is on the robbers; the victim was just naively confident about how well protected she was. And hey, a legion of fans, online followers, social aquaintances and just people who are simply aware of her did NOT even think to mug her.
No. 2: SOMEONE has to take point; or if there’s a high risk mission and there are no volunteers, SOMEONE is going to be ordered to go. Better let someone highly motivated do it. However, command is supposed to notice and rein in if they see someone who’s not just brave and bold but rather reckless and foolhardy to the point of risking mission success. But there’s no info in the example to know if the latter was the case (command would then be to blame for not addressing his issues).
No. 3: Combination of Larry Borgia’s and monstro’s answers. Let’s see what we can do to get better things going, you obviously have the intellect to achieve more, BUT please don’t whine and moan. I’d assign blame to her if she remains in the rut just whining and moaning rather than doing something to try and get out or make things better, even if it fails.
No. 4: That’s a risk in every start-up and he should have known. At some point before the total failure someone should have intervened and said, Dude, you love the cuisine but you are terrible at the business management, get someone to help you with that! If he obstinately refuses then greater blame is on him. If nobody even pointed it out to him then he was just wrong.
Really? Here is just one example - a police officer in GA recently reported that a black man shot her when she approached him and then ran away, spawning a huge manhunt.
Further investigation showed that there was in all likelihood no black man, no shooter of any race:
The evidence indicates that she shot herself. Why? Some people crave attention enough to do literally anything to get it. This is only one example, I can document with many more. I personally think the Kardashian case will turn out to be staged as well, for the same reason.
Agree with folks upthread that “blame” is a crappy word and a crappy idea we’d do well to banish from our lexicon.
Adults have a responsibility to act responsibly. Which means taking only risks with reasonable ratios of upside vs. downside. And with reasonably well-understood parameters. Especially when their decisions affect others, such as the OP’s restaurant guy.
Both those “reasonables” are subject to individual variation. But as monstro said, if you’re one of very few people doing the thing, you’re probably less “reasonable” than you think you are.
Likewise if other folks or a little Googling demonstrate to you that you’re clueless about what you’re getting into, then it’s a good bet you’re screwing up. Any subsequent success will be down to luck, not skill. If you have no idea whether the odds are 1:10 or 1:10,000,000 you probably deserve what happens next.
Said another way, Dunning-Krueger is a harsh master.
That guy a couple years ago who announced “fuck the 'gators” before going swimming in that canal is the poster child for both these errors.
No, no. A supportive friend may not, in an exercise of tact, point out the poor decisions that led to the bad thing happening, of course. But in a general discussion, it’s worthwhile to separate unforeseen-bad from foreseeable-bad. That’s not precisely blame, but it’s a recognition that an unforeseen bad requires a look at how we assess risk. A foreseeable bad means that our risk assessment worked and we ignored it. These are fundamentally different situations.
Everyone is responsible for the outcome of their actions but (as with the free will debate running concurrent with this one) the complicated question is who is the “one”. The individual whose behavior we are examining is also responsible for the behavior of the rest of their species, and vice versa, insofar as we’re all interinvolved to the point that our very sense of self is not merely singular but plural. (More so than we tend to realize). Hence, there can be no meaningful discussion of the individual’s behavior without also considering the behavior of every other human involved in the outcome of that behavior — it is not fair or reasonable to treat everyone else’s behavior as if it were “just the way it is” while regarding that one individual’s behavior as if it were an incarnation of “free will”.
An interesting POV. In crude terms, how many disastrous “Hey y’all! Watch this!!” redneck Darwin Awards wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been an audience for him to shout to? Darn good question.
Taking a different tack that’s more an extension of my last post. …
I’d argue that one is 100% responsible for the quality of one’s decision-making. One can’t realistically be held to 100% strict responsibility for the results. Because Nature, other humans, and random chance get a vote too.
If you’re stuck on the head by a small meteorite it’s hard to argue that it’s your fault because if you’d chosen to go for your morning walk 5 seconds earlier or later it’d have missed you. Your decision to walk exactly when you did caused the impact on your noggin. Though strictly factual, that logic is pretty obviously bogus. Nature got a (big!) vote on that one.
Lots of decisions aren’t single decisions; they’re long processes. e.g.: The OP’s guy who opened the restaurant didn’t go broke the instant he signed the lease. Lots of subsequent decisions contributed. As events unfold good judgment requires that original decisions be revalidated in light of accumulating knowledge and changing circumstances. Choosing to “damn the torpedos” is often how decent original decisions lead to disastrous outcomes. And is definitely a yuuge factor in marginal decisions going very, very badly.
Having just finished binge-reading non-fiction about extreme mountain climbing (Everest, K2, Annapurna), I’ve been thinking about the blaming/responsibility question a lot.
I think I’ve come to the conclusion that climbers, who are largely from the West, should have to make a deposit to country that will have to dispatch rescue squadrons to save their frozen asses.
On two of the OP’s questions:
Kardashian, of whom I am def. not a fan, acted vainly and stupidly in flashing her jewelry and location to the world. However, the blame lies with the robbers.
Grad school for a dying/dead academic field: I am a very lucky humanities prof with a Ph.D… I got a job before the door essentially slammed shut for academic hires. I’m of two minds here: 1) Anyone thinking about pursuing an academic career should do exhaustive research on job availability in his or her anticipated field; and, 2) Many grad programs, especially in the humanities, need to take a hard look at the number of students they admit each year vs. the reality of their graduates actually being able to make a living in his/her field after years of intensive study and taking out loans.
For example: I was admitted in a cohort of 20 students; ten years later three of us graduates have tenure-track, secure faculty jobs. It’s a brutal market.
Well, sure. Prudence is a good thing. And if you want to use examples as a cautionary tale to someone who is starting a business or joining the marines, that’s fine. But there seems to be a sort of–I don’t really know how to put this–glee, or maybe smug self-satisfaction that goes along with blaming people after something bad has happened to them. I don’t find that a good thing, though I’ve been guilty of it in the past.
Also, prudence shouldn’t slide into cowardice. What if the restaurant owner succeeded? Everyone would be praising him for living his dream. Before he starts you might strongly caution him to have a plan and resources in case of failure. But afterwards what are you going to do? I don’t really see the point in saying or even thinking “Ha ha, you fool! You should have known better!”