I'm a forgetful person. Yes, I've even been forgetting shit before I decided to do a full on assault on my braincells starting around junior year of my high school career. Now, I understand that my forgetfullness may be upsetting to many, but it's always astounded me at how quickly people will blame me or others for forgetting something. Let us stop and ponder upon this case of undiagnosed stupidity. Can one truly remember to remember? Of course not, memories are simply sparked. Regardless, stupid people act as if forgetting was an actual process the person was partaking in, so lets blame him for it! Forgetting is not a process, it's a lack of one. It's simply not remembering. So ladies, please stop blaming me for forgetting your birthdays. First of all, guys don't give a shit about this whole "remembering birthdays" thing, we don't care when you were born, the point is, you were born... When your birthday comes around, tell me, I'll celebrate it with you gladly, no need to prow my mind looking for what will never be found. Besides, I didn't forget your birthday, my brain did.
See that's another thing that bothers me when on this whole subject of blame. People have separated the person from the brain. It's like they'll hold the person responsible for everything they do, without taking into account that they have a brain with a different composition, which doesn't fucking work like theirs! Acknowledging brain chemistry as playing a factor in one's decisions may induce sympathy, which is exactly what you don't want to feel when you're trying to blame the fucker. But there is no separating the person and the brain, the person is the brain. Unless you're blaming their soul or some crazy shit like that, and then you're just gay.
So what about blaming people for being stupid? As Forrest Gump says, stupid is, stupid does. God Forrest you're a fucking genius. Look, if a person is stupid, they're stupid. They are incapable of thinking "smart" thoughts. If they could think smart things, they would think smart things, but they can't, therefore they are stupid. So why blame someone for their inability to think thoughts that would be deemed as being "smart"? If a smart thought doesn't occur, then it doesn't occur, so fuckoff on blaming the poor little retards.
Everybody is so obsessed with what someone "should have done"... This is undiagnosed ignorance and pure metaphysical bullshit. Really, it is. Look back on any point in time in your life and ask yourself, "could I have done any different?". The answer is, of course. But then think to yourself, "WOULD i have done any different?". Why would you have done any different given the very same set of variables your were faced with that day? Same variables, same outcome. So why obsess over what could have happened if its absurd to think it would have happened?
On a side note - same variables, same outcome... Is this to imply that we're nothing but mathematical equations with legs? Robots with skin? Is this to imply that, as absurd as it may sound, that we're not so in charge of our destiny? Give us X and we're bound to give you Y? That's for you to decide. But of course, nature already has its answer.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris murdered their classmates at Columbine high school and immediately blame was scattered. Fingers were pointed at Marilyn Manson for his macabre lyrics and image, the video game Doom was blamed for its surreal violence, accusations were thrown at the teenager’s parents for negligence, but not once was it explicitly said that these two kids murdered on the self-chosen accord of their own free will. Yet when assigning responsibility it is assumed that despite any influences, one acts freely in this given sense. Is it possible, however, that these teenagers were not as free as we’d like to believe?
Society very much likes to have things explained, especially when it comes to what makes us tick. We like to know how our bodies work, what causes mental illness, what determines sexual preference, what causes depression, addiction, intelligence, obesity, etc. It is understood that schizophrenics are the way they are because of a malfunctioning of the brain, and vietnam vets who underwent traumatic experiences on the field are often sympathetically reffered to as being, “not right in the head”. In essence, the effects of biology and environment on the individual are being scrutinized from every angle, classified and written in textbooks, and we tend to hail such understandings of our nature as being a triumph of the scientific world.
Yet when it comes to explaining what made the kids at Columbine commit their crime, the blame ultimately falls on their self-chosen accord despite their influences. Is this an explanation? It’s impossible to know every biological impetus that influenced the kids at Columbine, or every environmental factor that caused them to plot their crime, but if these factors were entirely understood they would render the children’s sense of morality as being superfluous. To map out every biological urge and how it was felt, or to identify every environmental influence and how it was interpreted, would be to understand precisely what didn’t cause the children to do as they should have done. In this regard, it is no wonder why Stephen Pinker of M.I.T once concluded that, "Science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning. Only by recognizing them as separate can we have them both...".
To paint a more vivid picture, recently I was incarcerated for 60 days at Theo Lacy Correctional Facility for drug possession. I would like to believe, in a certain sense, that if history rewound itself I could have acted differently in my given situation despite my every influence. After all, I was entirely free to not do drugs, and I was entirely free to go about my life in a healthy manner in accordance with the law. There were many things I could or should have done differently but my so called will, free to act differently, was essentially pulled in another direction. Some would criticize me for having a weak will, but this criticism in itself ignores an important point. Why should my will be so strong in the first place as to fight off a felt temptation? Temptations that those who point their fingers at me never experienced in all probability, yet those who have felt such urges would sympathize with my plight. Those who give their nod to me, as if to say, “I understand, you’re not alone” are essentially absolving me from blame, because in a very personal sense they understand. To understand And it would seem entirely irresponsible for me to suggest that I, in my given situation, was a victim of my own biology and circumstance. This of course undermines the concept of what I should have done, but isn’t what one “should have done” always undermined by what actually occurred?
Yet so many attempt to integrate what one should have done with what actually occurred. The former being a relevant map backed by scientific and causal explainations and the latter branching out into the realm of morality. So much seems to rest on dabbling in this moral world.