Lies and Victims

While thinking about the nature of truth, I came to this...

The only person who can lie to you, is you. (And most people do it extremely often)

As I am fond of pointing out, seeing is not believing. We all see things which we do not believe, (ie: movies, magic shows, etc) and we all believe things we haven't seen, (ie: Afghanistan, Bizarro_paragon, etc). This fact is important because it illustrates that beliefs have nothing to do with some aspect of reality, but only with desires. Whatever you wish to believe, you will. Now, what does this have to do with lying?

Since you only believe things that you want to believe, then you are responsible for believing a lie. You wanted it. Victims always share responsibility. If you get scammed and lose money, then you ARE responsible for being gullible. If you get your heart broken, then you ARE responsible for allowing emotions to cloud your reasoning ability. If you get beat up, then you ARE responsible for not knowing how to safeguard your flesh. If you get killed, then you ARE responsible for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The truth is that nobody is innocent, we just like to think we are. Stop lying to yourself. If you do, you'll be invincible.

 

Nate, are you a Libertarian?

 

I'm a Natian.

Given my background I've never gotten used to labeling myself really as anything. Iunno, I guess I agree with some libertarian thoughts... I wouldn't call myself one tho.

 

These right here are extremely libertarian beliefs.

 

NateSMZ thats realy interesting dude,

I think accepting a certain responsibility for things that happen is something that is very positive. Even if you were beaten up, or manipulated into loosing money, or whatever, there is a certain responsibility that lies on the victims shoulders.

The level of responsibilty however, does not equal the level of consequence.

Lets say i'm a gullible person, and i trust the kind salesman who manipulates me into donating money to a charity that doesnt exist,... sure, i handed the money over, im old enough and ugly enough to make my own decisions even if i am so gullible. I hold a responsibility over the ending consequences.

However, the not so kind salesman who consciously and purposely took advantage of me, holds a far greater responsibility for the consequences, because it was him/her who had the extra unrevealed information, the fact that it was a scam.

I have had no experience in that scam field, though i hope my point is made......

An example closer to home though,.... i have been beaten down to pulp, plenty of times.

Quite a number of times i have been beaten by numbers greater than 10, with a few fighting me, and the rest chanting and enjoying the action. I've had broken noses, broken cheek bones, splintered ribs, heaps of concussions, ive had a man jump on my chest while i was unable to move on the ground, ive had my head smashed against bricks, ive had trolley poles to the head, ive had knuckledusters to the teeth, bla bla bla

Wrong place at the wrong time?

Yes.

So, i hold a certain responsibility yes. I could have done many things differently, i could have stayed closer to well lit areas, i could have stayed near more public places, i could have not been out that time of night.

Being at the wrong place at the wrong time, in a sense, was my responsibility, i can not blame anyone else.

Getting beaten down though, how can that be at all my fault? Wrong place wrong time, fine, but it was they who commited the act, and i who received it.

I understand this perspective, but you cant tell me that it was my fault for getting beaten down all those times, for i did not do the beating. In fact most of the fights i didnt even fight back, i couldnt, the one who id think is about to throw the first hit doest, and i instead get hit from the side.

I dont think that believing those incidents were my fault, would make me invincible.

Fault, is associated with blame.

Responsibilty, is very different to blame.

Blame is accociated with accepting, or accusing someone of being completley responsible, with no one else at fault.

Responsibilty is accociated with accepting or handing out a degree of liability (dont think liability is the right word...)

So... i agree with you to an extent, but i disagree on the most part.



*EDIT... deleted a personal note which someone just used to insult me. that pisses me off.

 

You make a number of good points. Allow me to clarify a bit...

I don't mean that we hold the entire responsibility for everything that happens to us. The con artist who dupes people deserves consequences for his actions, no doubt. The point of these thoughts was more concerned with the fact that people generally like to find ways to remove ALL elements of guilt from themselves. They want to put EVERYTHING on somebody else. And our minds often end up rationalizing a good deal, just so we can convince ourselves that our problems come from sources other than ourselves, or that we are just victims of fate.

So what I was saying there wasn't that, if something bad happens, it's the fault of the person who it happened to... I was saying, it isn't ONLY the fault of the person who did it.

-------
And the invincible part is associated with that because, when you acknowledge your own shortcomings and failings... you mitigate the potential exploiting of them. If you admit that you are gullible, then you can work on fixing the problem. But if a person keeps trying to push the blame off on other people being bad... they will continue to get hurt.

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And lastly, let me just add that I hope you're in a better position now than you were. Nobody should have to deal with that sort of thing...

 

ahhh ok, the way you word it makes it sound like thats what you meant, especially the word fault. Like i said the word fault is accociated with FULL responsibility. At least it is to my understanding.

But yeah by what you just said then, looks like we're in agreeance

EDIT*

cheers for that last point... it kinda only hit me that i revealed that after i submitted the post... but i think im happy to leave it there.

and yes, i'm in a much much better place now, things are going very well for me thank you

 

^edited, to hopefully reflect my thoughts a bit better

and I want to make it clear, I don't think this way because I've had an easy life... lol, I know there are plenty of ppl who have had worse situations, but my experiences growing up weren't the most pleasant - plenty of negative things have happened to me over the years...

at some point I just realized that accepting at least some responsibilty was the key to improving... often it's easy to think, 'why me'? But another thing I learned was, if you're capable of recognizing a problem, then you have a responsibility to fix it.

 

oh i never assumed anything like that mate,

i just took it as a perspective,

In my own life, things have usually worked out only when i accept some responsibility, cause its usually only then that i make efforts to impact on whatever it is.

i agree with ya there aye

 

This is a contradiction or doesn't follow.
It basically says: You are responsible because it is their fault.

Also, it is their fault for lying. They have the greater part of the responsibility.
Extend this principle out to other things where there is a victim and it becomes absurd.
Example:
Someone shoots into a crowd and you get shot and killed, your fault for being there.
Someone beats their wife, she must have done something.

I don't think anyone would blame the victims in those cases. Lying is based on the same principle.
If someone lies to someone else and they believe them nobody will blame the victim.

 

It's not that the blame of the action lies with the victim of the action, but rather that the victim shares some responsibility in their own plight.

I don't know that I necessarily agree that this principle applies as strongly to the random actions undertaken by a number of crazed individuals in our society, such as the firing into the crowd example. I mean, of course you can be held responsible for making the decision to get onto the airplane, but when it's purely random chance that the plane suffers a mechanical failure and crashes, your personal responsibility diminishes because of your inability to act during that period in a way that would reduce the risk.

However, in every action like this, I can see how the effected person has taken steps either to ensure their presence or has failed to take steps that would remove their presence, knowing the danger or not.

For instance, the abused wife is not at fault in the least for her husband's actions, nor does she deserve his aggression. However, she has a responsibility to herself to prevent being involved in such a situation, or being involved with such a man, regardless of whether she was/is aware of his ability to be violent. In this regard she has failed herself, and is ultimately responsible for that failure. But she certainly is not at fault for the occurrence of the action.

 

*fixed a typo that arose after rewording*

and exactly @ Joneagle_X

Every negative situation could be prevented with greater knowledge and/or ability. Now obviously, it's impossible to possess absolute knowledge, but we are responsible for the things we don't know.

As an example, say the plane has mechanical failure. Now naturally we think, 'how could anybody avoid that?', but a person with a great deal of experience around airplanes would probably recognize when something was amiss. If we lack that experience, then we share the blame for whatever consequences come to us.

That doesn't mean other people aren't also at fault for not taking greater responsibility to ensure it's safe operation. But nobody else is as responsible for your safety as you are. You have a duty to yourself. If the constraints of time, resources, etc, mean that you pass up on a portion of that duty to focus on another... you should do that with the knowledge that nobody else is stepping in to pick up that slack. Now their protection of themselves, may as a byproduct, protect you in ways you've neglected... but one should not view that as a natural right. ie: The airline mechanic doesn't want to get fired and/or sued for neglect, so he will most likely do his job to the best of his ability... but if you count on that, you take the risk.

 

What if god decides to blow us all up and for some unknown reason he doesn't give us the chance for redemption?

I just wanted to make something really hard to use the explanation for.

 

Then it's partially your fault for not pleasing the God enough.

 

youre RIGHT


QUICK EVERYONE OPEN YOUR HARDRIVE (humans call it a "heart") AND PLAY BACK YOUR PRAY MACRO!!

(sorry for not really contributing)

(and yes I know I contradicted myself by another post but I'm an android obs thingy!)

 

What about situations that are nearly random chance in the way they played out? (The idea of "acts of god" labeled by insurance companies comes to mind) An example that I have actually been around is a random guy was driving down the road I live on (imagine more of a country road) and a tree fell completely totaling his truck. Now hos is the guy responsible for this? He could have been driving a few miles per hour faster or slower and his truck would probally still be in one piece but there is no way that he could have known that tree was going to fall at tha exact time.

 

But he is partially responsible for driving under a tree knowing full well that there is a 1/1,000,000 chance that the tree would fall at the exact moment to slam into his car.

He accepted that risk and must also take partial responsibility for the outcome. There is no situation that you can put forth in which the victim is not at least partially responsible. For instance, the acts of God you mentioned... Hurricanes are completely avoidable. Live in a landlocked area. It's just a risk you accept.

 

I see Jon def has a grasp on the concept.

To answer the falling tree... the guy could've designed his vehicle with a reinforced cage and bulletproof glass to render himself safe from all manner of mishaps. Obviously, that would be expensive and time-consuming... so the guy wouldn't bother with that. He accepts the risk then.

The point isn't that we should all live paranoid to avoid all risk. Live is risky. We can't avoid that. But when something bad happens we should either say to ourselves... 'I knew that could happen, oh well, it wasn't worth the effort to avoid'. Or we can say, 'I don't want that to happen again, I'm taking steps to make sure it doesn't'. But saying, 'I did everything I could to avoid that and it still happened, the universe hates me', doesn't solve or help anything.

 

Unless of course you're talking about those late nights when you run out of Oreos.

That's when you know that the Universe hates you.

*NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

 

ironically enough mixed ppl are sometimes called oreos...

sorry you missed me Jon =P