The Tweet is Undefendable

[DBTrek]

Totally lacking a sense of personal responsibility can be a sign of a personality disorder... but so can pathological self blame or self regard.

I think the personal agency versus society argument is one of them false choices you hear 'bout.

And that's all I'm trying to point out - that it's not a dichotomy. You simply can't pretend that peoples' circumstances are all due to personal agency. That's like saying a disabled kid "deserved it" because his parents didn't pray enough.

Nonsense.
No one claimed ALL of people's circumstances are a result of personal decisions.
What I did was highlight your reliable retreat into instantly blaming "the system", "society" and everyone else as soon as any mention of personal responsibility appeared in conversation.

It's like Pavlov's dog. You want to get people salivating and talking about how they're not responsible for their own circumstances? Say the phrase "personal responsibility" in a conversation. Seriously, try it. Watch people like GCF come out of the woodwork to lecture everyone about "the system". It's a trigger phrase that no leftist can leave unchallenged.

Even now he's back-pedaling and trying to claim that what he's really trying to do is say we "can't pretend that peoples' circumstances are all due to personal agency". Think about that for a moment. Nobody made the claim that GCF is supposedly refuting. And even if someone had, does anyone believe that what modern Americans are suffering from is a lack of systems, institutions, and others to blame for their situation? Is this the dire service GCF is supposedly providing for us all?

Laughable, man.
Ha-ha.

[TheReal_ND]

Hmm well if I was going to blame anyone other than myself I would blame the lack of cohesive communities like we used to have but then who do you blame for that? It's not the immigrants fault for coming here. It's not the parents faults for being rootless cosmopolitans. It's not the community's fault for having lost all social trust in their neighbors.

Meh. Just random .02

[DBTrek]

Well, consider the competing ways we approach the problem.

Let's take, for example, a minority kid in a single mother household living in poverty. He's getting bad grades in school and he's sent to counselors DBTrek and GCF for advice.

My approach: Kid, you gotta bring these grades up. It's not just about the grades, of course. It's about learning. You need to be able to learn and adapt, no matter what you do with your life. Maybe you've been told that this stuff isn't important. Maybe you don't see the value in it, or how it relates to your life. So sit down for a minute and let me tell you *why* this stuff is important, and how you can make it work for *you*.

GCF approach: Of course your grades are bad, man. The system is set up for people like you to fail. The whole thing is built from the top down to hold you down. So listen, don't worry about your grades, or whatever arbitrary metrics "the man" is trying to use to make you feel inferior. You're an awesome human being no matter what your grades are, and you can tell the system to just fuck right off!

Two different approaches.

Personal agency vs. outward blame.

I happen to think one approach is actually helpful for creating better lives for individuals (and society) while the other one is utterly selfish and destructive to the human spirit. There is research to back that up, of course. Yet the second approach has an incredible following, and countless government agencies subsidizing its message.

[TheReal_ND]

Well the second one is just easier. Perhaps even perniciously promoted. See. It's possibly the systems fault man :dudeweed:

[SuburbanFarmer]

Well, consider the competing ways we approach the problem.

Let's take, for example, a minority kid in a single mother household living in poverty. He's getting bad grades in school and he's sent to counselors DBTrek and GCF for advice.

My approach: Kid, you gotta bring these grades up. It's not just about the grades, of course. It's about learning. You need to be able to learn and adapt, no matter what you do with your life. Maybe you've been told that this stuff isn't important. Maybe you don't see the value in it, or how it relates to your life. So sit down for a minute and let me tell you *why* this stuff is important, and how you can make it work for *you*.

GCF approach: Of course your grades are bad, man. The system is set up for people like you to fail. The whole thing is built from the top down to hold you down. So listen, don't worry about your grades, or whatever arbitrary metrics "the man" is trying to use to make you feel inferior. You're an awesome human being no matter what your grades are, and you can tell the system to just fuck right off!

Two different approaches.

Personal agency vs. outward blame.

I happen to think one approach is actually helpful for creating better lives for individuals (and society) while the other one is utterly selfish and destructive to the human spirit. There is research to back that up, of course. Yet the second approach has an incredible following, and countless government agencies subsidizing its message.

Absolute strawman-drivel.

I'd say exactly what you would to the kid, and more. However, if I were called upon to judge the kids grades, on some kind of idiotic moral basis, I would take the other factors into account, rather than pretending that he had every opportunity that other kids had.

The original claim was that the spike in cable news viewership is higher because the political clown show has scared people into paying attention. Not because Americans suddenly decided to be more engaged "just because". Then you launched into a fools crusade about personal responsibility and victimhood, hoping to show that we're all blank slates making our own outcomes. This is simply not true.

[DBTrek]

Absolute strawman-drivel.

I'd say exactly what you would to the kid, and more.

As evidenced by . . .your considerable posting history extolling the virtues of personal responsibility and your absolute reluctance to leverage outside factors as an excuse for poor individual performance?



C'mon man.

[Speaker to Animals]

I realize I was speeding, officer, but Donald Trump's tweets got me so upset, I got hypertension and he made me speed. I'm the victim here.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Absolute strawman-drivel.

I'd say exactly what you would to the kid, and more.

As evidenced by . . .your considerable posting history extolling the virtues of personal responsibility and your absolute reluctance to leverage outside factors as an excuse for poor individual performance?



C'mon man.

I say exactly those things to my own kid. "It's not fair, but deal with it and do the right thing."

I don't pretend that all factors are equal, and I don't unfurl my virtuous plumage whenever someone has an outside factor messing up their lives.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Hmm well if I was going to blame anyone other than myself I would blame the lack of cohesive communities like we used to have but then who do you blame for that? It's not the immigrants fault for coming here. It's not the parents faults for being rootless cosmopolitans. It's not the community's fault for having lost all social trust in their neighbors.

Meh. Just random .02

I blame the mercenary culture that manifested in our society during the 80s. We all got used to being ass-fucked by megacorps, and realized that nobody is going to do anything about it, so we all got a little more selfish in return. It's mass psychology, not millions of people deciding not to care anymore.

[Speaker to Animals]

We are all to blame to some degree for the degeneracy. Some of us obviously more than others. But still.. all of society is responsible for that, and all of us have to pay the consequences for it too.

In similar times, when the classical civilization was disintegrating, St. Augustin wrote about this in City of God. The first chapter has an interesting argument on the nature of individuals having to pay the (sometimes deadly) price of a degenerating society.