Some will think the context you shared absolve him
Agreed 100% with what you said. I didn’t mean for it to come across like I was giving him a pass on the impacts of his actions.
Actually to expand on it: You’re responsible for your outcomes whatever they are and whatever your reasons. I don’t think it matters if you “didn’t mean any harm” or whatever. If you’re too scared to protect someone from violence when you could have, or too lazy to feed your family, it’s not like you’re out to hurt anybody, but yeah, your actions are hurting somebody. It’s your responsibility to overcome your bullshit. In this case, Pence doesn’t seem like he has the full moral courage to realize now that he’s an adult that he bought into a bunch of shit and he needs to leave it behind. Michael Cohen did it, the Little Green Footballs guy did it. It’s hard but it’s not impossible.
It makes no difference if your issue is abusiveness or laziness or gullibility; if it’s hurting someone and you’re directly involved, you’re responsible for putting a stop to it. It’s easier said than done sometimes, I’m not trying to say imperfect means evil, but still at the end of the day, you did what you did. If he winds up instrumental in killing a bunch of women with ectopic pregnancies, I don’t think he gets to go up to St. Peter at the end of his life (metaphorically speaking) and say “Oh my bad, some people told me it was fine, and I didn’t really think that much about it. Means it’s all good right?”
Well, we should be careful with that extreme also. It neglects the role that context and environment plays in our lives. It rejects the notion that societal problems have impacts on adverse behavior because it can sweep it all under the rug in the name of “personal responsibility”. Again, there is no easy answer. Humanity will wrestle with this question until its dying days because it is entirely subjective. Assuming you are not actually religious, there is no objective St. Peter to tell them they’re wrong. They just die and it’s up to those who remain to define the ethics of what they did and left.
And for the gang member to work his way out of that life is much much harder than for someone in the State Department to put active resistance against giving aid for Israel. Or for Pence to make his change, or whatever. And usually there’s no one to help him with any of it.
Agreed 100% with what you said. I didn’t mean for it to come across like I was giving him a pass on the impacts of his actions.
Actually to expand on it: You’re responsible for your outcomes whatever they are and whatever your reasons. I don’t think it matters if you “didn’t mean any harm” or whatever. If you’re too scared to protect someone from violence when you could have, or too lazy to feed your family, it’s not like you’re out to hurt anybody, but yeah, your actions are hurting somebody. It’s your responsibility to overcome your bullshit. In this case, Pence doesn’t seem like he has the full moral courage to realize now that he’s an adult that he bought into a bunch of shit and he needs to leave it behind. Michael Cohen did it, the Little Green Footballs guy did it. It’s hard but it’s not impossible.
It makes no difference if your issue is abusiveness or laziness or gullibility; if it’s hurting someone and you’re directly involved, you’re responsible for putting a stop to it. It’s easier said than done sometimes, I’m not trying to say imperfect means evil, but still at the end of the day, you did what you did. If he winds up instrumental in killing a bunch of women with ectopic pregnancies, I don’t think he gets to go up to St. Peter at the end of his life (metaphorically speaking) and say “Oh my bad, some people told me it was fine, and I didn’t really think that much about it. Means it’s all good right?”
Well, we should be careful with that extreme also. It neglects the role that context and environment plays in our lives. It rejects the notion that societal problems have impacts on adverse behavior because it can sweep it all under the rug in the name of “personal responsibility”. Again, there is no easy answer. Humanity will wrestle with this question until its dying days because it is entirely subjective. Assuming you are not actually religious, there is no objective St. Peter to tell them they’re wrong. They just die and it’s up to those who remain to define the ethics of what they did and left.
Yeah, agreed.
And for the gang member to work his way out of that life is much much harder than for someone in the State Department to put active resistance against giving aid for Israel. Or for Pence to make his change, or whatever. And usually there’s no one to help him with any of it.