Re: Blame Syndrome

There *used* to be a time and place in America when one *could* leave doors
open, leave possessions on porch, etc and it wasn't called negligence. If
anyone came on your property and stole them, he was called a thief.

I was talking with a man in Belize after our house burned down and I was
complaining that we had saved very little from that fire, our "hurricane
plywood" being one thing that was saved. Only to be stolen by thieves. This
man told me that his sister had a house fire not long before, and people
were salvaging her few things from the burning house, running back and forth
from the street to the house with her possessions. He said that every trip
they took, they found that thieves had taken what they had just left on the
previous trip.

Anyone who steals is a thief. One could look back at every situation and
say, "well, we should have locked the plywood up in someone else's house" or
"we should have left one person on the street to protect her household
things", BUT the bottom line is a thief is a thief, and the person whose
property he/she stole is a victim of thievery.

--
Kathy
www.ambergriscaye.com/villadelsol
"Su" <no.name@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:VecXf.2886$L7.257@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My husband sent me this. I'm in absolute agreement with him. You can agree
or disagree with what he wrote. Posting this will be my last word on the
subject.


There's a sickness in our society that I call the victim and blame
syndrome. It's where we refuse to take responsibility for our own actions
and blame others. We're the victim. It's like alcoholism in as much as
the inflicted don't know or refuse to believe they are inflicted.

This isn't something new. It's been around for a long time. H.G. Wells
tells about it in his novel "The Time Machine". In his case it was
socialism but it was really the same thing. Responsibility was slowly
shifted over time from the individual to an outside entity. What resulted
was a civilization called the Eloi that had absolutely no responsibility.
The responsibility lied with the Morlocks. The Morlocks provided
everything and when the Eloi were victimized the Morlocks were to blame.

This isn't far from the truth. It's becoming far to common to hear "It's
not my fault" or "It's his/her fault". I'm not saying that it's never the
other person's fault but quite frequently it's not. Let's look at a
couple of examples:

A person tapes $100 bills to his mailbox and leaves them unsupervised.
They get stolen. Where does the fault lie in the loss. If you say "with
the person that stole them" you would be wrong. True, the person that
stole them would be guilty of theft but the responsibility for the loss
would be with the person that taped them to the mailbox. Why is this so?
The answer lies in the expectations of a reasonable person. A reasonable
person would at least suspect that they could be stolen and in this case
would probably expect that they would be stolen. A reasonable person
would expect a thief to take them. Given these expectations the fault
lies with the person taping the $100 bills. Why would you leave them
where you expect them to be stolen?

A woman leaves her purse open in a grocery basket and walks away to do
something. The wallet is clearly visible. The wallet is stolen. The
person that stole the wallet is guilty of theft but the woman is
responsible for her loss even though she is the victim. Let's face it.
We see theft happening every day. The reasonable person would expect
there was a good possibility that the wallet would be stolen.

We as a society have to realize that we have a responsibility to ourselves
and to society, not the other way around. What's so hard about securing
yourself and your possessions? It's really simple, folks. Don't put
yourself in a position to be victimized. If you do you will surely become
a victim. If you do, who's responsible? You are! If you do what you can
to avoid being victimized and you still are then you are indeed a victim
but I think you'll find that they are the exception rather than the norm.






.

Relevant Pages

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