fault: responsibility for an accident or misfortune.

responsibility: the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something.

IN the end, we are all responsible for our own choices, and others are responsible for the choices they make in interacting with us. so because we interact with so many people, I wonder why we so often look for only one to be to 'blame' when something bad happens.

I was watching a popular NETFLIX series about a girl who killed herself. The series explored whose 'fault' it was. The parents thought she was happy because she never let on otherwise. The adults at the school were given two vague clues in the form of an ANONYMOUS note in a class where the teacher promoted ANONYMOUS sharing and a visit to a counsleors. The issue was the teacher could not really act on something that was meant to be ANONYMOUS except to offer resources for anyone thinking of harming themselves, which is what that teacher did. The counselor who spoke to the girl was told by her that she 'didnt know' if something happened so all he could do was give her her options to go to police or try to move on, which is what he did.

Everyone 'blamed' everyone else. but in the end, it was HER choice to deal with her struggles by ending her life, even though plenty of people held some level of responsibility on her path to making that decision.

Do you ever try to think about responsibility (which is rarely one person or thing) instead of 'fault' and 'blame' or is pointing a finger and being done a bit easier?

This is the difference between successful people and the average non successful person.

A successful person takes responsibility wrong or right, good or bad.

others don't, and they blame instead.

Successful people don't believe in accidents or misfortune

unsuccessful people do and then assign blame or fault.

As in for the trouble girl, who knows what the signs were, people cannot help someone if there are no signs or the person is hiding the signs.

Used to line up the kids against the wall when something happened.
I'd ask them "Who Did it?"
Everytime, the answer was always "Joey Did It".
Being the youngest boy, I always thought they were just blaming him so all got reprimanded equally. I gave long-winded lectures about owning up to their own deeds, honesty and all that stuff.

Come to find out, years later, when they were all grown, that Joey usually Did Do It!

I should probably tell you the moral of the story so I don't leave y'all hanging.

Its not important to point the finger.
What's more important is to stop the action before it happens.
If you see someone messing up, take the time to help them avoid messing up in the first place.
Then, there is no reason to point the finger.

emotional responses associated with death, despair or distress are complex ., sometimes they are a maladaptive coping mechanism . .. blame.. denial .. guilt .. regret ... what is clear is there is a disturbance to our thought processes when grief and shock are involved . We know the response is individual and subjective .., Accepting /acknowledging responsibility when emotionally overwhelmed or processing loss is not always achievable.

acknowledging the young girl's responsibility in taking her own life is unlikely to provide any comfort to those affected by her death . Grief is not always rational or logical .

Even more reason to pay attention to those around you and help when you can.
We should look out for each other, even strangers.
What if all she needed was a smile and an encouraging word?
What if that school shooter just needed someone, anyone to take time to listen?

Fault is the outcome of a decision we (as an individual) or we (as a society) made that results in an unacceptable consequence. Sometimes it is a result of failure to take responsibility but more often it is caused by poor judgement or reasoning. It may also result from a lack of knowledge necessary to make that decision. Often society deems these as "accidents" but in reality it was fault.

Responsibility is very different. With responsibility, you knew better but were not willing to do the right thing to prevent the consequence. When you know a knife is sharp and will very easily cut someone yet you allow a 2 year old to play with it, that is a failure of your responsibility. You know a gun will kill yet you left a loaded revolver on the coffee table with children around. You got into your car when the roads were ice covered and drove 80 mph because you were late for work. You lost control and killed someone in the oncoming lane. Anytime you know the possible consequences of your actions and do them anyway that is a failure to take your responsibility.

We can take these same concepts to society. We make rules and pass laws. Sometimes those rules have consequences either because they were enforced or because they were not. We have laws against a convicted felon possessing a firearm yet we do not always prosecute someone when they are caught. We make rules/laws limiting what police can do with mentally ill people. When that causes a consequential outcome, society failed to take their responsibility. We have HIPPA rules. What if that prevented a doctor from telling a parent their child had been cutting them self or was contemplating suicide? Same goes for educators. When someone follows the rules/laws society has laid out for them, then if unacceptable consequences happen, society is at fault. In politics, this is referred to the "unintended consequences" There are no unintended consequences only a failure to analyze correctly.

What you have raised is a very complex subject for society to deal with. We need to try and protect people as best we can without taking too many freedoms away. We already know it is impossible to teach everyone such that they always make the right decision. Most people make bad decisions every day the only difference is the consequences of the outcome.

hy

IMHO Fault seeks to pit victim against victimizer

Responsibility seeks to work towards solutions.

In practical reality, focusing on "fault" and "blame" while trying to determine responsibility is mostly done by people attempting to avoid responsibility and mitigate consequences away from themselves, IME.
Or mid level managers.

I've found sitting around hypothesizing about responsibility, semantics, the nature of "should be," tends to be a frivolous pursuit (usually done by those that want to avoid reality) as practical reality will almost never agree with any conclusion derived at.

For instance:

In practical reality other forces will come into play to force responsibility onto others.
e.g. raising taxes to pay for some sort of mental/emotional background check on teenagers before allowing them access to something. Mandatory sensitivity training for everyone. Requirements for students to take so many electives and participate in extracurricular activities with some kind of stated purpose of personal enrichment and growth, but really to keep kids from having personal choice and freedom to be alone, make bad choices, etc.
Going to school and now the kids that have some common trait with the suicide girl are now looked at (and then treated) differently.

People are herd creatures. Every step of the decision making process (even whatever event is calling for a decision) and the environment which demands a decision (choice) to be made, is extremely influenced by everyone the person making a choice has ever interacted with in even the most insignificant way.

No man is immortal living on an island in an isolated universe of perpetual energy, food, and magically advancing technology.
As long as there are families, communities, the internet, nations, etc., everyone has a tenuous link to the global social cultural/socialization ecosystem.

Everyone is ultimately responsible for whatever everyone else chooses to do, why they chose to do it, and what options a person determines are available, to some degree.
Whom and to what degree is the purpose of laws, judges, and enforcement.

I have a big issue with not owning up to things.


example:

my first responsibility within the machine shop I work for is engineering. specifically, converting cad into mastercam. but what got me hired was if any part needs to be perfectly flat, round, square I do all of the surface-ID/OD-centerless, jig grind.

a machine shop is designed to work like a successful sports team. someone interprets cad into mastercam, from there it becomes written as a program, then it gets loaded into cnc equipment, a machinist then loads the vice/chuck, then presses the go button and the part gets machined to dimension. then it gets first article inspected, and if that passes and it needs to be ground, it comes to me.

now grant it, a bad part can always be fixed, generally.

what I mean by that, is if a part is required to be flat by .0002 [2 tenths], it has a better chance of getting there if the machinist operating the cnc loads the part into the vice correctly. otherwise, you get what is known as taper. and taper is a bad thing because it takes 2 hours to fix vs a 15 minute grind job.

I had 100 parts and the taper for a 2 inch long part was .003 [3 thousands]. in the machining world, this is called a bad part, but further more, it let's you know the machinist is a moron and has little skill.

so, I go and get the machinists. ask him, how did you run these? got the usual b.s. because no one owns up to anything even though his name is on the work traveler. so in front of him, I set up an indicator to where the tip was touching the lowest spot on the part. and then I slid the part to where he could see the needle move to .003 [3 thousands]. then I told him every part is like this. he still denied it was him who did it. so I grabbed the traveler and pointed out it was him and why was he lying?

first off, the guy IS NOT IN TROUBLE. secondly, this a learning situation for him. thirdly, the owner believes me over him any day since I have more responsibility within the shop.

finally, he fessed up.

but I still asked myself, why would you lie about something like that and deny it was your fault when your name is on the documentation?


people are stupid!!

I think of responsibility as something you take on yourself.

If you bring a child into the world, you’re reponsible for them.

If you take that job, you assume the responsibilities that come with it.

If you make a commitment or promise, you’ve assigned yourself as the person responsible for seeing it through.

When it comes to other people? While we may not “technically” be responsible for them, when we make a choice to participate in the lives of others, we should act responsibly in how we influence their lives.

So are the people who were close to someone who committed suicide guilty of not being able to see what was going on and helping the person before it happened? I say, it’s a sorrowful no.

Are the bullies who deliberately set out to humiliate and ostracize another child responsible for contributing to the circumstances that make a child feel helpless enough to take their own life. IMO, that’s a hard yes.

We may not technically be responsible for one another in this world. That doesn’t make it okay to be IRRESPONSIBLE with each other. Some may disagree, but it’s how I feel.

Iam_isalways@fault