We live in a blame culture, where nobody takes responsibility for their actions.

Here's another thread I welome, because it so-conveniently relates to something I have been musing about for quite awhile.

I've been around long enough to see several legal defenses based on how the perpetrator had, earlier, been victimized themselves into numb unthinking and, thus, could not have formed the intent required to prove culpability for the crime charged. And then a few years later, after the type of hurt done to the perpetrator has become a public cause with new laws, new shelters, and new professional specialties-- on Dr. Phil, yet! :~) -- that defense becomes no longer viable legally. Because "we all know better now, and if they got hurt that way they should have known by now where to get help and not need to be acting out about it anymore."

After several years of watching that pattern, and the ebb and flow of the court system's handling of cases, I started to wonder about the way people get blamed just in everyday life for the crap forced upon them, that they are somehow expected to have known better than to allow.

Hm.... at what point DO we expect ourselves (not "them") to know better?

The old phrase is, "Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me." Sometimes it takes a number of times being mistreated before we recognize what was done, how it was done, and what it was in us that let it go on so long-- longer than twice, let's say.

I think because of the societal desire Giok said so well-- not to take responsibility--, that this has resulted in mutual blameshifting. "You shouldn't have done that to me" is answered with "You shouldn't have LET me, and therefore you WANTED that from me."

And I think that attitude doesn't allow for how people actually ARE-- learning beings who, hopefully, get smarter. Maybe not fast enbough to get smart between "screw me once" and "screw me twice." I know of one such situaiton in my own life, which I was blamed for perpetuating, that in all honesty I was just trying to figuire out, through some pretty heay flak from the present and from the past.

My thinking now is, "Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, excuse ME for not reading your mind. Screw me three times, I'm still trying to figure out Screwing number one. Screw me FOUR times-- guess what, I'm SO ready for you now."

I wonder if anyone else would own up to knowing that continuum from the inside? "Ah, I'm older and wiser." Is THAT what that means?

~Susan