Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5980591" data-attributes="member: 8835">Here's another crazy philosophical TV thread.This time, inspired by NPR and the Diane Rheem show's discussion today on healthcare costs and the snippet I heard about a doctor who spent 15 minutes on removing a mole, and 90 minutes talking somebody out of Suicide.Here's how that though chains down to today's topic.  In Japanese culture, it is thought that when you save a man's life, you are responsible for that life.  An example is, if a psychiatrist a suicidal person off a ledge last year, and that person then goes on a killing spree this year, the psychiatrist is responsible for those deaths.Frequently in fiction, during the bad guy monologue he'll throw in some threat that if the good guy doesn't do what he wants, the bad stuff that's going to happen will be the hero's fault.I see this kind of logic as trying to pass the blame, not take responsibility for your own actions or a form of survivor's guilt.  If you try to do a good deed (save a man's life) and that man later does bad things, the bad man is at fault, not you.  This would be why Batman captures bad guys, not kill them.  He's not responsible for them escaping three issues later and doing more evil.if the bad guy says if you don't pay him, he'll blow up the city and you'll be responsible for the deaths, he's trying to pass off the responsibility.  The bad guy is the one putting those lives at risk, had he not armed the bomb, nobody would have been in any danger.When the bad guy sets up a dual threat, and the hero has to choose Gwen Stacy or the city of New York, it's not the hero's fault that Gwen Stacy died.  He didn't setup the situation, and he did the best he could with what he had.I do see a corner case, as it were.  If a bunch of kids bully somebody in school, and that kid goes postal, who's at fault?  The bullies, or the postal kid?  In the case of Columbine, I'm still inclined to blame the postal kids.  If they really wanted to go postal and be "righteous", they would have ambushed just the kids who bullied them.  Whacking a whole school puts them back in the blaming everybody but themselves category*.*During the long road trip to MN last week, our conversation wandered to Columbine, and our consensus was, the shooters were likely victims of bullying, and some of the kids they killed were probably their tormentors and "had it coming."  That doesn't justify going on a shooting rampage, but it does shift cause and effect and blame/responsibility a bit. Bystanders to the incident see a group of loners going bad, but anybody who's been bullied sees the pattern, and you can bet nobody's going to stand up and say "those kids had it coming."Anyway, that's my current chain of thought.  To sum up, it is total bull crap that the hero is somehow responsible for the evil that men do.</blockquote>

Verification