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Well, this IS the Great Debates Forum. If you wish to exercise your right to be INtolerant, thousands of CD members on the Politics Forum are just dying to jump into the melee.
The self entitled will never accept responsibility for their actions no matter the ramifications of their deeds. If society just threw their hands in the air and gave up what kind of world would we have?
As hard as the PC bunch tries to convince us that things like drug use is a disease and not a choice by either depressed or just plain lazy people the deeper down the rabbit hole we will go.
Last year we had a group of idiots stop traffic on 2 highways by chaining themselves to cement filled barrels to bring notice to the black lives matter movement. Just last week they had their day in court and the judge let them go. They refused to apologise for their actions and will probably do it again. It was bad misguided behaviour and in this case society gave them a pass.
Bad behaviour by anyone adult or child should never be excused. It can be ignored but it is best to confront it. Bad behaviour at school the teacher and principal should get involved before it escalates. Bad behaviour at work call human resources and the boss. Bad Behaviour on the streets call the cops.
We have rules for a reason both written and informal as a society norm and anyone that doesn't follow them is usually ostracized and put in time out, fired or sent to prison unless you are a certain politician that is then you run for President.
We have so many broken records in our society where the kids follow in the footsteps of the parents poor examples. Only education can fix this. So many kids look up to celebrities that have little talent beyond half a voice for singing. They idolize these people and act as they do.
No one should be excused for their bad behaviour.
I think this is a very simplistic view.
There is no general agreement on what "bad behavior" includes. I'm not trying to insult you, but I think some of your posts are bad behavior...and you may think some of my posts are "bad behavior".
Were the "correspondence committees" that started the American Revolution "bad behavior"? The Boston Tea Party...bad behavior? The Minutemen at Lexington and Concord...bad behavior? I think the British would have said yes. I think we Americans would say no.
Was the Underground Railroad "bad behavior"? A Confederate would say yes. An abolitionist would say no.
Was Rosa Parks exhibiting bad behavior sitting in the front of the bus? Blacks would say no; racist Whites would say yes.
...but the thread title was prompted by my reading many posts lately in which the writers appear to believe that all people who do not conform to society “norms” (i.e., they do not get a good job, they do not stay out of trouble with the law, etc.) should be “excused” to at least some degree because of possible bad parenting, bad economic conditions, etc. Their contention seems to be that people should not be blamed when they are not self-supporting and/or they become criminals because it all comes down to “luck” since some children are born to poorer parents than others, some children are born with more intelligence and/or drive than others, etc. – and that is not their fault.
Although I think people who think that way do have a point, I also think that if “bad” behavior goes unpunished, that society will suffer for it because people who are inclined for whatever reason to be criminals or “spongers” (takers) will prey, in one way or another, on those who are not so inclined...
Congratulations, 811. In two succinct paragraphs you just described the field of criminology - and a few of its leading theories!
I am a rational choice criminologist - a very unpopular theory these days. It holds that offenders make a rational choice to offend after weighing the risks and benefits of offending. Then they decide to do it.
The first reason the rational choice theory is unpopular is that if something as simple as a decision could explain most crime, 90% of criminologists would be unemployed. (I can get away with it because I am one of the very few criminologists who actually worked in the field, not a university.)
The second reason the rational choice theory is unpopular is because it is very difficult for highly educated people to imagine that some people would actually decide to become a junkie or burglarize a neighbor or commit a violent, senseless crime. They evaluate the risk/benefit ratio from their viewpoint - not the viewpoint of the offender, who is undoubtedly younger, doesn't have a doctoral degree, a guaranteed paycheck and may not even be sober.
The third reason the rational choice theory is unpopular (and more to your question) is that it places the responsibility for the offense squarely on the person who decided to offend - which is usually the offender himself. It is not politically correct these days to hold people accountable for their actions when there are so many other ways to explain their misbehavior. Ironically, most cops, lawyers and judges - people who actually deal with offenders all day long - lean toward the rational choice theory. (It's those pesky professors who make a living creating new theories that believe in the other 30 or 40 theories.)
So good luck in your perusal of criminology - you should get lots and lots of varying answers. Have fun with them.
The self entitled will never accept responsibility for their actions no matter the ramifications of their deeds. If society just threw their hands in the air and gave up what kind of world would we have?
As hard as the PC bunch tries to convince us that things like drug use is a disease and not a choice by either depressed or just plain lazy people the deeper down the rabbit hole we will go.
Last year we had a group of idiots stop traffic on 2 highways by chaining themselves to cement filled barrels to bring notice to the black lives matter movement. Just last week they had their day in court and the judge let them go. They refused to apologise for their actions and will probably do it again. It was bad misguided behaviour and in this case society gave them a pass.
Bad behaviour by anyone adult or child should never be excused. It can be ignored but it is best to confront it. Bad behaviour at school the teacher and principal should get involved before it escalates. Bad behaviour at work call human resources and the boss. Bad Behaviour on the streets call the cops.
We have rules for a reason both written and informal as a society norm and anyone that doesn't follow them is usually ostracized and put in time out, fired or sent to prison unless you are a certain politician that is then you run for President.
We have so many broken records in our society where the kids follow in the footsteps of the parents poor examples. Only education can fix this. So many kids look up to celebrities that have little talent beyond half a voice for singing. They idolize these people and act as they do.
No one should be excused for their bad behaviour.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Lately, I've been contemplating the First Amendment and how people seem to be either ignoring it or are clueless about what it actually states. Your "group of idiots" were exercising their First Amendment rights. Just because you are in disagreement doesn't mean this was "bad behavior" on their part, and the judge gave them a pass because they had broken no law by peaceably assembling and petitioning the government for redress.
It feels to me as if different groups of people in this country have adopted widely divergent views of what constitutes bad behavior and what should and should not be tolerated by society. Neither side seems to want to spend much time considering what the other side has to say. If science tells us the planet is warming than scientists are shills for the gubermint. If medical researchers tell us that addiction is a disease then they are coddling meth addicts and the like and probably have been getting kick-backs from big pharma. If Donald Trump goes around glorifying his proposal to surround the US with zillion foot walls paid for by another country, his supporters break into wild applause. If Bernie Sanders self identifies as a socialist, his followers couldn't care less, and they, too, break into wild applause. Now which group is exhibiting bad behavior learned from emulating poor role models? I would say neither one is. They simply consider different world-outlooks as the societal norm. Ammon Bundy considers armed attempts to take over public lands and not paying his grazing permit fees a perfectly logical response to government laws he dislikes. I live in ranching and farming country in SW Colorado, and I think the BLM and the Forest Service have any number of imbecilic grazing policies. Plus, I'm extremely angry over Denver's plan to wriggle around the water laws and take away our irrigation rights, so Denver can have nice, green lawns. Why should we let Denver take-away our ability to have productive farms and ranches? Maybe we should emulate Bundy and take over at gun point near-by Mesa Verde National Park. Is this bad behavior or are we merely trying to protect the only way of life that we know?
Snap judgements as to what constitutes bad behavior can be detrimental to all concerned. A sniper killing school children definately requires a call to 9/11 and all the law enforcement available in the area should certainly make all haste to converge on the school and either kill such as evil person on the spot or lock him up in jail forever and ever and ever. But a kid messing around with a squirt gun? Shouldn't we (and especially the police) take a moment to see just what's going on before we put a bullet in his head? Very seldom are things open and shut, black and white. If they were, we'd never have had to invent technicolor.
Some people don't even know when they're being racist. Sometimes a person actually has to be told that some remark was racists.
There is certainly no shortage of people willing to do that now.
As for the OP, what should be excused depends on the issue and who you ask. Liberals will give the poor a carte blanche pass to be as lazy as they want whereas conservatives are more likely to excuse bad behavior by business or religious figures. The truth of our society is that almost no one is consistent and most people will contradict themselves if it benefits their personal interest.
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