21 Jul '04 - + 0 - 0 Is right, right?

Every day we are faced with decisions and we all attempt to make the "best" choice for each decision. Sometimes there is an obvious better choice of any set of choices but to say it was the only "right" choice could imply that we are not aware of other choices or the possible outcome. So how do you decide the best choice? Read on for how I see it.

I do not believe in a black and white system of right and wrong. There are some choices where the better choice is logical and others where it is not. An example might be like punching my sister or kissing my sister. Neither choice is the "right" choice and both have their consequences. The better choice depends on what I want my result to be. (hehe, Natalie and Tammy you gals know which choice I would make, right?) :)

I decide which is better based on a multitude of criteria. Some of the first criteria that come to mind are my previous experiences, others previous experiences, my expected outcome and the suggestions of expected outcome that friends and family see.

So there is no right choice for me, only a better choice for which I have the most supporting information for that will provide me with my wanted or expected result.
As a final thought, I try to go through my life gathering as much information as possible so that I can make better decisions. I do that by reading, watching others, talking with others and participating. I believe this principle applies to everything I have to make decisions about such as jobs, religion, politics, raising kids, living together as well as survival and entertainment.

thirteen stones, bouncing:

tlb - 22 July '04 - 02:36

Nathan - 22 July '04 - 03:16

Elitist approach, to choose the obscure, simply because it is obscure, making it easy to define it as special or “better”... My definition only…
What is the purpose of balancing things out yourself, don’t things tend to balance themselves out? That being the case, why force your own interpretation of balance on the situation?

Entertainment valued frustration; again my definition… something is not ideal, so rather than allowing the natural human emotion to take place ( the 5 steps) teh subject will jump to the conclusion of abondonment of emotional connection and find their situation humorous, to avoid confronting the situation and dealing with it head on. Much like laughing when someone hits you, to frustrate them into giving up beating on you since their desired result is not to be achieved.

I talked with the judge this morning at the Round Rock Municipal Court regarding my speeding ticket, which I am innocent of… I wonder if the “One Nation Under God” coupled with Matthew 7:1-5 will get me off? Probably not, but again, a man’s words written and spoken are his poetry, a man’s actions are his definition.
Definition request filled, back to you…

tlb - 22 July '04 - 05:13

The judge is not judging you, he is judging your behaviour or rather, judging the innocence of accused/alleged behaviour based on supporting information that you have when you plead your case.

In the first comment, you have judged me by stating I am intentionally choosing the obscure simply because it is obscure. My opinion is no more obscure than the stance you chose when you called it obscure. I do not attempt to tell the reader that what I believe should be what they believe nor do I write that what they believe is wrong because I believe something different.

Our lives are what we make of them. I may choose to kiss my attacker (in your example), or I may choose to ask why he felt like attacking me then have a cup of tea with him because he is no longer angry. The desired result is achieved either way since he has released his anger and I have accepted it without revenge. This allows for both the natural human emotion to take place as in the identification of what is causing anguish, acceptance of that anguish and understanding the path I took to accomplish acceptance.

Nathan - 22 July '04 - 06:05

my confusion begins at judging someone and seperating that from their behavior… How does repeated and consistant behavior seperate from you judging a person? Does that exclude someone from punishment? How do you punish a behavior but not the person? To me it seems once you seperate the person from their actions you relieve the individual of their responsability. Being that we all choose to live in America, why would our government choose to not seperate the two? I find your scenario of your attacker joining you for tea quite humorous. The probability of this scenario occuring under anything other than fleeting anger is highly limited. I personally would not kiss a [DELETED] in acceptance once they had released their aggression. I’m sure the [DELETED] in front of kids at the Mall in Madison might prefer that to the sentance of his behavior, but for some reason all those kids parents can’t seem to plant a wet one on the fella.

I do agree you do not “tell” your readers what to think, any more than a magician “tells” his subject which card to pick in a magic trick.

Again I regress to action versus words. How do we properly judge right and wrong, by actions or words. And if neither, how do you judge safety and pleasure by seperating behavior from it’s carrier…? I still fail to see the difference of how to not judge a competant adult ( by law) seperate from their actions. i.e. CHOICE

tlb - 22 July '04 - 07:41

IANAL, that is, I am not a laywer and nothing in these posts may be considered legal advice.

Mental Note: The behaviour and person discussion should be a separate post.

If you are found guilty of behaving in a way that violates a law then you are punished. note being found guilty, does not mean you actually did the crime. Just the same, claiming not guilty does not mean you did not commit the crime, only that it must be proven. You do not punish a behaviour, you punish the person for their behaviour. Not everybody works or thinks like that so this is based on my previous experiences and not a “right” answer. Only the best answer that I have to address your question.

Our government may or may not separate the two (since that includes all branches). Our court system does, which is what I am basing my comments on.

I have found the comments on child abuse inapropriate for my web page and have been removed. Please show some discretion with your posts to this public site. This site is a G rated site and such commnents may violate the Communications Decency Ammendments for publicly accessible content since I do not have a disclaimer at the front of my page that states you must be 13 to access this site.

Thank you!

ncb - 22 July '04 - 09:18

whoops!

tlb - 23 July '04 - 00:53

Note: In this post I have used the term ‘character’ for what has been previously referenced as ‘person’ because I feel that you are trying to differentiate between a judgment of character and a judgment of behavior. My apologies if I am mistaken in your meaning.
Very confused about how you would separate behavior from self. I agree with tlb that it seems to separate you from personal responsibility. Is it wrong to judge murderers (murder one, specifically – premeditation) for their behavioral misstep? I can see maybe in the case of those who are mentally or chemically imbalanced, it’s not fair to judge them based on their behaviors, for the simple fact that they may not be wholly in control of themselves. But how can we not judge a person’s character from their behavior when he is of sound mind? In my humble opinion, it seems like a contradiction in terms to say that one’s character is unrelated to one’s behavior, which it seems like is what you are trying to say. (apologies for the potentially confusing grammar there) Take the speeding ticket example. While the speeder may not, in fact, be a “bad” person, the act of consciously disobeying the law must reflect upon the nature of his character, or at least one part of it. I believe the choices we make that result in ‘actions’ or ‘behavior’ must correlate directly with our character. Is it not, in fact, these choices and these actions that help define our character? Are we not called hypocrites when we think one way and act another? Just my thoughts….

tp - 23 July '04 - 07:47

The judge in the original example of the speeding ticket is deciding if an individual (person) performed the accused behaviour (choice). The person and the behaviour are separate and a “GUILTY” judgment ties the two together.

i.e. If you are found not guilty, it does separate you from being responsible for the accused crime just as being guilty specifically ties you to being responsible for the accused crime.

Let us relate this to the “right vs wrong” that I started this with. I think that behaviour is a choice. (in sane humans but not insane ones) :) and a Judgement is to decide if that choice of behaviour is right or wrong. I choose not to make the judgement of right vs wrong between a person and their behaviour (nor of a persons character). I do judge a persons choice of behaviour as being what I want for myself and will agree to disagree with their choice and move on.

An example of this is when a person is choosing to be violent, I do not judge them for making that choice, I simply remove myself from the area that they are choosing to behave violently in.

This action is consistent with recent events.

Nathan - 26 July '04 - 03:15

OK, so you don’t judge the person until they need to be judged because of the environment, and only then do you not exactly judge them but accept that you disagree with their choice of sane person behavior, and remove yourself from the bad environment… I think… So does that mean you judge the environment, and can you place blame on an idea? If you can does this mean the person who the idea decided to land upon is guilty which therefore ties them to their responsability, when they were in the wrong environment… and whn under the right environment are they in fact golden geece???

OK seriously.. you don’t judge until it effects you directly right??? So basicly you’re saying, that if it’s not in your backyard you don’t care. And why bother with judging something that doesn’t directly effect you? And then when you don’t like it you move on…??? If that’s the case then why care if there is a right and wrong at all, once the overwhelming feeling of “behaviour” and “choice” come into play? Honeslty it sounds to me like there is this very noble idea of being above “Judging” someone, but it remains in an idealistic state and once it comes to the point where you have to make a decision ( judge between right and wrong, better or worse, good or bad, whatever…;) you do just like all the other humans and judge, decide, and choose blindly and with faith in your choice, and then say “I don’t judge you, just the bad stuff you do…”

Does that about sum it up?

tlb - 26 July '04 - 16:25

Nice discussion.

In my humble opinion a person is not their behavior – two completely different things. If my child writes on the wall or hits me I still love them. I do not however love the behavior and there is a consequence in my house for behaviors that I do not love. Just as there are positive consequences for the behaviors I do love. As soon as the consequence is over the incident is over. And my child has never wondered if my love for them comes with strings attached, it does not. I love them without condition and I love them no matter their behavior.

Just like I am trying to love my neighbor without condition. For me to love one neighbor but not another based on their behaviors as I judge them puts me in the center of our little universe. This cannot be right.

I don’t understand everything Nathan is saying but what I do understand I agree with completely. Having a cup of tea with your attacker is where we are going as a family of man. Nathan is just going to be there faster than the ones who find it so easy to judge the right and wrong behaviors of others.

Open your mind. Search for a better way of thinking. We are still alive. There must be more to learn right?

JC

jc - 28 July '04 - 13:41

-Personally I see a child writing on a wall and an adult who murders as two seperate things all together. If someone fails to see the extreme difference between the two, I would find it difficult to discuss the topic. But yes, I agree JC and Nathan, with children the behavior is accepted and expected, making it “ok”. However I find humor in the fact that JC writes that it is not “right” to judge… in fact the words “CANNOT BE” are rather resounding to me, because it shows just as much stubborness as the “judge” himself…
-I do disagree that we as a family of men are getting to the point where “we” are going to be willing to love our attacker but dislike their bahavior, I think we are getting away from our morals and values. To discuss that would go far deeper than this allows, but I think the saying goes something like “chivalry is dead”. The days of doing “right” and standing up and being a man about things are long gone. Divorce rates are up, broken families run rampant, more and more mothers are “single” mothers, and now it’s not because their husband died in war. It used to be shame to have a child out of wedlock, now it’s a hurdle for college. A handshake was a contract, and forgiveness was something that was honored not expected. I think it’s sad, and I think it’s shameful to live that way, I try not to, I’m doing better, but that’s our world now. We live in a world where we blame everyone else, but are ashamed to admit it, where we expect to be accepted and if we’re not then we’re misunderstood, and everyone is square. For me it’s not the right decision to lay down and not fight for what is right. To me believing and having faith and stnading up for those values is what makes a man. ( not to be confused with forcing a belief upon someone)
-One last thought, In the right “environment” those ideas would work perfectly, smootha s silk. But in our world bombarded by the negative, in the real world with real people and real scenarios, in other words here and now, I dodn’t see that approach as “right”.

.:What if?:.

tlb - 30 July '04 - 02:39

When it comes to seperating a person from their behavior as a concept in of it self – their is no difference in a child writing on the wall or someone murdering that child. Either you can seperate a person from their behavior or you can not. Seeing the behavior as excepted has nothing to do with it. A behavior is not a person and vice versa. I’m not saying that I can today love and forgive someone who murdered my child but hopefully someday I will be able to. I am saying that you can love that person and hate their behavior. That person’s Mom probably does. Just because a person is a killer or a rapist they are still a person.

The difference in someone shooting my son in the streets of Madison and shooting my son in the streets of Iraq are smaller than most of us would like to admit. Many innocents get killed in war zones. But we accept that. Cost of doing business. So if your child kills my child in Iraq you do not love them any less. And when I grow to where I want to be I do not love them any less either.

So now we are down to simple geography. We can still love my child’s killer as long as it is in certain countries under certain circumstances. Oh wait, there are also hunting accidents. We can still love my child’s killer depending on what they were thinking the second they pulled the trigger.

The behavior of killing is not the killer himself. They are two seperate things.

Your personal morals and values define how you judge the rest of us, not whether the world will someday be able to have tea with their enemies. Divorce rate is up. So what. I’m divorced. I married the wrong person. I still love her, she loves me, and both of us are much happier now that we are divorced. Judge me for getting a divorce. Be my guest. It’s fine that you think some things are shameful. Nice. Put shame on people. Put shame on me. My children are now from a broken family. Shame on me. It used to be a shame to have a child out of wedlock. Why? Why should we shame others? What a horrible thing to do to someone else.

You can think whatever you want and teach your children whatever you want. You can shame your children if they don’t agree with you. I am not trying to change your mind. When I said this cannot be right I said for me. Read it again. I don’t know what is right for you.

I won’t judge you or try shame you for your thoughts, beliefs or actions. Free will is a beautiful thing. If you want to judge me and try to shame me be my guest. I will always have the teapot ready when you make it back up here and I will always love you.

JC - 30 July '04 - 09:38