Posted by Thor (63.249.65.142) on February 13, 2002 at 01:03:52:
In Reply to: Re: The Question of the Week posted by that guy on February 13, 2002 at 00:30:09:
If we're saying that every event in a person's life is a direct result of their past choices and that they are responsible for those events as a result, then the concept of responsibility starts to lose meaning. You could say that a person is "responsible" for everything that happens to them but the word "responsible" would start to lose meaning because it represents a division between the self and the environment. If we assume that when a butterfly flaps it's wings in San Fransisco and it gets raped in Iowa, that the flapping and every other past action was a cumulative cause for the rape, we are really talking about karma; the relocation of responsibility from the environment to the self. Moreover, we remove the destinction between the two. If I am the cause of things that happen to me, I must be the cause of the things that caused them. The end result is that we become responsible for all events everywhere. If a rock falls on you, you're responsible not only for being in the wrong place/wrong time, but for causing the rock to fall as well. You'd be the cause of all that is good and evil in the world, but you'd also be at the mercy of everything you'd caused. Omnipotence and impotence simultaneously; if that's existentialism, i think it's wrong.
-thor