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Responsibility vs. Victim

A comment I saw on Facebook this morning caused me to reflect on the difference between being a victim and taking responsibility for one's situation. It is an interesting conumdrum to consider. When one trusts another, that is a choice. Responsibility is realizing that it was a choice and that other choices could have been made.

Now suppose that someone convinces you that they are trustworthy. The other person works very hard to convince you that they are on your side. They do everything they can to give you warm fuzzies and make you feel loved, accepted, and supported. But also suppose that this other person has his or her own personal agenda that depends on you doing something that will benefit them, but not necessarily you. Then suppose that this person provides you with all sorts of reasons for you to do what they want, and omits telling you about the negative side. If you do what they want you to do, and you are damaged by it, are you "responsible" or are you a "victim?"

The answer is actually both. When someone gains your trust and then misleads you into something harmful, then yes, you are a victim of malicious treatment by the other person.

But, you are also responsible. But what does that mean? It means you have the ability to "respond." You can learn from the mistakes you made and make different choices the next time around. It becomes a "victim mentality" when you do nothing and allow it to happen again and again. If you do not change your choices, then you make yourself a victim.

Lets take this responsibility one step further. Suppose that once you realize your trust has been taken advantage of, you also realize that others are being similarly badly used. What moral responsibility do you have to warn others? I will leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Finally, lets consider such a situation in which the person misleading for gain is afforded special trust because of their special position. This could be a cburch leader or someone with special licensure that is bound by specific ethical standads, like, oh, say a social worker or an attorney, shose services are engaged specifically because they have professional knowledge that you don't. L Ann Babb, in her book, Ethics in American Adoption cites a case in which a young woman was led to believe that an attorney represented her in an adoption, only to discover at a rescission hearing that he had been representing the adopters all along. Victim or responsible?

You make the call, the comments are open. I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks.

Comments

phatsam88 said…
I enjoy your perspective Tad. From personal experiences I know HUGE lessons come in many forms. One of those forms can start out looking like being made a victim. The great news is VICTIM is a step in the process of enlightenment and learning. In the examples you proposed the an individual can use the situation to become much wiser. Victim then is a stop sign or bill-board along the road one travels, it is not the destination. If I experience victimization and I don't learn a lesson from it and the situation happen again, then I am choosing to be unwise and there are other words for that state-of-being. Insane! (Einstein's definition of insanity is something like, "Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.")

I pose the following, "Everything is a choice." Nothing happens in my space unless I allow it, call it forth or create it through my own actions. Therefore when I realize it is my choice to be a victim for a moment in time and use wisdom to shift beyond just being responsible, I can actually rise above the drama and be accountable, reclaiming my power given up as a victim. Knowing it is my personal power that makes me a victim or not is the key. It's a simple choice to be open to new possibilities and trust with all my heart and in the same moment use wisdom, ask questions, ask for references and documentation as well as feedback from others. And if the results aren't what you anticipated. Make another choice. The possibilities are unlimited. I choose to work on WISDOM and ACCOUNTABILITY. Thanks for the subject to ponder today.

Thomas G.
Tad Wimmer said…
Thomas, Thank you for your comments. They verge on the metaphysical. While I agree with most of what you've said, I take exception to two thoughts.

First, we can change our behavior and still get the same results if we have not correctly identified the behavior or choice that was at cause in our unwanted situation. For example if I bake a cake and it tastes horrible, I can change an ingredient and try again. If I don't change the right ingredient, I may still get very similar results, but I will have eliminated one possible element of my problem.

Second, there are things that happen that we do not control, or that we don't know how to control. Rain, snow and sunshine will happen as they will (usually), and I may be able to influence you, I cannot control your behavior. We choose how we interact with the things we can't control.

Several years ago, I went through a very nasty situation that cost me a lot emotionally and financially. Another party made some poor and harmful choices. Looking back over that time, I can see possibilities where I could have done things differently, but I doubt that any choice I could have made would have made the results less damaging. Occasionally, we are presented with predicaments where we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.

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