Quote – “A Choice is Nothing for Responsibility” – 9/20/2020

“No person is ever responsible, in terms of choice. As this would be the same to ask a mother which of her children she would choose to die, since if not, she’d be responsible for them all. All responsibility is, rather, within the realm of not having a choice.”
– Modern Romanticism

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1

maylynno on 21 Sep 2020 at 3:31 am
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It depends on the situation. Most of our days goes by making choices: doing good or bad, eating a fruit or a chocolate etc. Each choice has consequences.
The mother who is asked to choose which of her kids has to die is certainly a choice but an extreme one. This is why it can’t be a choice for her.

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  romanticindeed on 21 Sep 2020 at 5:30 am
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  This comes back to what I referenced about Creation vs. Causation.
  
  To have a choice, means to desire a reason, an excuse, for something to occur. You could imagine it as a person who committed a crime, and now believes they can get away with it. Their excuse to escape Justice, not be in the hands of their own responsibility, is bound up with choice. Therefore, in that criminal’s choice, they believe themselves free from the law. This is to say that a criminal, now in prison, has forfeited their freedom, their choices, and their reasons and excuses. For to be responsible, means to never have a choice. If a criminal continues to believe themselves always with a choice, then they’ll continue to believe themselves always without needing personal responsibility for their actions.
  
  If we have, or want, a choice, then we have a chance to escape responsibility.
  
  Another example is if one’s nation has gone to war. Now… every citizen of that nation lacks a choice in the matter to be drafted into the military, to protect their country. It is their duty to do this.
  
  Another example is a cheating husband. The husband who commits this infidelity wanted a choice, outside of the responsibility of being honest. He merely wanted his freedom, outside the marriage, and outside the requirement of being responsible for who he is meant to be both bound and honest with. It is the same as the criminal example, who is not meant to lie before court. We are meant to tell the truth, making truth never a choice to tell. We always lie, always deceive, when we choose for ourselves.
  
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    maylynno on 21 Sep 2020 at 6:21 am
    
    Yes now I understand what you meant in your post. Going back to the examples on here: crime is a choice unless the criminal is mentally sick so there is no responsibility, or at least a lesser one. Marriage is a choice: you can decide to marry or not. So whatever action one takes, there is always a responsibility. Responsibility doesn’t mean necessarily guilt.
    
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    romanticindeed on 21 Sep 2020 at 6:26 am
    
    I believe guilt is a factor of personal development. One can be guilty as a cheating husband for his lack of open honesty to the wife. The criminal in the other example is, of course, guilty for what they’ve done. Even if they lie their way through the trials, seeing themselves still with a choice in the matter, the material evidence will prove otherwise. That evidence can only ever be material and physical, because it represents the sacrifice of materialism to benefit the selfless needs to society. A criminal removed from society is indeed a selfless thing, of itself.
    
    To discover guilt of a criminal, and then, place them in prison, might be to those who care for their community, a showing of that care. It would be, to them, a personal development if they attach themselves to their own community.
    
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    maylynno on 21 Sep 2020 at 11:42 am
    
    Sure, and this subject has been widely debated over the years. It is a personal development and it is for the care of community.
    
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  romanticindeed on 21 Sep 2020 at 5:42 am
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  Selflessness is the motive for a human to lack all choice, all freedom, because such a lack of choice, lack of freedom, pertains to a sacrifice of the self, of materialism. We treat ourselves as material, through lacking choice. At the same time, we can say we do not “select” who we love in this world. We can say that those we love, were never chosen, any more than we’d select them like making a choice for a slave at an auction.
  
  We don’t use love. We don’t expend love. Love has nothing to do with choice, because just like the example with the mother and her children soon to die, it is certain the mother could never make a choice. In that, it’s now objectively true that love is always for never wanting a choice, and thus, always wanting to remain responsible in loving what one holds dear.
  
  I do not believe any loving person in this world will say to someone, “I chose to love you.” I believe that is the cruelest thing to even admit. It’s as if comparing such an infinite and Almighty emotion as love, to some material like a shoe. If one “chooses who to love” like they choose their own breakfast for the morning, then we might as well all say that love is no more expendable than common dirt. Why ever treat love as something like lust, as consumable, as related to greed and selfishness? It’s objectively untrue.
  
  If we can say that responsibility relates to having a choice, then we can say that love relates to greed, to keeping our family impoverished in a neglecting fashion, to being materialistic, to being gluttonous and lustful. For no person would say to themselves that they “chose” to help who they love. Rather, they’d find it in themselves to not have a choice to help those they love.
  
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    maylynno on 21 Sep 2020 at 6:22 am
    
    I agree, love is not a choice. Hence the expression “falling in love”. No one chooses to fall.
    
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    romanticindeed on 21 Sep 2020 at 6:29 am
    
    Nor does one choose where to fall, or when one falls, or how one falls.
    
    I look at the heart like its one’s own personal seduction. Always calling. We always listen to it, even if our practical self is telling us to be rational and focused.
    
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    maylynno on 21 Sep 2020 at 11:43 am
    
    True, and the heart is somehow ironic.
    
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