Responsibility and the orcas' tea party

Oh boy, was that scary or what?

Now I'm normally alert but about two days ago, I'm finishing off getting 'little' Fricka's dinner when suddenly I am partially surrounded by Orca tails. An entire pod of orcas 'standing' upright in the water looking above the waves . I popped up for a quick 'look see' and for all the world it looked like......an orca's tea party! I immediately swam away but one of them must have sighted me. It was a fairly hairy ten minutes! Just as well we can turn tighter!

Now I hope that you have noticed a singular lack of mention of a certain big event in Beijing, well except for the two female athletes a couple of posts ago, and that's the way it stays. It's not that I'm not interested, although I'm not much, it's just EVERYONE else on the planet is writing about it and I always like to be different!

I will however offer my deepest sympathy to the Danish 4 man pursuit team in the cycling. To be so comprehensively 'creamed' (or do you say 'owned' now?) by the Brits must have been so depressing :-) It just never used to happen at that level, catching the other team!

I was redirected back to an earlier blog today by a comment left on it. As I quickly reread it, I started thinking about responsibility. (Blame Sartre!) Now I'm not talking about the responsibility you might have for a child or a parent, another member of your species, this is about taking responsibility for your own actions.

Now, as far as I can gather, you lot mostly don't want people to take responsibility, you want to take it away from them. Confused? Think about it. Imagine I'm human. I subject my child to a regime of systematic deprivation such that she dies of starvation. Now, what have I done? In effect, I've said that since I've done it, I condone it and as a result I've now condoned systematic deprivation for anyone. Not just another adult to a child, but also another adult to an adult. I don't think the 'defenceless' nature of the child makes much difference here. So what do you do? You deprive that person of their liberty, you put them in prison. That takes the responsibility away from them. They no longer have the opportunity of seeing the logical extension of their actions which is that someone may do the same thing to them, or someone they care about, one day.

Now this is not the same thing as 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' because that is still just punishment. It's just revenge.

What you don't seem to see is that if you gave people back the responsibility for what they do, they might think differently. Not just weigh up the consequences for themselves. Will I get caught? If I do, can I get off? Might I get a lighter sentence? Might society punish me less than they could? Might they actually start to think that what they do could be done to them or someone they care about? And, as a result, think a little more carefully about their proposed actions?

I don't know if it would make any difference or not but if you are of a mind not to get your morality from an external source, God, the State etc, thinking like that might make you a person that your fellows would have less trouble with, wouldn't it?

In the wake of 150+ dead in the Spanish air crash for which I offer my sympathies to the families of the dead and disfigured and especially to the families of the pilots who in true media fashion have already been made the scapegoats.............
a small funny to lighten the heart:

FIVE RULES FOR MEN/WOMEN TO FOLLOW TO A HAPPY LIFE
1. It's important to have a woman/man, who helps at home, who cooks from time to time, cleans up sometimes and has a job.
2. It's important to have a woman/man, who can make you laugh.
3. It's important to have a woman/man, who you can trust and who doesn't lie to you.
4. It's important to have a woman/man, who is good in bed and who likes to be with you.
5. It's very, very important that these four women/men do not EVER meet.

There you have it! Problems sorted.