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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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It's the victim's responsibility to, if they are in a place or situation where their morals or sense of right and wrong is continually violated, find a place or set of relationships where their values are respected. From there they need to start working to live those positive values and encourage others to do the same by example.

Complaining about your situation, refusing to change anything, and calling for violence is not an admirable response at all in my view.

How is "it's the victim's responsibility to find a place where their values are respected" different from "it's the victim's responsibility to avoid it"? (Where "it" means "their values aren't respected")

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I don't understand how the proverb connects to your answer.

It sounds like you are saying that if someone becomes a victim twice, they don't count as a victim at all, so it's okay to tell them to avoid being victimized. Is that a correct reading?

I'm saying that people should be open, honest and trusting as a general rule, because that's the right thing to do. If you get burned by that, it's not your fault. It's not your responsibility to be so cynical and closed off from the world that you never get hurt.

However if you repeatedly get hurt in similar ways, it's your responsibility to look at the situation, figure out why you're getting hurt, and either change yourself or your situation to avoid being victimized further.

People still 'count as a victim' although I'm not sure what this phrase means exactly even if they're victimized twice. But the duty of a victim is to grow beyond their victimization into a more actualized human, in my view, and hopefully help prevent the victimization they dealt with in the future.

I still don't see the difference between "it's the responsibility of the victim to avoid the situation" (which we both agree is terrible) and "it's the responsibility of the victim to change themself or their situation". If you say that those aren't the same, that seems to be very fine hairsplitting between "changing the situation isn't avoiding" or "changing yourself isn't changing the situation" or "when I say that a 'victim should' I don't mean to count people who are repeatedly hurt as victims".

It's absolutely possible to get hurt several times, through no fault of your own, under circumstances where it's unreasonable to just escape. If you demand that they escape, that's victim blaming, no matter how much hairsplitting you can do about "that's totally different from saying that it's the victim's responsibility to avoid it".

It's absolutely possible to get hurt several times, through no fault of your own, under circumstances where it's unreasonable to just escape.

Eh, I disagree. At least in the modern first world, there's almost always a choice. Our ancestors faced far worse situations and made a hell of a lot of progress despite awful impediments. I think any modern Westerner who tries to make the argument that it's unreasonable to escape their circumstances is just making excuses.

Call that victim blaming if you want, that's how life is. All life is suffering. It's your job to live in a way that reduces that suffering and makes some meaning out of it.

And for all your drilling down on me in this extremely specific scenario - what the hell does it matter? Are you trying to catch me in a gotcha of 'You're victim blaming!'?. What's your end goal here?

And for all your drilling down on me in this extremely specific scenario - what the hell does it matter? Are you trying to catch me in a gotcha of 'You're victim blaming!'?. What's your end goal here?

I think your position is inconsistent and am trying to demonstrate it.

How is my position inconsistent?

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