24 ⚜ Anonymous Text / CW: abuse mentions

[restingstitchface]

Whether a man is a criminal or a hero is a matter of perspective.

But if you don't want to play your role anymore, and are removed from your motivation for being who you are, what do you do? Do you seek redemption and rehabilitation and transform as an individual, or do you repeat negative behavior? How much do you believe people change only because they are imPorted? In short, do you believe people can change?

If I had anybody willing to discuss this in private with me, I assure you, I'd not be raising the issue publically.

Thank you in advance.

Comments

[dirtyredneck]

Hell yeah. You still gotta take responsibility for the shit you do. Owning up to it, recognizing it, doing what you can to make up for it. Knowing and accepting that some people will never forgive you or care that you're trying is part of it. Being sorry you did it don't change that it happened.

[restingstitchface]

Fascinating. Do you believe in free will, then?

[dirtyredneck]

Yeah. Do you?

[restingstitchface]

No. The human experience is incompatable with the notion of free will. Our thoughts, emotions and behaviors are productions of our brains. All our actions are predicted and we are not free.

[dirtyredneck]

If that were true, then no one could ever change. No one could ever be surprised by a change they saw in someone. Plenty of that still happening.

[restingstitchface]

I beg to differ! Nothing changes if the machine that you are controls emotions at random. The change you're speaking of is merely the unconscious machinations of the brain. Irregularities.

[dirtyredneck]

Nah. It ain't about being controlled at random. It's about having the feelings, knowing the consequences, having the fears, and still making a choice to do something different than you've always done or always known. Choices like that are hard. They go against what's safest or what you know, but they ain't just 'unconcious' ones or 'irregularities'.

[restingstitchface]

Input, then. Input like that affects specific behaviors. It isn't that you're consciously making a choice.

[dirtyredneck]

You don't think you any choice is a concious one?

[restingstitchface]

No, but some people are equipped to make better choices than others.

[dirtyredneck]

Guess it's your right to believe that. But I can't.

[restingstitchface]

Of course not. You're under the illusion that you have the dignity of choice. But the choices you make are responses to an effect. They are actions designed to remove you from your current predicament.

[dirtyredneck]

I just think I have more control over myself than that is all.

[Not all the time, as his occasional lashes in anger would show, but most of the time. Now. He didn't used to.]

[restingstitchface]

Hmm. Can you honestly say that?

Perhaps the question ought to be have you always had such a high level of self-regulation?

[dirtyredneck]

[That was getting into territory he wasn't comfortable talking about, so he just didn't reply. Left it hanging. Which probably said more than any kind of refutation might.]