Originally Posted by
OrnotBitwise
You are defining "circumstances" as something -- or a collection of somethings -- entirely external to the individual. This is an unrealistic scenario. Each thought and impulse of an individual results from external stimuli: the duality between internal and external worlds is intrinsically false.
No two different individuals can ever experience exactly the same set of circumstances. It's physically impossible.
Hence my assertion that it could never be tested. But you ignore that and trudge on... oblivious to the fact that you simply repeated the first part of my statement in your eloquent, yet disjointed, reposte.
It doesn't change my argument at all. Each decision you make lead up to those larger decisions later. They take away some options, add others. Each thing we do, what we think, how we react makes our environment it isn't a random group of circumstances made from nothing, it is made from the very choices that each of us make.
The attempt to take responsibility for your actions away is a fault of humans that has been around probably since the first person. "It's not my fault!" has been heard throughout the ages, but there is never a less true statement uttered.
What you do changes and limits future choices, each decision leading further onto a path where you reach one of those life-changing choices finding yourself limited in outcomes. We can most definitely change our habitual responses with solid introspection and a solid sense of responsibility.
We can ask ourselves:
What did I do to get myself here?
Or we can ask:
What happened that got me here?
I prefer to ask what I did myself that ended in such a situation, to look back, to seek out those small choices. Not only for the bad, but also for the good. Sometimes you may want to return to such a path rather than avoid them.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
- -- Aristotle
Believe nothing on the faith of traditions, even though they have been held in honor for many generations and in diverse places. Do not believe a thing because many people speak of it. Do not believe on the faith of the sages of the past. Do not believe what you yourself have imagined, persuading yourself that a God inspires you. Believe nothing on the sole authority of your masters and priests. After examination, believe what you yourself have tested and found to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto.
- -- The Buddha
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- -- Aristotle
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