Conditioning
I see that my statement
She was trained to be a victim.
is not universally popular.
Well, phooey.
There are some possibilities to consider.
1) People are entirely a chemical & physiological construct, capable only of
a) whatever they're genetically programmed to do, or
b) whatever they're conditioned to do. This assertion assumes that conditioning is entirely physical/physiological, and that it will override genetic programming in "most" cases, but not all.
I do not endorse this view.
2) People are the product of evolution (see above), but have somehow "evolved" a conscience, morality, ethics, values, and all of that high-falutin' philosophical stuff. People are still "programmed" genetically, but their "brain" can override this stuff, especially if
a) properly conditioned (see above), or
b) confronted with a sufficiently "energetic" event (catastrophe, trauma, etc.) which allows their "brain" to overcome the "programming threshold."
I know this will shock you, but I don't endorse this, either.
3) People are more than what's physically represented in front of you. In this case, it can be argued that the thing that makes anyone "who he is" is some non-physical (and probably immortal) mind/soul/spirit/whatever thing, and this "thing" (spirit) is what does the thinking and feeling and all of what makes humanity
human (making me sort of a "created in God's image" kinda guy). Now, by definition, you wouldn't "program" a non-physical entity genetically or "condition" it physically. No, you'd have to
teach it. Whatever it gained by way of ability, it would have to
learn. And that means that any attitudes it has toward survival are also
learned, one way or another. Which implies that these attitudes and stuff can be
unlearned and re-taught (or re-learned). This also implies that the
person is much more responsible for his own condition than current "conventional wisdom" would have you believe.
It is this construction of the human condition that I most closely endorse.
It will therefore come as no surprise that I would declare that a person
acts like a victim as a result of what that person has
learned. Now, it's also possible to become a victim through a
lack of learning, but this doesn't exhibit the same way, and it's not reasonable in today's society to declare that someone has
NO learned attitude regarding survival, given the amount of effort expended in our schools to "socialize" the children.
I'm not going to argue the "nature of humanity" question, I'm simply explaining how it informs my viewpoint on personal responsibility and learned behavior.
This girl held a gun, which rational thought would inform
had the capacity to stop a bad guy, and yet
she overrode that and dropped the gun. It's kind of splitting hairs to argue "she was trained to be a victim" versus "lack of training made her a victim," the point is that her behavior was essentially learned -- more importantly
the correct behavior for this situation is LEARNED.
When the heat is on, we fall back on our training or lack of it. She had either
decided against such training, or believed
other training that said it wasn't needed.
Either way
her state of training was that of a victim.
I'm not going to buy condemning her to the fate alloted her by genetics, as that simply dooms her from the start, and implies that
it doesn't matter what training you get, you're still gonna do what the genes say. I would submit that generations of data contradict that view.
You want to survive? Get the training that makes it possible.
You don't want to get the training? Well, doom on you, then.
If you can't get formal training, then at least train yourself as best you can.
Doing
NOTHING and hoping it will all turn out okay . . . formula for disaster.
Even at this late stage, this girl can be trained to defend herself. What happened to her sucks, but it doesn't have to define her life.
That's what's cool about being human: we can out-learn and out-train our shortcomings and traumas.
Train the girl. And train her some more. And bring her to a level of competence where there simply cannot be a repeat of this heinous incident.
The magic is in the training.
Get some.
), it's kill or be killed, in the real world. Do you think I want to brutally slaughter someone, just for the heck of it? No. Would I rather shoot him with a sleeping dart? Or a Star Trek photon knock-out laser thingamajiggie?! Of course! But this is the real world, ma, and it's kill or be killed. You do NOT hesitate to kill a person coming after you to kill or rape you. Do you understand? You pull that trigger without hesitation! I don't care how scared you are, how intimidating he/she is to you... you pull that trigger!"
