Posted by shar on June 8, 2003, at 3:54:02
In reply to Re: But if I do bad things, aren't I bad?, posted by Dinah on June 7, 2003, at 11:39:22
>But if I do bad things, aren't I bad?
Nay, m'lady. Tis like "hate the sin, love the sinner." If one does something bad, one has DONE something bad, not BECOME something bad. We are all a mix of good and bad. To follow the logic of your question on the flip side: if you do good things, aren't you good?
> And if I'm responsible for making myself better, aren't I to blame if I don't?
Another nay. That's called blaming the victim in my book. Just like if one had cancer; there are some folks who believe that their treatments work, and the person who isn't getting well isn't [praying hard enough, following the diet rigorously, meditating with a pure heart, etc.] or anything that doesn't reflect badly on the treatment. One who is making a good faith effort to improve, cannot blame oneself for not trying, if one is trying. It is circular logic and bad for the brain.
>I agree with matt (I think it was) who talked about using words like bad, good, etc. They are extremely value-laden, so what I think is good may be quite bad to someone else. Some people think that thinking something is just the same as doing it (so thinking of murder is the same as murdering someone). Whatever we end up labeling good or bad is very personal; and, while I'm not against labels per se (because they allow us to make sense of the world), they do need to be used carefully, I believe. Sometimes, in therapy we learn that labels continually cause us problems and we have to get to what's behind the label to make even greater progress (such as, "bad" may turn out to be "self-aware" or "good" could mean "submissive").
Hmmm, hope this made some sense.
Shar
poster:shar
thread:230572
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030529/msgs/232335.html