You are not entitled to the money I earn.

[Skippy 82]

You probably didn't gather that my beliefs aren't just people based raising, but also experience based raising.

Choices are taken away from us a lot, from where we're born, to who we encounter, and even the genetics in the brain we are given. Weaker minds wouldn't rebel. That's why a large part of the country does menial work that doesn't please them. People fall into a habit and get used to it. I'm not saying a person with opportunity doesn't take it. Opportunity's always there. But you are really quick to dismiss every action a person makes as 100% their fault, and you also seem to think that we do have a predestined decision to make all the time.

Actually I'm not, and I don't, actually, quite the opposite. Nothing is decided, noting is predestined, and we are all accountable for our individual choices, regardless of how, where, and why we were raised. You are looking at everything black and white and at the "easy" side of cause and effect. There are cases where one has no choice about something, actually no, there's not, there's always a choice, one may just be the "hard" choice, such as spending time very hungry because one refuses to steal. People are so much more complex than you are trying to make it, and no matter what, we ARE accountable for every one of our actions.

For instance, I brought up the ridiculous scenario that it wouldn't matter if a person was born some place in America, or some place in Russia, but according to your views, both alternates would have that person end up in Russia doing the exact same things, and you didn't even mention it. Something along those lines. I can't remember exactly what it was. But think of it like this. Peoples' greed is influenced a lot by our consumerist culture. What if we all lived in shacks in a third world country and never heard of the kind of lives we have here in the US, good or bad? They wouldn't desire anything better, because they don't know about anything that they consider better, and their culture might not even think of ours as better than theirs anyway. Emotional programming is largely based on the cultures you're a part of.

No, actually, my views don't say that, again, not near as black and white as you are thinking. People's greed is event in every culture and society, and always has been. Corporate greed is an entirely different entity, tat is driven by consumer culture. Even in third world countries, people are driven and even kill for greed, not the same kind that you and I think of, but greed over women, food, the size of one's hut, position, weapons, so on. Just because they are in the third world and have never seen an iPod doesn't mean they don't have greed, it is a base human function, everyone has it. And that is true about cultural programming, but there ARE certain traits that are universal, greed is one.

A person can spontaneously change their ways, but sometimes people are really really far gone. Would a child with multiple personality disorder have it if they weren't traumatized and beaten as a child? Would a shell shocked man returning from war just up and not be shell shocked anymore? Human psychology isn't all on its own. The infinite scenarios we are faced with all shape us and who we are. The decisions of whether or not to murder are both determined by what you believe, and if your life has taught you to believe that it's wrong to kill someone, those thoughts probably weren't yours. If the decision was to murder, the thoughts telling you it's OK were probably not yours either. Both decisions might have been influenced by the brain you got or the people who swayed you.

This is where you start to change things around, you are basing an argument on abnormal psychology, which is, as it says, abnormal. People with these issues have abnormal behaviors, and they need to be treated. Yes there are a small group of people who need help, and may not be able to help themselves, and do things that would be considered by our society as wrong.

As for murder, again, people do not function in a linear black and white cause and effect, those raised in gangs and murder culture do not always grow up to be murderers, and those who are raised with a silver spoon, never seeing a weapon in their lives become serial killers. Correlation does not equal causation, people are capable of individual thought and practice. In the end, the decision was yours, and if what swayed by psychological trauma (which is actually very rare) then you should be institutionalized and helped, not let go because it "isn't your fault".

To an extent, I am saying that we have destinies, but I'll be the first to tell you that they're the most wrong and stupid things to buy into. I don't want people to make excuses for themselves like how they were raised if they did something they think is wrong. That's because they believed it to be wrong and thought they could do nothing about it, despite having control over themselves. I believe a desire to do something can overcome your situation. But if a person thought that what they did was right, then their actions and their beliefs have produced a situation that is good to them. I might think it's wrong, but I haven't gone through what that person has, and I am not that person, so who am I to totally blame them for their actions?

Sahaqiel

To borrow a line from a silly movie, "we have no destiny but what we make". There is no predestined path, our choices aren't made. Our choices are influenced, but they are ultimately ours, no one else's, and we should judge them by the letter of the law. In the case of welfare, we should not stand back and let people abuse the system because they were raised that way and know nothing else. Doing something because that is the way it has always been done does not make it right, and accepting it, because people know nothing else does not make it right. It is time to reform our social welfare program to get off the life members and get it to only helping those who actually need it.

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed"

That is complete fallacy, man's greed is absent the earth. In most societies, we have moved past greed requiring human resources and moved them to invisible assets, and a mans wealth is no longer limited to how much of an asset he has in his vault, but by what the number on the screen says. Greed will outlive the destruction of every natural resource and find new ways to be fulfilled.