Why I'm posting this is that I'm fascinated by our society's obsession with individual responsibility, and how it makes for such awful public policy. It leads to public policy like "If you don't like your landlord, move to a better home!" "If you don't want to live in poverty, get a great job and pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" And on and on. It's insane to design a society where an average shmuck living an average life is either in poverty, or at risk of poverty.
God, yes. At Christmas dinner I was talking about how the healthcare system should give everyone proper care and care management and not force them to go to tons of effort to get the right doctor and treatment plan, and someone else - who had apparently had significant health problems! - couldn't understand this as anything other than "people shouldn't go to any effort to improve their own situation."
Good. I was worried that I made the beginning of the post so long that no one would get to the part where I made a point.
And on and on.
If your employer won't cover contraception, just don't have sex until you want children.
The introduction was odd because it felt like reading the previous unfogged thread about Trunk, on Frappe. I couldn't really tell if you were trying to agree or disagree with Trunk or agree or disagree with the previous unfogged consensus (such as there was) in the previous thread.
But your basic point that there's a tension between encouraging people to do what they can and taking responsibility for themselves, and not making public policy in such a way that places unnecessary barriers to successful outcomes ("we want everybody to have a pony; we've passed a law which says that anybody who whistles the star spangled banner while standing on their head will get a free pony. This will increase pony ownership.")
There's a separate question, about whether social conditions are an extenuating circumstance when it comes to judging individual choices -- I think that they are, but I also think it's a different conversation.
I don't get why getting yourself out of an abusive situation doesn't count as taking responsibility for your life. You have a problem. You do something actively to solve it.
Unless...is it possible?...that when people talk about "personal responsibility" they really mean "lie there and take it"?
Maury or Springer for middle-class moms at home on the Interwebs. With comments! Bleah.
A few weeks ago, the middle-aged daughter of a close acquaintance of mine was beaten by her husband. He broke her arm, then he threw her downstairs. She fractured her pelvis. She says it was her fault, because she provoked him. Plus there are four kids to worry about. I'm sure she's trying to take personal responsibility for what she did.
I guess what I'm saying is fuck Penelope Trunk and everything she stands for--mommy blogging, narcissism, life-coaching, domestic violence and all.
I don't get why getting yourself out of an abusive situation doesn't count as taking responsibility for your life.
Telling other people what choices to make limits their avenues for personal responsibility. I don't think she's saying, "never leave" just, "I'm choosing to not leave and I believe that I'm doing so for good reasons, and I don't appreciate people telling my that my choice isn't valid." (note, I haven't read the linked post).
7: It's also, "Leaving my husband would mean that I had failed at marriage. I never fail! Failure is not an option! Don't tell me I can't fix it on my own. I can do anything if I just try hard enough!"
The personal responsibility thing is difficult, isn't it? I've had the same thought thinking about racism/gender discrimination: that for subtle stuff, the individual being discriminated against is at least sometimes probably better off in denial about about it. But encouraging or mandating that kind of denial lets the problem continue.
What you kind of want is some set of values that encourages people to be all stiff-upper-lip for themselves, and solicitious and understanding about difficulties faced by other people.
I like how the personal responsibility schtick is mixed in with the "I grew up in a home where there was lots of violence. So it's likely that I will be in that kind of house when I'm an adult. ... since I am statistically likely to create a violent household" stuff.
fuck Penelope Trunk and everything she stands for
Not so much fuck her -- she really seems to me to be not functioning well, in a way that makes me want to cut her all the slack in the world for being strange. But fuck anyone who's promoting her as a sane source of advice, certainly.
One is inclined to think that, as a man, one has an individual responsibility not to hit girls.
One is inclined to think that, as a manperson, one has an individual responsibility not to hit girlsother people, barring self-defense or the defense of others.
Figured that could use a broader statement.
On person responsibility: have I recommended The Checklist Manifesto before? (google says yes, twice but neither time in the context that I'm thinking of now). That's one of those books which I loved because it completely affirmed my sense of how the world works.
I think it's basic argument is pretty widely applicable -- that human beings are both quite capable and prone to predictable failures and that it's important to design systems which protect against those obvious failures.
The problem is that it's easier said than done -- it is a challenging problem to design physical objects which accommodate human bad habits and mental lapses, let alone social structures, but I think it's an important goal.
she really seems to me to be not functioning well
Well, I don't read her so I can't say. I can easily imagine you're right (both because of what I've seen of her writing and because, you know, to a first approximation LB is right about everything). The setup just seems like a typical sort of Trainwreck Rubberneck (Oversharing! Damaged people! Drama! Comments!) where you end up feeling contempt for everyone involved. The idea that she markets herself as a source of wisdom and guidance (for $250/hour over the phone!) is just ridiculous.
The sad thing about the last part, is that as far as leaving the relationship goes, it doesn't matter. Whether or not her husband is being abusive, or it's mutually abusive, or she is the one who is being abusive, she should probably get the fuck out. I say probably, because I can see the argument for treating a one time incident of relatively mild violence as something that can be gotten over as long as it doesn't repeat itself in an otherwise good relationship. But the stuff about her parents relationship clearly says it was a more or less regular thing. No matter who is at fault, it's time to get out.
families are a system, and that she has a role in the dysfunctional dynamic, and that when one person works on themselves in therapy, the entire family system will change, and therefore it's worth trying. (I'm generously paraphrasing her words.)
A family is like a body. If one part has a problem, like you have a sprained knee ligament, you all need to pitch in, to walk in a different way and stop putting so much pressure on that part. This can have nothing but beneficial effects for the hips, the back, the toes, et cetera,
OT: Woohoo! Cholesterol normal! Don't have syphilis or other social diseases! Weight in normal range! Glucose levels normal! Other stuff dismissed as "normal" by obviously-bored-with-healthy-but-curious*-hypochondriac-patient physician who always sounds like Droopy Dawg anyway! Predictable, routine lifestyle vindicated!
* "How would I know if I had tuberculosis? Do I need to be vaccinated for smallpox? What's this thing on my elbow?"
"That's the scar you showed me last year that you got falling off a skateboard when you were 12."
"Look, doc, you're the one with the skin diseases poster on the examination room wall."
Not so much fuck her -- she really seems to me to be not functioning well, in a way that makes me want to cut her all the slack in the world for being strange. But fuck anyone who's promoting her as a sane source of advice, certainly.
But isn't she in the latter category herself? A Quandary.
Whether or not her husband is being abusive, or it's mutually abusive, or she is the one who is being abusive, she should probably get the fuck out.
This is right. Part of what's confusing with the personal responsibility argument is that it goes kind of like "You're telling me to get out as if I were a blamelessly innocent victim. Actually, that's wildly oversimplified, and I'm a responsible part of the complex dynamic leading to the violence, so I should take responsibility and work on it within the marriage." And while the first part of the second sentence is probably true in many cases and in Trunk's particularly, that's not a reason not to get out of a violent relationship. Getting away isn't a claim of total innocence and lack of responsibility for anything that's happened, it's just an effective way of making the violence stop.
I don't think she wants to leave the farm she's living on. She doesn't like the trade-off yet, perhaps because she doesn't perceive any level of violence against her as unacceptable.
For a different discussion of personal responsibility, has anyone else read Random Family? I'm reading it now and fairly astonished. I would love to know what because of Coco and Jessica.
I finished Novel Writer's book, and ended up enjoying it over all, in a lot of ways. But there's a lot of this personal-responsibility-as-solution stuff. He's critiquing how the finance industry loots every interaction and piece of policy that it comes in contact with, and thinks the ultimate problem is that we won't let financial institutions fail. And that therefore the markets needs to bottom out and industries need to fail, etc. He doesn't address the collateral damage suffered by everyone else in that situation.
she doesn't perceive any level of violence against her as unacceptable.
I said this wrong. I meant it as: 'any level of violence is too much', but it also reads as 'no level of violence is too much'. Although I gather from reading her that she also has a very high tolerance for violence against her (and that she also dishes out).
thinks the ultimate problem is that we won't let financial institutions fail
There was a good line in a Crooked Timber thread a while about about how the US depends too heavily on, "regulation by failure" and that this was a particularly bad approach to the nuclear power industry (where failures can be very unlikely and also very dangerous). You could make the same argument about the financial services industry -- that the solution of, "let the people who are doing things badly go out of business" only works when failure is (relatively speaking) easy.
For a different discussion of personal responsibility, has anyone else read Random Family?
I did! I think it's great. I also wonder what happened to Coco and Jessica, although I'm not optimistic.
I just started reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers which seems like it is a similarly immersive book about very poor people. If heebie is still interested in what it would be like to live in a garbage dump with no privacy, this book would be a good choice.
I don't think she wants to leave the farm she's living on. She doesn't like the trade-off yet,
She's not going to leave because she is enjoying the dynamic. He's probably just the right mix of crazy himself. He tolerates her aggression and lunacy until he snaps and when he does his retaliation isn't doing significant physical damage. She probably makes him feel guilty as fuck afterwards and he in turn is extra attentive and tolerant of her craziness for a while. And in the meantime she posts pics on the internet and gets a flood of attention from another source. Leave? Ha. You couldn't pry her out of there.
Off to work. Maybe I'll go a whole shift without a visit to a similar household.
24: how long ago was the post? Do you have a link?
24: how long ago was the post? Do you have a link?
Post and the specific comment
That incompatibility has a lot to do with the rather considerable planning and management, with very narrow and rigid (if you know what's good for you) constraints. Capitalism is far too messy and far too dependent on failure as a regulatory mechanism to be safely used for a nuclear industry.
24: While it boils down to the same thing, the traditional aphorism is "regulation by lawsuit". In a lot of situations, eg the ADA, or the FDA when it comes to food, there are rules but no effective enforcement mechanism, so in practice regulation is done by private citizens filing lawsuits. Everything becomes tort. This is in stark contrast to most civil law jurisdictions, and even to some extent the UK, given that we basically don't have class action lawsuits here.
in the meantime she posts pics on the internet and gets a flood of attention from another source
Yeah, I've got nothing* to base this on, but something about that post seems... insincere is the wrong word, but I'm having trouble coming up with the word I want. The gratuitously porny picture of the bruise isn't helping the perception.
*Seriously nothing. I'm not sure I've ever encountered her writing before and didn't recognize the name when it appeared in the post.
She writes frequently about being autistic, so if you're picking up a non-standard emotional vibe from her post, that could be why.
10: part of taking responsibility is trying to live up to your expected values.
31: Huh. Maybe so. I was really struggling to pin down anything specific about what seemed off.
"Get out of the relationship now!...and then work on yourself, so that you don't get into another relationship with another abusive partner." (I don't understand why this isn't stated explicitly, more often.)
I think this advice, sound though it might be, has too strong an 'it's your fault' element to be useful easily deployed. I know you don't mean it that way, but I would certainly be worried that someone I was saying it to would think this a possible interpretation.
30: I've only read her when linked to, but that comes up a fair amount. I think what you're picking up as insincere is that she's not functioning normally: she's diagnosed herself as Aspergers, that might be right, I don't know how to tell, but she's certainly got something non-ordinary going on.
I'm not sure I can articulate this right, but I think "regulation by failure"--and similar things like "free market approaches to preventing and abating natural disasters"--are just contradictions in terms. If you let nuclear power plants fail or floods wipe out cities, you aren't preparing or regulating, you are letting things happen.
Libertarian types will try to argue that efforts to regulate or prepare will backfire or make things works, but they start to sound really implausible when they claim that every effort to regulate or prepare automatically makes things worse.
The amount of damage that comes form natural disasters in a free market seems like it should just count as "the state of nature" or some kind of baseline. When people say that that is the level we should have, they aren't proposing to improve things, really. They are just saying everyone deserves what they get.
34: People love "it's your fault" advice! Why don't they deploy this one?
she's diagnosed herself as Aspergers
Oh, for Heaven's sake.
More seriously, I too would never actually tack on "and then go get therapy so that you don't get in another abusive relationship" either. It would be socially inept. But I might say "...so that you have some support to validate what you're going through" which amounts to the same thing.
Oh, for Heaven's sake.
From the OP:
Penelope Trunk is such a surefire way to piss Unfogged off.
How do the regulate by lawsuit types deal with limited liability? Among the many reasons it's a stupid idea, this seems like the most obvious, especially when dealing with industries that have rare but horrific disasters.
Penelope Trunk is such a surefire way to piss Unfogged off.
For the record, here is the previous Penelope Trunk thread which, knowing nothing about here, I thought went into helpful levels of detail and specifics about what she's posted.
She doesn't strike me as the stereotypical "I think I have Aspergers which gives me license to be a poorly socialized asshole" type. Again, I can't diagnose anyone with anything, and Aspergers, while I don't really know anything about it, seems wrong somehow for her, but I think she's genuinely got some deep oddity in her thinking process.
She clearly doesn't want to leave her situation. I'm not sure the specific rationalization she's put forth is meaningful.
"How do women get better at not creating a violent household? Probably by changing their behavior."
I suppose if one person is battering another, that does make it a 'violent household', although the one doing the damn battering is the one creating it, in the way that my setting off firecrackers while you read quietly is what makes this a 'noisy household'. (Yes, yes, mutual provocation and all that, but even so.) If the question is 'how can I take responsibility for my own physical and mental safety?'. a very good answer is 'leave'. If, on the other hand, the question is 'how can I create a non-violent household with this person?', you can try changing yourself, but there's no guarantee it'll succeed, and lots of reasons to doubt it.
'Personal responsibility' advice appeals to the naturally inflated sense of control most people feel over their actions and circumstances, plus a large dose of the fundamental attribution error. We like to feel we're responsible for what we do--master choosers and all that. I guess the social message you'd like absorbed is: you're responsible for your own individual actions, so be appropriately cautious, resourceful, persistent, etc.; but at the same time, you're responsible to other people, so make sure your individual choices also take them into account, since we do all have to live together. It's the latter, outward-looking face of responsibility that's largely swamped by our culture's responsibility-talk.
42: Hmm. I have no comments in that thread. This might indeed be my first exposure to her.
39 -- One wants to validate the distress -- it's not justified and it's not some inherent flaw in you that makes this your fault -- and help them move out of an unsafe situation asap. Plenty of time to help them work through all the other stuff once physical safety has been established.
36: Only by insisting that everyone deserves what they get can we make sure that everyone gets what they deserve!
Is there any indication that she's scared of her husband? Perhaps in those moments where he becomes physical, but does she say anything about trying to avoid otherwise normal behavior so as to not provoke him?
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LB, I want to read some Trollope and I know you're a big fan. Which novel would you recommend I start with?
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47: Oh, definitely. I'm really not that tone-deaf to a person in a dangerous situation.
But in the context of all these people railing to Penelope Trunk, they're creating/maintaining a society norm: zero tolerance for abuse! And it wouldn't be terrible if the society norm was: ...and then everyone involved should get some support from a therapist, as part of their new, separate lives!
1) Now I remember. I, and The Last Psychiatrist, decided PT was in no way aspy, but obviously Borderline. It is in that thread or at TLP.
I am not quite a zero tolerance guy. Slaps and shoves can happen, and a guy shouldn't necessarily give up on his wife forever just because she got physical in the heat of passion.
Although I certainly do. Some great aunt or grand niece hugs or cheek kisses me without express invitation, or a casual acquaintance touches me on the arm, and I don't want to know them anymore.
I guess I should have added that I realize my own standards of personal inviolability are a little high, and don't extend them to anyone else.
Although I do consider society a little strange, hypocritical, and dangerous for allowing as much unwanted touching as it does.
And I avoid drunks.
50: I think the standard starting point is The Warden. It's his first successful book, and shorter and less complex than most of his others. It's not my favorite, but you have to read it to set up Barchester Towers, which is spectacular. From there, you can keep going with four more books in roughly the same setting with characters who are either from the earlier books or in the same social world: Dr. Thorne, then Framley Parsonage, The Small House At Allington and The Last Chronicle of Barsetshire. Or you could go with the political novels starting with Can You Forgive Her?, which I love for Lady Glen.
If you don't feel like committing to both TW and BT, then start with CYFH?, come to think.
It's funny, though: there are a ridiculous number of Trollope novels, and they're mostly on a level. I don't particularly like the Eustace Diamonds -- Lizzie never gels for me into a person. And TW is simpler than most of them. But of the ones I like, I like one as much as the next, mostly.
It's depressing reading Trunk's blog, and I think I'm going to avoid clicking through on these pieces in the future. The whole thing just seems symptomatic of the very dysfunctions she describes in such fatalistic detail, so that I feel like I'm just peeping in at the spectacle of someone's mental and emotional decline. Her assessments of human motive seem broken, at best intermittently functional, at least to go by what adduces from many of the supposedly offensive and hateful comments she cites. And her reasoning is weirdly skewed, too; while the stuff about domestic violence and abuse not necessarily being one person's fault is right as far as it goes (or at least is a widely-supported perspective among social workers who contend with DV) it's also not relevant to the question of whether one should stay or leave.
What implication Trunk's problems have for wider beliefs about "personal responsibility" I don't know. I think probably not many, because the bromides she chooses would seem to be of secondary importance; more basically, she just appears to be dysfunctional to the point of despair. Her post is heavy with hints that she's not really staying out of her beliefs about responsibility, but because she believes that leaving is pointless: she thinks she will always bring out this violence in people and that she won't be moving on to something better than what she has with "The Farmer," which at some level is all she believes she deserves.
One is inclined to think that, as a manperson, one has an individual responsibility not to hit girlsother people, barring self-defense or the defense of others.
Figured that could use a broader statement.
So true. I have a client who was assaulted --pretty much unprovoked -- by another client. Both sort of have the same case manager. The police saw it all. He wants a restraining order and now wants to press charges. I'm pretty sure that my company (not my direct boss -- but others) won't like that so much. They both live in the same apartment building, so if he has to get kicked out, he will go to a shelter and then we have to make a plan to house him. So much better if they could find a way to get along.
55: Barchester Towers was the first Trollope I read, and even though it's technically the 2nd book in the series, I had no trouble getting my footing. And it was a great book. I think it's safe to recommend starting there.
59 is a good post. It's not about some general bromide about "personal responsibility", it's a pretty dysfunctional woman struggling with the options available to her. It's possible that Trunk's current partner is a good person with whom to make a stand and try to work on her behavior. That's not a general statement about violence in intimate relationships, but it's perfectly possible it's the case in her situation. I can't see how anyone can say that's not the case based on an extremely fragmentary description from a very unreliable narrator.
55 & following: I'm off to the library.
Yikes. After further explorations on PT's blog, I take 62 back. I have no idea what that woman needs but it's probably not more time with that man. I guess if the alternative is homelessness or having her kids taken away, maybe not even then.
Yeah, they definitely need to get away from each other. But I suspect they won't, or that if they do it will be because "the Farmer" leaves her or kicks her out rather than the other way around. Whichever way it goes... I don't want to know.
I don't understand how you get a culture that thinks about the entire group, when individuals make personal decisions.
I still do office hours ...
53: No, wait! *The Way We Live Now.* It's one of the best, it's self-contained, and it deals with a bubble economy, to boot. Also, there's a lady from Texas who shocks all the Englishmen by being a bit too "handy with pistols."
57: I did an independent study in high school on ideals of femininity, and that was one of the books I looked at.
I've never read the Warden, but I still liked Barchedter Towers, though I already knew a bit about the Oxford movement.
It's not PT's fault that the Farmer hits her, but doesn't she hit him too on other occasions? That would be contributing to a violent dynamic.
Good argument for TWWLN, although I think it's one of the rare cases in which he's unfair to a character. Maybe I'm fangirling for Fanny Trollope.
Short, self-contained alternatives: the Struggles of Brown, Jones & Robinson; or possibly Miss Mackenzie.
69: By her own account she sounds like something of a borderline personality (though she doesn't use that term) whose contribution to the whole cycle is psychological rather than physical.
Leaving aside Trunk's oversized and seemingly knee-jerk defensiveness, her final paragraph -- linking to previous of her posts I'm not going to click through to -- is truly absurd. Oh well.
I like The Belton Estate - it's really short (for Trollope) but it gives you a real flavor.
The Warden I like okay, but going straight to Barchester Towers is not impossible. There's a handy Trollopian recap in the beginning!
71: Somewhere in her site I saw that she did refer to herself as having Borderline Personality as well as aspergers. Shortly after reading some more, I decided I no longer needed to look through the site any longer.
Any recommendations for films of the Trollope novels?
Brown, Jones & Robinson is amusing, but the only sense in which it's a Trollope novel is that Trollope happened to write it. In a properly organized world, it's maybe minor Thackerey (did I spell that right? It looks funny). TWWLN is also excellent -- I didn't recommend it mostly because it's even longer than Trollope's usual doorstop, so it seemed like a bad place to start.
20
... that's not a reason not to get out of a violent relationship. Getting away isn't a claim of total innocence and lack of responsibility for anything that's happened, it's just an effective way of making the violence stop.
This assumes making the violence stop is always the highest priority. Some people stay in violent relationships because they think it is the lesser evil.
75:I know nothing nothing of Trollope, but the answer to such questions is always:
Orley Farm is a wonderful stand-alone novel, if you don't want to get into a Trollope series. Actually, maybe OF is part of a series (LB?), but it can certainly stand on its own, without sequels and prequels. The series are great, though.
I can't read Trunk (59 articulates why, much better than I could), and will not do so. I guess I'd sooner watch 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians' (which I also cannot/will not do).
'Personal responsibility' strikes me as a peculiarly American version of a fundamentally Calvinist concept. I do have some sympathy with the anxious Puritans of American lore and legend, keeping careful personal account (through diaries, letters, commonplace books and the like): am I saved? can I ever really be saved? or did my Maker kick me to the curb, toss me into the 'reject' pile, even before I had ever been born? such a scary system if you believed in it! imagine the neuroses (or just read Hawthorne, really). But as a matter of contemporary public policy, not much sympathy here: just another way for the wealthy and/or privileged to sneer at the less fortunate, imo, while rationalizing more tax cuts.
LB, I want to read some Trollope and I know you're a big fan. Which novel would you recommend I start with?
Not LB but I'd try Phineas Finn if you like reading about Victorian politics, then the other Palliser novels. My wife used to say that if you want to get some sense of where the Tories came from, these are the novels to read (John Major was a fan).
Why I'm posting this is that I'm fascinated by our society's obsession with individual responsibility, and how it makes for such awful public policy.
Worse, it's always personal responsibility that's urged on the victim, not the abuser. You need to leave the landlord, the landlord never needs to improve their housing stock.
I want to read some 19th century novels, dammit. Maybe I need to get off the part of the internet that doesn't serve up old literature. Also, finish school and get a job.
Anyway, TWWLN is the only Trollope I've read, clew is right that he's unfair to a character, but it's still great and worth reading.
Oh, and the BBC version of TWWLN is actually pretty good, even though it's not long enough to capture all the subplots. But it's also possible that I was favorably disposed to the actress who played Hetta Carbury. Also, I saw it before I read the book. But then I watched it again later on netflix.
I think Unfogged should deploy Weinshall authentication: The scheme requires a user to memorize a set of thirty
assigned images. To login the user is presented with a
series of screens. Each screen contains a grid of 8 × 10
images, some of which are the images previously memo-
rized. Starting at the top-left corner the user calculates a
path that advances down and to the right, but varies when
it encounters one of the assigned images. On reaching the
edge of the screen the user enters the two bit number
written on the margin at the exit point. This procedure is
repeated eleven times per login.
Worse, it's always personal responsibility that's urged on the victim, not the abuser. You need to leave the landlord, the landlord never needs to improve their housing stock.
I think this just summed up the American attitude. The landlord's friends would be telling him, "Sure, if they don't like it they'll move!" Although in the PT case, the Farmer's friends are presumably telling him to get the hell out while he can or something. That part may be more true outside relationships.
The idea that she markets herself as a source of wisdom and guidance (for $250/hour over the phone!) is just ridiculous.
This reminds me slightly of Dogbert sitting behind a desk with a sign reading "I Will Listen To Your Sad Stories For $5". A man sits down and unfolds a tale of woe about how his wife lefts him and halfway through Dogbert bursts out laughing, says "that was wonderful, thanks" and hands him $5.
85
I think this just summed up the American attitude. The landlord's friends would be telling him, "Sure, if they don't like it they'll move!" ...
Landlords get analogous advice, that they should evict bad tenants rather than trying to make the relationship work. See for example past discussion re parsimon and her deadbeat tenant.
What's so bad about advising people to move if they aren't getting along with their landlord anyway? That's what you all advise people in bad personal relationships.