Responsibility

[andrewducker]

[Poll #935668]

Comments

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

If I get into a car and say, "Hey - you drive.." I am voluntarily giving up control.

If I get drunk voluntarily, knowing I might not make the -best- decisions or have great motor control, then I am voluntarily and knowingly giving up complete control.

And I put "10" on the second because I see it as a being a 10 or 0 sort of question. Either you are or you aren't. Anything else is too problematic and needs to be defined and I don't think it can be.

[yalovetz]

I think 'depressed' is significantly different from just 'overcome with emotion'.

In general though, I think my answers would depend on how drunk someone was, how depressed someone was, what the action was, what the overall context was, etc. It could vary from 1 to 10 on both scales, depending.

[andrewducker]

I'd seperate "depressed" and "suffering from depression".

[yalovetz]

Fair enough, it wasn't clear which you meant.

[birdofparadox.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the clarification. There's a difference between transient depression versus soul-sucking, brain-betraying chemical imbalance.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Ah, I answered as if you meant "suffering from depression" and then suddenly realised you probably didn't. And can't remember how to change poll answers.

[kimberly-a.livejournal.com]

To change your answers, you click "Poll #935668" at the beginning of this journal entry, then click [Fill out Poll].

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Ah, brilliant, cheers! I'd remembered that I had to click on the poll number, and had no idea what to do next.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

How about if their actions are reactions to bad deeds by others and so justified if not proportionate?; I suspect you are asking not about acts per se, but about acts that would normally be repressed by politeness/sensibility-type inhibitions, and which a variety of causes including drink, depresion and lack of sleep may release. This puts rather a different slant on teh question of "who is responsible".

[andrewducker]

Hmm, possibly it would have been better as "How much does alcohol _change_ the responsibility?" - i.e. if someone would be responsible for their actions while sober, would they still be responsible for them while drunk, etc.

[ginjabadja.livejournal.com]

I would like to claim any indepth knowledge, but in a legal sense someone overcome with emotion, depression or other is said to be acting under "diminished responsibility"....IIRC this can mean the difference between being prosecuted for manslaughter or premeditated homicide.

As drunkness is self inflicted, I think the law suggests a person has to take responsibility for their own actions. Which is why we get in too such deep and murky waters on claims of sexual assualt when one or both parties are under the influence (please note that I'm trying really hard to be non-gender specific).

Like I say I'm no expert....

D'oh

[ginjabadja.livejournal.com]

Opening sentence was meant to read...
"I would not like to claim indepth knowledge....."

Sheesh!

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

You have it pretty much right. So self induced intoxication does not diminish responsibility, but having your drink spiked does. Mental illness implies lack of capacity to sin, more or less, so you get locked up in a loony bin rather than a jail - worse really as sentence is indefinite. the toughies are transient mental illness cases (like somnambulists) and "emotions": things like battered wives ayndrome - english courts not keen on letting people off on crimes of passion but provocation law has got there in the end.

[makyo.livejournal.com]

I think there's a difference between being drunk and depressed (by which I mean "suffering from depression"). They're both about your brain chemistry affecting your ability to make suitably rational choices, but with drunkenness one presumably has consciously made a choice to put oneself into that state, whereas with depression it's generally far less voluntary.

This, I guess, is at least partly why we throw people in prison for doing bad things while under the influence of alcohol, whereas we commit them to a psychiatric hospital when they do bad things due to mental illness.

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

Alcohol has a tendency to make people more likely to do things they might have done anyway. I suspect it a better excuse than cause...

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

That, more concisely, is what I was trying to say.

[ripperlyn.livejournal.com]

I want to quantify my response a bit because I don't think the question is asked properly.

I answered '8' for both, and my reasoning is thus:

A person is 100% responsible for GETTING drunk. But once they *are* completely hammered, they are acting largely on impulse rather than considered action. Therefore I don't think it's fair to hold them 100% responsible for what they do - SO LONG AS THEY ACCEPT RESPONSIBLITY for getting themselves so wankered in the first place.

Depression is similar. A person is not responsible for BEING depressed, but they do hold some responsibility for how they cope with their depression or other strong/negative emotions. Either they cope by asking for help, or they cope by doing destructive things, and they are responsible for that.

[chuma.livejournal.com]

Rather than trying to phrase my own version, I'm just gonna say I agree with you.

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

I am very very wary of anyone using depression - or any illness other than the very severest mental disabilities - as a reason for inappropriate or illegal actions.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Drunk is a choice - easy to avoid totally, so 100% responsible - you chose to take that first drink...

Depressed or emotional is not so much - you can't stop what you feel - but (and this one one of the most important things I ever learned) you can feel emotions and *still* not let them materially affect your actions(if so doing is inappropriate or damaging to you/others you care about in the longer term). OK, not all that easy at times, but entirely possible where required.

[avatar.livejournal.com]

Let's give a bit of leeway, aye chaps?

[momlady.livejournal.com]

I, too, think that this is a tough question, and in part, I'm apt to agree with the "0" or "10", no in between. However, I did use an "in between" for the answer about depression. As one person pointed out, there is a difference between being "depressed" and "being overcome by emotion".

Depression is also different from the many other mental illnesses in which people are found "not responsible" for their actions. As a person who suffers chronic major depression, I don't feel it should be targeted with "irresponsible" behavior. If you used the term "schizophrenic" or "other severe mental illness", the question would be much easier to answer. Depression can be controlled properly, but the choice to drink and drive is definitely the responsibility of the drinker.