[Zutroy]

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yeah exactly. Sometimes the "choice" that GOT thinks people are making, they arent actually making, because they don't see any other options to choose from. It annoys me when people who are of a different mental state cast their own mental state onto someone else. Sure its obvious to us that she chose to kill herself because we can easily see not doing it, or the girl who goes back to the BF that beats her is choosing to do so, because to us, she obviously doesnt have to. But that doesnt mean they see it as a choice, they are suffering from mental illness or the trauma of extreme abuse, who the [censored] knows whats going on in their brain, its not like she calmly and rationally went "gee this really sucks, I feel humiliated now, guess I better go kill myself".

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If you agree (not saying you necessarily do) that people should be morally responsible for their own actions except in cases of mental illness or severe emotional instability, then how does the blame suddenly shift over to the last person to impact their psyche (seems borderline arbitrary; straw, camel, etc)? Why wouldn't it logically be shifted to the chemical imbalance itself?

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Well, it largely is the fault of the the chemical imbalance but at the same time the parents had it within their power to prevent her suicide and didn't. They chose to seek revenge on a girl they knew was mentally unbalanced.

If someone leaves a glass on a edge and you come by and purposely knock it down, who is responsible for the glass getting broken? If you hadn't knocked it down, it wouldn't have broken. The opposite is arguably true of course (if they hadn't left it on the edge it wouldn't have gotten broken) but your intent is purposefully malicious while theirs might simply be misguided.

Also, on a more philosophical level, people aren't rational all, or even most, of the time. They make stupid or difficult to explain decisions based on their relationships with other people. The actions you take can directly influence the actions of others. I have only hypothetical examples to back my claim but say a boy falls madly in love with a girl. The girl, who hates her boss, tells the boy to kill the boss. He isn't thinking rationally and is blinded by his love. He kills the boss. Is she in any way responsible in you mind?