"What was she wearing?" Here is my analogy busting the flawed logic of shifting blame from the perpetrator to the circumstances....

Let me explain and elaborate through an analogy. Before I begin, I want to make something very clear. This analogy is not actually about robbers or jewellery.

Imagine someone decides to wear expensive jewellery in public. That person exercised their free will by wearing it.

Now imagine a robber notices it and decides to rob them. The robber also exercised their free will.

Both people made choices. Both choices led to consequences.

The difference is that the consequences are not morally equal.

The person wearing the jewellery experiences the consequence of increased risk. The robber experiences the consequence of having committed a crime.

One person's choice may have influenced the situation, but it never removed the other person's freedom to choose differently.

The robber could have walked away and ignored it. Or Done absolutely nothing. Instead, they exercised their own free will to rob. That decision belongs entirely to them.

This is the distinction I think people often miss. Every choice has consequences. But not every consequence is the same thing as moral responsibility.

A choice can increase risk without becoming the moral cause of another person's wrongdoing. The person wearing the jewellery isn't morally responsible for the robbery simply because their choice became one of the circumstances surrounding it.

Likewise, the robber cannot escape responsibility by pointing to the jewellery because countless other people would have seen the same jewellery and chosen not to rob.

That is the power of free will.

The same circumstance can produce completely different actions depending on the person. This is the broader point I'm trying to make.

Life constantly places us in situations created by other people's choices. Those situations influence us, limit us, challenge us, or even tempt us. But they never completely erase our own ability to choose. Someone else's action may become part of the circumstances I face.

My response remains my own. That is why I believe consequences and responsibility should never be confused. Circumstances explain why a choice became possible. They do not explain away the choice itself.

At the end of the day, every person owns the decisions they consciously make. Both people experience consequences, but only one bears moral responsibility for the wrongful act. That's a subtle but important distinction.

I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts on this, open my mind to any blind spots or perspectives I might be missing, or hear if you spot any loopholes in this framework.

Thank you for reading beautiful souls,

Have a great day ahead!! 🤍