On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 02:10:52PM -0800, definitely what <rone at ennui.org> wrote: > Matthew Hunter writes: > Are you responsible for the actions of your children once they reach > adulthood and attain free will? > This is a terrible assumption, in my opinion. Nobody attains free > will ("free will" itself is a canard, painted as an opposite to > "fate", when they're really the same damned thing); we're born with > the ability to make decisions, and as our mind develops, we can make > more complex decisions. > > "Adulthood" as it exists in most of Western civilization is pretty > broken, too; upon puberty, we should be helping kids to start making > 'adult' decisions, but instead we continue to treat them as children. > Then 18 rolls along and we suddenly let go. "You're on your own!" I agree with you, but in the content of this discussion it's irrelevant. Point is, at some point your children attain independence of decision-making from you, and from that point on, you are no longer responsible for their actions. Society marks that as age 18, which is a really bad way to do it, but there aren't any obvious better ways. > I think adults are responsible, to some degree, for how their children > behave, but not for their actions. If that makes any sense. It doesn't; behavior is composed of actions. However, I think I understand what you're getting at. Certainly I don't think parents are absolutely responsible for their kids actions before the age of majority, I was just trying not to be distracted by that issue by using the accepted social convention. :) -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp