[keating]

> because everyone is free to do whatever they want.

Citation needed.

> It's rare to find the man who realizes that everything he fails at is ultimately his own fault

Incompatible with the other claim.

If other people are free to do whatever they want, they are free not to cooperate with you. If you fail to get Megan Fox to want to engage in mating behavior with you, it may well be due to circumstances beyond your control, like not being her "type".

We aren't free. We have a lot of built-in unconscious drives that push and pull us in one direction or another. Our decision-making process is wired up through genetic happenstance and upbringing. Our parents, schools, cultures, and religions programmed us to a large degree and then turned us out into the world.

[maxklein]

If I cannot lay Megan Fox, it's because she decided not to. Excercising my freedom does not give me the right to take away someone elses freedom. If however, Miss Fox says no to me, and I take that to mean that I will fail with all chicks from then on, then that is my own bloody fault, and its something I can change easily by trying for other chicks.

So when someone blames his reading of reddit on his high school, I say that's silly, and its something he is absolutely in control of, and can change without affecting anybody elses freedom.

[kc5tja]

"Excercising my freedom does not give me the right to take away someone elses freedom."

Nonetheless, in this hypothetical situation, you failed in your quest to lay Megan. Therefore, by your own words, it is your own fault.

This myth, that it is your own fault if you fail to achieve your own goals, forms the foundation for conservative viewpoint in this nation. I'm not here to preach the gospel of the Left (they have their own mistaken views too), but you have to concede, as heart-breaking as it is, that the Right isn't always either.

Recognizing a situation for what it actually is necessitates that we take human behavior as an animal into consideration when observing our own behavior. Taken in the original context of the statement, the author's claim that our failures are "our" fault is an indictment, not merely an observation.

"Failure" is never just a black-and-white situation. We live in a complex, chaotic world. It's time it's addressed as such.