So my friend gets very sick while he's on vacation with his family out of the country, right? If you were his girlfriend back in the states, what would you do? Would you:
a. Send him cute e-mails with pictures of soup and ginger ale and other sickbed items, along with messages about how you miss him and hope he feels better;
b. Try not to bother him, but plan a big "Welcome Home!" surprise for him when he returns;
c. Jump on an emergency flight packing a thermometer, throat drops and Vitamin C and rescue him in his hour of overseas need;
d. Have your ex sleep over your house, cheat on your boyfriend with him, tell him about it in an e-mail when he's ill and far from home and friends, then get upset when he breaks up with you and go cry to HIS friends expecting sympathy.
I'll let you think through your answer for a bit while I discuss the concept of consequences. Dictionary.com gives the following definitions for consequence:
1. Something that logically or naturally follows from an action or condition.
2. The relation of a result to its cause.
3. A logical conclusion or inference.
It seems a very simple concept, no? Yet people seem to be struggling with this concept at present. For example, if you should, say, cheat on your boyfriend, the naturally following action is that he may break up with you. This should not be a surprise; it is the consequence that fits your particular action. That you e-mailed him and admitted it really has little bearing here. Nor does your being remorseful about it after the fact. Cheat on boyfriend = no more boyfriend. Similarly, assume that now you have cheated on your boyfriend and he dumped your ass, you decide to call his friends looking for advice because you are hurt. Whose friends are they? They are his. Who is their loyalty to? To him. So if you call them up and try to play the "I'm the victim" card, the logical conclusion of that is that rather than the validation you crave, you will end up getting a big "Fuck you". That is the consequence for deliberately hurting that person's buddy. How you feel about the whole situation: irrelevant. See? Consequence. It's simple.
Now, back to the SAT question at the top of the post. In the context of this recent discussion of the consequence principle, which of these options seems like a good way to NOT keep your boyfriend hanging around?
6 comments:
Look, when you are open for business, you are open for business.
Time and tide wait for no man.
Hand me a pronoun please.
option a is adorable
i did that, in a slightly modified form, in college.
scenario -
1 sick girl.
1 bottle warm sprite, in lieu of ginger ale
1 package starlight mints, in lieu of pepto bismol
1 printed picture white rose, in lieu of open florist/ available flowers
end result = mad, ill sexing.
rinse and repeat.
Sean - so what you're saying is, when she was sick you didn't cheat on her and then tell her about it over e-mail? An interesting choice.
let me just say this whole entire situation sucks and i'm just happy that the only people that got involved in MY drama were the people i selfishly dragged into it
Well that's the whole thing. She acts like everyone just jumped into this with no provocation, but the reality is after she did it she started calling and IMing his friends about it. If she didn't want the wrath of the boys raining down on her she should have known better than to try contacting them. At any rate it is done. She is dead to them and she is dead to me.
Whether or not you believe that you are acting "Holier Than Thou" by not getting involved, you don't get to dictate what is and isn't your business. Only your friends can dictate that.
I also enjoy being the asshole. I'm damn good at it too.
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