i hear a lot of stuff like “having BPD is an explanation not an excuse for hurting someone” but i genuinely don’t understand how something can be an explanation without being an excuse?
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If someone breaks into my house and steals my TV, they might explain that they needed a new TV since theirs broke. That would be an explanation for why they did what they did. But it wouldn’t be an excuse, because they could have done other things as well like not stealing my TV.
The idea is that we can understand why someone does something but still acknowledge that what they did was wrong and they shouldn’t have done that in the first place.
This is a very American thing.
The US has, over the last 70 years, rejected the notion of mental illnesses being able to change the mental processes of a human almost completely. It is assumed that whatever happens in someone’s brain, any person at any time is completely rational and intentional in their decisions.
This goes so far in some places that even reflexive movements (like leaning away when someone gets close to you or swings at your face) are ruled conscious decisions and can land you in prison (resisting arrest).
While it is easy to see how bodily issues affect the movements of a person, for things in the brain and mind (those two are different, too), it is not. That’s not a reason for the shift in opinion, just the mechanism that allows it.
As far as I’m aware, there is no good research into why this has happened in the US, but it is most likely an effect with a hundred small causes. For one, the desire for punishment seems to be the major drive behind many aspects of the American laws and legal system. On the other hand, there seems to be a deep-rooted angst to be locked away for wrongly being deemed insane rooted in something like that happening in the 50s and 60s. One could even accuse pop culture, e.g. Batman’s villains all being ruled insane and being put into Arkham Asylum instead of a prison. Or the trope about pleading temporary insanity to avoid consequences for crimes.
But it all boils down to one thing: If you stumble and run into someone because of a broken leg, it’s an accident. If you do the same thing because of a mental illness, it’s assault and battery.
Again, this is how it is in the US. It’s very different in other countries.
“Your mental health is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.” Read that here sometime back. What caused us to have the problems we have may not be our fault, but fixing them is our responsibility. You can have it as an excuse or as a goad that pushed you into fixing your life.
Here’s the thing, all human behavior has an explanation. Even the most heinous, destructive, even self-destructive actions do not emerge out of a vacuum. If you could understand all ofthe intricacies of a person’s biology and the expression of their genes, their upbringing, all of the experiences, the atream of thoughts going back to their birth you would be able to explain the cause that lead to the effect (the action in question.) Of course that is all too complicated for a human being to fully understand, even when it comes to themselves. But partial explanations can be approximated. That’s all it is. It’s trying to understand cause and effect as it pertains to human beings.
Now a large part of the explanation of any person is plianly outside of their control even if you believe in free will. You can’t control what you think. You can learn but you can’t control where you start from or what mental faculties you are blessed with. You can’t will away your biology and environment even if you can influence them. Even if you could change these things to whatever you want you can’t completely decide what you want. Perhaps you learn to want things that are better for you. However you can’t just decide to want healthier things, you learn that they are healthier and more fulfilling and you innate desire for happiness shifts your aim to a new material target in order to satisfy the same underlying desire. You have to actually want those virtues to start off or life has to thrust those new priorities upon you in some way.
What does this mean? We either we have to abandon the whole notion of right and wrong and culpability all together or we have to accept that even if there is always an explanation for why wrongdoing happened it is still harmful and must still be condemned or discouraged in order to reach what we agree to be the best possible outcome (people acting in a way we think is moral).
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