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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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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