{"id":16166,"date":"2011-04-02T00:38:21","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T07:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/?p=16166"},"modified":"2017-04-02T06:34:56","modified_gmt":"2017-04-02T13:34:56","slug":"consideration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/consideration\/","title":{"rendered":"Consideration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Strike-The-Root.com<\/a> | The definition of a citizen<\/em> is a member of the body politic who grants an allegiance thereto in exchange for a guarantee of protection.\u00a0As various Supreme Court decisions have made clear, however, there is no obligation on the part of the government to do anything.<\/em><\/p>\n

Much is made of the claimed “social contract.”\u00a0Often it seems that the claims made in regards to this contract are made by those who seek to make a claim upon others more than by those who seek to fulfill a duty such contract may compel.\u00a0Can one compel generosity?\u00a0I think not.<\/p>\n

A contract consists of three elements: 1) an offer, 2) acceptance, and 3) consideration (it’s gotta be a two-way street).\u00a0One party makes an offer, the second must accept the offer, and there must be value exchanged.\u00a0To make someone “an offer he can’t refuse” is not a contract, it’s a demand, or more accurately, a threat.<\/p>\n

Regardless of your level of generosity (or the generosity you think you have proffered) on your part, you have no claim against another or others if they have not accepted your offer and agreed to the consideration.<\/p>\n

I would like to point out that the idea of entitlement is beset by the same core fallacy in thinking that citizenship is.\u00a0There really can be no entitlement absent a contract, otherwise all you are doing is making a unilateral claim (threat) on another, or others.\u00a0And much to the dismay of many, perhaps myself included, this applies across the board, even to such mundane things as courtesy and politeness.\u00a0No one owes me anything.\u00a0At least not until he and I have had the mutual respect of sitting down and discussing the mutually beneficial terms of our relationship. Not even courtesy.<\/p>\n

The point of this is that regardless of what a wonderful person I think I am being, and the generosity I believe I have bestowed, I am owed nothing in return.\u00a0Nothing . . . in return.<\/p>\n

But! (I think I may hear some of you gasping in horror.)\u00a0Well, look at it from your own perspective.\u00a0Do you want to be obligated to someone who does what they think is a goodness to you, regardless of whether or not you want that “goodness”?\u00a0Unspoken expectations are perhaps the greatest cause of the failure of personal relationships.\u00a0Certainly you wouldn’t want to codify into law an obligation for you to reciprocate everything that anyone else might think<\/em> you owe them, would you?<\/p>\n

The sad fact is that we each must be responsible for clarifying our terms.\u00a0And the hard part in this is that that requires understanding our own expectations and desires first before we can even begin to try and put them into a form that may be acceptable to the reciprocating party or parties.\u00a0That may be the issue right there.\u00a0As children, our needs are fulfilled without our even knowing what they are.\u00a0It’s a bitch having to actually take responsibility for ourselves.\u00a0But there you have it.\u00a0It is the responsibility of each one of us to, first, know what it is that we want, and then second to try and find something of value we can offer in exchange to others so that they may feel inclined to want to reciprocate with us.\u00a0Anything less is juvenile, animalistic survival of the fittest.\u00a0It is not<\/em> society.<\/p>\n

So the next time that you have a sense of a betrayal of your expectations–your “entitlements<\/em>“–you may want to pause and reflect upon what consideration you have given others and whether you’ve openly expressed your desire for a reciprocation, and then gotten their acceptance of your offer.\u00a0You would like the same consideration from them, wouldn’t you?<\/p>\n

Karma.\u00a0\u00a0 Remember Karma?\u00a0It’s a song<\/em> about Karma!\u00a0(Hat tip to Arlo Guthrie.)<\/p>\n

By NonEntity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Strike-The-Root.com | The definition of a citizen is a member of the body politic who grants an allegiance thereto in exchange for a guarantee of protection.\u00a0As various Supreme Court decisions have made clear, however, there is no obligation on the part of the government to do anything. Much is made of the claimed “social contract.”\u00a0Often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[294],"tags":[192,833,401,329,832],"class_list":["post-16166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-citizen","tag-consideration","tag-contract","tag-responsibility","tag-social-contract"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}