It's nobody responsible for their own actions, we're just all victims of circumstances?

Hi,
Naturally we react to circumstances around us, so I determine my own reactions in context.
I am responsible for my actions and re-actions, so I have never felt a 'victim' of circumstance..
Heck, I would not change my slight Geordie accent, in use with either the Queen or the bloke in the pub.
I account for my actions, good, bad, or indifferent, in no particular order.
My surroundings, in terms of meeting freinds & neighbours, or just mending the local water-mill unoticed, or playing guitar at festivals is neither here nor there to me.
I am not a victim of happenings, I just adapt slightly, as should others.

Goodly question.

Bob the Boat
You are responsible for putting this question on here. You are not a victim of circumstances.


Answers:
Lucretius, Aquinas, St Augustine, John Calvin all had a go at answering this question and all failed. Post-Newton it was common to believe in a deterministic universe where particle physics (if completely understood & analysed - fat chance! -) offered, potentially, the perfect predictive tool. Quantum theory has blown a hole in that but, like any other theory is capable of falsification in the light of fuller evidence.

The short answer is, we don't know and probably can't know.

The legal position is clear. Either we are responsible for our actions, in which case criminals are justly punished, or we are not; in which case the judges, juries, hangmen & jailers are all automata as well, and the whole thing becomes meaningless.

However, subjectively, we all have an awareness of 'free will' - of choices made & implemented. We have direct awareness & first-hand experience trumps any sort of theorising. So subjectively, it's a non-question.

Pragmatically, too, it's a non-question. Either we are all helplessly pre-ordained victims of circumstance in a determinist universe, in which case even our awareness is predestined and has no relevance to the problem, or there is a random element, in which case any sort of predictability is chancy even on the largest scale (the odds might be enormous, but someone does sometimes win the lottery), or we unprovably have free will.

A question which has no framework of agreed logic, body of common data or sensible tests to decide its validity is, basically, a meaningless question.

Sorry.

For the record, I believe in free will.
Everybody should be responsible for their own actions but the general thought is that they are not. There is always the culture of blame 'it wasn't my fault'.

Alcoholics are not forced to drink, neither are drug addicts forced to use drugs and smokers are not strapped to cigarettes. All these activities are undertaken by choice and the participants expect sympathy when things go wrong. They completely ignore what the result of their actions doing their families

Instead all we get is the whine it was not my fault, 'it was because ....
If an aeroplane crashes onto your house, you are a victim of circumstance. It's the guy at the airport who does a half ars**d job of maintenance who causes the wings to fall off. The pernicious belief in society that everyone is a victim, makes everyone feel less able to cope with life, and lawyers just get richer .
My favorite statement is:

There are logical consequences to our actions.

So now we are not victims of circumstance, we are experiencing the logical consequences of the things we have done.
I don't subscribe to that view, by and large people are responsible for their own actions with obvious exceptions ie., when they are deranged, its an act of God etc