Personal Responsibility

Great Debates
1

Exactly when did it become acceptable to eschew personal responsibility?

I hate to sound like an old fart (I’m only 40), but it seems that more and more often I come in contact with people who are willing to blame anyone and anything other than themselves for their lot in life. Is this a recent phenomena? Is it related somehow to our current president’s ability to dodge persoanl liability for the situations he “finds” himself in so successfully? Am I just getting old?

On the other hand I am able to find plenty of people who agree that this lack of integrity is pervasive and growing rapidly worse.

I am interested in the opinions and responses of you, the Teeming Millions. What’s the story?

2

I’m not sure there is a cite for this, so regard it as personal opinion. The ‘victimhood’ started long before Mr. Clinton’s personal failings. I would guess about the time, early to mid seventies, self help books, ‘I’m Ok, You’re Ok’ kind of thinking became more pervasive. “It’s not YOUR fault, you’re just the product of your environment”

It’s depressing and you’re only 40? You youngin’ you!! The only sure cure, is not to fall into this yourself, and anyone in your immediate influence, help them not to do it either. The saddest legacy of this is the helplessness it seems to promote, and harden.

3

It’s never been acceptable. It’s the increasing trend (I’m 19, and I’ve noticed it) of convenient, relativistic ethical attitudes that embrace the notion of victimhood. This is, of course, the liberals’ fault, and totally beyond my control to fix, so why bother? :smiley:

4

40 is not old el_mono, and it’s not only older people who notice this problem. Everyone I speak to agrees.

It seems to me that this problem becomes more prevalent in larger towns and cities. Maybe it’s because the larger the group of people around you, the easier it is to blame “them”. This is because “them” are a faceless group of strangers. The liberals, or the communists, or whatever.

If you live in a small community in which you know most of the people personally, or at least by sight, it is much harder to blame them for your problems. (Also, if you know your neighbours, there are much more likely to help you with you personal problems, so you may in fact have less in the first place.)

So I think it is becoming easier to blame others as the world evolves into more of a single huge global society.

5

I believe it started even sooner than mentioned. I think it started with Dr. Spock and the whole “psychology” method of raising children. Perhaps people misunderstood the orignial message. Perhaps it hasn’t done our culture any good to “spare the rod”. I haven’t actually thought this one out completely but it does seem to me that our more modern methods of child rearing might have something to do with this. Of course I wouldn’t advocate beating the crap out of your kids, but it does seem to me that “time out” methods are not applied either. Too many of us are too damned busy or too damned tired to sit down and talk to our children or follow through on our edicts.

We give our children too many things that are absolutely meaningless when what they need is our time. We’re also a generation (I’m 42) that has their share of irresponsible assholes, many of us raising children. Our children grow up to behave even worse than we do. After all if dad is a liar and a cheat why shouldn’t I be? I’ve also seen many parents that won’t make their children accept responsiblity for their behavior. They wear blinders. “Not my child! My child couldn’t have possibly done that! Someone else must have influenced them.” I see it all the time. It doesn’t suprise me that people, and younger people in particular, do not feel the need to support themselves or own up to pretty much anything. Mommy and Daddy have been running interference for them their entire lives.

Needs2know

6

Diverting blame from the self has probably been around since before the Stone Age, but the troglodytes didn’t have a Government with social polices to give them what they wanted without working for it. If they wanted to eat meat, they had to hunt, and succeed in hunting. So if you want to increase personal responsible, decrease social give away polices in the Government, Corporations, Churches, and Homes.

7

“It’s not my fault my child misbehaves! I’m a perfect parent! It’s just that the child victimizes me! Poor me!”

If you go to a psychologist and the psychologist says, “You have problems, and those problems are of your own making,” would you still go to him? Or would you find a psychologist who says, “It’s not your fault.”? We all seem to be “entitled” to have everything go our way. When they don’t, we get upset and ask “Why they are doing that to me?” We no longer, it seems, ask what we can do to improve our lot. It’s much easier to blame someone else than to do the work to improve our lives. It’s so easy to blame someone else, that people don’t even consider that they might have a part in it, that they can resolve the situation, or that no one else is to blame.

I think part of the problem is that often both parents work, and the kids have to fend for themselves. For eons, the children have been with at least one parent in their formative years. It’s only recently that kids are dropped off at day-care. When little time is spent with a child, is it so surprising that the parent and child have trouble relating? (Not being a parent, I could be completely wrong.)

8

I can say that my son (2) already has the idea that there are somethings that my daughter (1) shouldn’t be doing, so he tells her “No!”.

So Cute.

On the other hand, I’ve seen way too many kids who have no clue what responsibility is, or why they should follow a bunch of dumb rules. Then they are surprised at how much they have to learn once Mommy and Daddy aren’t around to run interference.
Problem being, for a lot of those kids (I went to a church with tons of them), Mommy and Daddy still run interference for them, even tho they are in their mid 20’s now. They don’t have to face anything bad, M & D will take care of it.
All in all, just a bunch of whiny losers.

9

I dunno. When did it become acceptable to ignore the forum descriptions?

Off to Great Debates.

10

I see the whole trend coming in when law firms became real money-making enterprises. The fact that ignorant juries could award unlimited amounts of cash (in Punitive Damage awards) meant that it was in the interest of the legal industry to absolve anyone of personal responsibility.
The latest manifestation of this will surely be the Ford/Firestone tire failures. On the one hand, SUVs are inherently unsafe-they are NOT meant to be driven at sppeds over 65 MPH. Their idiot drivers persist in trying to fling them around corners at speed-of course the laws of physics haven’t changed - so these things flip over. And, driving too fast on under-inflated tires will cause problems too-but not for a skilled litigator! Nope, it will always be the tire mfg./car mfg.s fault - because that’s where the MONEY is!

11

Hey someone actually agrees with me on this board!!!

My neighbor is a single parent like me. Although he’s a guy. He has two teenage children. Shortly after I started having trouble with my then 14 year old daughter he started having what I’d consider BIG trouble with his 14 year old son. My daughter and I were seeing a therapist. We didn’t think it was helping much but we kept at it.

He took his son once. When the therapist suggested that perhaps HE NEEDED TO EFFECT SOME CHANGES IN HIS BEHAVIOR TOO, my neighbor got pissed and never went back. How dare the guy suggest that he wasn’t doing all he could and in the best way possible.

Me on the other hand (and no I’m not Jewish or Catholic) kept going in there bawling, looking for answers on what I was doing wrong. How could I improve, what could I do? Because I just knew that I had failed her somehow. I just knew that there was something more I could do. Did I say it didn’t help? I was wrong. It did help us. At the time it didn’t seem so but she and I learned a lot about ourselves through those visits. And now we don’t go anymore and I still make mistakes but I sure as hell don’t put the blame on anyone but us. (She is old enough to be able to accept quite a bit of responsiblity for her behavior now. Especially since we’ve gotten so much out in the open.)

Anyway, my neighbor still has problems. He’s moved in a girlfriend who has a 16 year old son and an 8 year old son. His son and the other boy have been on house arrest for vandalizing the neighborhood. Her 8 year old “runs the neighborhood” unsupervised. His daughter, who no longer hangs with mine much, is still failing in school and lies to him all the time. It’s just business as usual over there because he refused to believe that HE NEEDED TO DO SOMETHING. And he still insists that “my children weren’t raised that way”, they’re good kids.

Needs2know

12

Thanks for the course correction and sorry to be a pain. Still new around here but hey, it was my fault!

Seriously, thanks. Think good thoughts!

13

I remember a turning point in personal responsibility.
During the Iranian Hostage crisis the United States attempted a rescue mission. During the mission helicopters had to land in the at night in a sandstorm to refuel. (I don’t think the sandstorm was part of the plan) However there was an accident and the rescue attempt had to be aborted. Later President Carter on national television took responsibility for the loss of life and the failure of the mission. He was not re-elected. Several years (seven?) later President Regan blamed President Carter for the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon. Carter’s reduction of funding for the CIA was to blame for the lack of defenses around the barracks of the Marines. Regan was elected twice.

14

And…

::whips out Bible::

“[Adam] said, ‘The woman you put here with me - she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’” - Genesis 3:12

Adam blames Eve. He is also blaming God by saying “The woman you put here with me…”

What I’m saying is that this is nothing new.

15

I think there has been a real change, but not in acceptance of personal responsibility, but in our response. More specifically, we seem to be moving away from the position that punishment is an appropriate response to error. Such a shift I fully support. It is much easier to accept the responsibility for change with the assistance of your fellow citizens rather than their censure.

16

Although for the most part I completely agree that we need a renewed emphasis on personal responsibility (including our responsibility to be considerate and helpful towards others), I just want to make one small dissenting point. Recall that we’ve just recently gotten away from some really nasty forms of shoving “responsibility” onto the shoulders of some people who didn’t deserve it:

“He raped you? It was your fault for dressing so provocatively and getting into his car with him! Slut! You better hope nobody ever hears about this!”

“Don’t come trying to tell me that Uncle Bobby did something bad to you! That sort of thing only happens to bad, bad children!”

“So you didn’t get the promotion; what did you expect? Is an important corporation like that going to risk its reputation by putting a Negro in a management position? You should count yourself lucky that you get to work there at all.”

“You mean those other boys beat you up like that because you were holding hands with Charlie? You evil, sick, degenerate, filthy beast. I wish you had died before I gave birth to you.”

Now there are some fine examples of people being encouraged to take more personal responsibility for what happens to them, right? I agree that there’s a good deal too much whining and “victim politics” around these days (much of it coming from people whining about victim politics); but at least some of it is just the pendulum swinging away from social attitudes that went much too far in the other direction.

17

EGKELLY –

Oh, bushwa. Are there some ridiculous cases of people being awarded for absolute stupidity? Sure, and it’s the ridiculous cases that get all the press. But the legal profession is no more responsible for the “victimization” of American society than the professions of psychology (“you did it because you were abused as a child”); medicine (“you did it because you have a defect in your brain chemistry”); social work (“you did it because you were raised in poverty”); education (“you did it because you never got a decent education”); and a host of others. There’s blame enough for all of us, believe me. Will certain members of the legal profession exploit these rationales if they get a chance? Sure. But they didn’t come up with them.

Excuse me, but DAMN! Have you been keeping up with this issue AT ALL? Firestone apparently manufactured and sold tires that it KNEW were defective – and defective enough to kill people. Ford then put those tires on its cars; though it denies knowing they were defective, it is contended that it did know. Now, you have people doing something that any fool in American society knows a lot of people routinely do – namely, drive too fast – and in your mind that makes the deaths of the drivers and their loved ones their own faults even though they were totally ignorant of the fact that they had been sold crucial equipment that was known to be dangerously defective. I can’t believe anyone might think this would not be the manufacturer’s fault. It has nothing to do with “where the money is;” it has everything to do with making the people who sold the defective product pay for the injuries and deaths occasioned by its use.

18

The Bridgestone/Firestone analogy was probably not the best example.

Jodi raises a very good point about the egregious damages awarded by juries being in the minority, just getting undue press due to the sensationl nature of the subject; I think the Gun Problem, the Drug Epidemic, and a host of other “issues” get blown way out of proportion the same way.

On a personal note, I recently had the opportunity to accept some personal responsibility, when I was injured at work; bad enough to have to go to the hospital.

Well, the nice folks at the ER wanted to put the incident down on Workman’s Comp., but I steadfastly refused, paying instead with my own employee’s health insurance.

You see, I injured myself by doing something unsafe, by not following established, common-sense safety guidlines, and improper use of hand tools.

I knew better, but I did it anyway, and broke my hand.

Now, with a broken hand, I can’t effectively do my job; the company I work for would be well within their rights to send me home until I can again do my job.

But since I declined Workman’s Comp., they have me hanging about, getting paid, for essentially doing nothing except advising and supervising all of our temps., and some light clerical work.

The thing is, I could’ve claimed W.C., as no one witnessed the accident, and my version of what happened (if I “worked the system”) wouldn’t be able to be easily contested.

But, to my way of thinking, that just ain’t right.

ExTank
“But I can’t wait to get this !@#$%& cast off my arm!”

19

Huh? Carter took responsibility because he was Commander in Chief of the military and approved the plan. The plan was overly complex and should never have been attempted. It didn’t fail because of a single accident, but because the plan was doomed from the start.

Was Reagan the first person to achieve success with blaming his predecessor for something? Was the fact that Carter didn’t have a scapegoat for Desert One a deciding factor in the election? Did Carter show the same selfless devotion to accepting personal responsibility when blaming OPEC for the fuel crisis? What exactly is your point?

BTW, am I the only one who thinks that egkelley’s line of reasoning sounds like “it’s not their fault, the evil lawyers are responsible.”

20

Is it very difficult to believe that people are sometimes responsible for what happens to them and sometimes not; that both chance and choice are factors in human lives?