Accountability

[pgsmith]

Child is stealing cookies out of the cookie jar.
Other child tells mom.
Mom grounds child #1.

Child #1's response? Child#2 -got them- in trouble.
No where is there a grasp that they shouldn't have been stealing cookies in the first place.

Fast forward 30 years. Child 1 is now an adult who likes to drive fast. As a result they have several tickets. Whose fault is it that they have a lot of tickets? Not theirs for constantly breaking the law by speeding, but those 'cops' out to 'trap them'.

We see the lack of taking responsibility everywhere. The government should raise min-wage so they can make more money, rather than showing up on time, working hard and pushing ahead. A life long smoker has a number of health issues. Not their fault. Even though there are warnings everywhere. Overweight? Not their fault. It's McDonalds fault, so lets sue McD. Someone who barely does enough to not get fired resents someone else who worked hard and got a promotion. Their reasoning is that there is favouritism and someone 'hates them'.

But whose fault is it? We've trained a generation that it's not their fault. It's always someone else's. Suggesting people take responsibility for their lives gets you funny looks and suggestions of being crazy.

People need to "grow a pair", and stop being 'victims' who have 'no control' over their lives.

While I agree completely with your sentiment Bob, I don't think it's as simple as that. I feel that it is necessary to stop and think about how our society became this way. Even though it makes me feel like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, here are my thoughts on how we got this way ... it's someone else's fault!

Seriously, our society as a whole is very easy to manipulate through the media. For quite some time now, we've been made to believe that someone else will take care of us. A great many laws have been passed to save us from ourselves. TV inundates everyone with the idea that someone else will think for us and make sure we're safe. We shouldn't have to make difficult and potentially erroneous decisions for ourselves, we should let "experts" make those decisions for us. Everyone should get a participation trophy because no one should be a loser! Love yourself for who you are, not who you wish you could be! These are the lessons taught by our government and the media.

In the upper echelons are the extremely rich and those they control. For them control is power, and a malleable society is much easier to control than a society of independent thinkers. This explains, in my head, why there is such a concerted effort to make us into a society of followers, and discourage independent thinking. It will take much more than "growing a pair" to be able to recover from this.

 

[Steve]

I think that the ideas of government and media manipulation are very true. However, I also think that people who are successful tend to also be personally accountable.

While I agree that society has to do better, what I'm really trying to get at is that it's exactly the other direction. We should all, as a group, be taking care of our own business, rather than worrying about what everyone else is doing. If we did this, the rest would start to take care of itself.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Big Don]

[video=youtube_share;rNKIjLLZMWs]http://youtu.be/rNKIjLLZMWs?t=1m10s[/video]
Substitute "Politician and/or Activist" for "woman"

 

[donnaTKD]

i agree with the OP

i always put my hand up and acknowledge what i've done be it good, bad or downright ugly -- in my book if you're old enough to commit the crime then you do the time.

ok so i've lived mainly by myself for the last 20 odd years and so if i tuk up then i only got me to blame for it and i extend that everywhere. i joined army a long time ago (left a long time ago too) and everytime i tukd up i said it was me doesn't matter what the punishment was i owned up - there were a lot of people that saw what was happening to me and decided to keep quiet so they punished everyone for it cos they wouldn't own up.

i see it now at home and at work - people not pullingtheir weight and blaming others for their disninterest in whatever it is - namely hard graft - customer rings up "is my car ready" - guy says yup knowing full well that it's not even been touched since it was dropped off - customer turns up to find his car hasn't moved - questions the boss and the guy that answered the phone passes the buck and nothing happens to him not even a warning etc..... i personally hate this.

if you do something wrong at least have the nuts to stand up and say so when questioned it just means that there's a whole heap less trouble down the line - also depending on what it is that's been done it can be sorted there and then without dragging everyone else through the mud for what you did.

just my thoughts

 

[Elbowgrease]

Integrity, and accountability. I've heard it said that a real friend will tell you what you don't want to hear, but what you need to hear. I don't know, the whole thing really could go in a lot of directions on any level any person might choose to analyze it. Personal, societal, etc. Martial arts and music are beautiful teachers, a person might be able to lie to themself, may even be convincing, but when you get in the ring or climb on the stage it's either the truth or a lie and it leaves no doubt. Someone once aid that in this country, boys lack a right of passage. In this day and age there is no ritual after which you are no longer considered a child, so some people never have to grow up. Honesty, integrity, honour, accountability, a lot of that gets neglected, rejected, thrown out for instant gratification in this day and age. It's just easier to get rewarded if you're a jerk that's willing to lie and cheat and steal and blame everything on everyone else, as long as you're slick enough to get away with it.