Personal
responsibility is dead. Long live
personal responsibility!
I cannot speak for other nations,
but America suffers from a debilitating lack of ability to take responsibility
for its own failures and faults. Every
time something bad happens, all involved parties shift the blame to the other
parties, yet when something goes right all parties claim the success for
themselves.
The history of this trend is
difficult to trace, but it likely emanated out of the emergence of the United
States as the dominant world power after World War Two. With America’s newfound dominance and
prosperity, a sense of entitlement began to sink into the psyche of
Americans. Those with a sense of
entitlement often believe that nothing is their fault, but instead the failings
of others.
This buck-passing can be illustrated
with numerous examples from recent history.
To begin with a fairly light instance, examine the case of Oakland
Raiders linebacker Rolando McClain.
McClain was pulled over for driving a car with excessively tinted
windows but refused to allow the police officer to examine the window. When he was finally given a citation, McClain
signed it with an expletive. Was this
McClain’s fault? Of course not, as he
explained that he is “falsely accused of everything” and went on to imply that
the cops are corrupt and out to get him.
Another superficial example is a
personal pet-peeve of mine. Taylor Swift
is, as everybody knows, an immensely popular singer who has a reputation of
writing songs about ex-boyfriends to expose how poorly they treated her. In the past four years, she has been
romantically connected to six men (Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, John Mayer, Jake
Gylleenhaal, Connor Kennedy, and Harry Styles).
Yet, after each relationship ends, Swift implies that it was not her
fault; the common dominator to all these “heartbreaks,” however, is Swift
herself. She appears to be unable to
accept the fact that her actions are likely the true cause of these failed
relationships.
Americans complain about the
ineffectiveness of Congress and the incessant bickering between the two parties
over what should be simple issues. We
blame polarization for creating two parties which can hardly agree on anything,
the lack of term limits for politicians who only care about getting reelected,
and the power of lobbies for unduly influencing policy. All of these are certainly factors to the
political inertia gripping the nation, but again we fail to see the root of the
problem. Who put the extreme
ideologues—from both parties—into office?
Who continues to reelect politicians who only care about getting
reelected? Who continues to award
politicians who live in the pocket of special interests with reelection? It is all of us. The problem exists in Washington, D.C., but
it starts in every polling place in the nation.
To hit closer to home, the lack of
personal responsibility is overwhelming in all levels of education. There is a cliché that teenagers believe that
they know everything, that they are always right. A keen ear in schoolhouses and classrooms
certainly seems to affirm this stereotype.
Did I get a bad grade on that essay because I did not try hard enough or
put it off until the last second? Of
course not, the bad grade is the fault of the teacher or professor who grades
unfairly. An examination of
RateMyProfessors.com points a bright spotlight at this syndrome as students
refuse to accept responsibility for their own shortcoming and instead pin it on
the professor. The worst grade I have
received at Loyola is a “B” in Professor Shuster’s Contemporary American
History class. Did I receive this grade
because Professor Shuster is a bad professor?
No, I earned that “B” because I half-assed that class and quite simply
did not try as hard as I should have.
The most topical example of shifting
blame everywhere but where it truly belongs is the gun control debate raging
after a year of violence. Both the
pro-gun control camp and the anti-gun control camps take part in this
regrettable exercise. Who, or what, is
responsible for gun violence in America?
According to a statement by former Republican presidential nominee Mitt
Romney in the second presidential debate, it is single parent households. According to the National Rifle Association,
it is violent video games and movies—a theory given legitimacy by
Vice-President Joe Biden’s absurd summit with movie executives this past
week. Yet all of these frivolous efforts
simply distract from the true cause, which is the possession of guns by
unstable individuals. The N.R.A. likely
realizes this, but they unfortunately operate under a paranoid assumption that
if they give an inch, they give a mile.
I realize that there are authentic
situations where one fails due to circumstances beyond their control, but these
cases are not as omnipresent as people like to make it seem. Individuals must begin taking responsibility
for their own personal shortcomings first before we as a nation can address our
failures as a nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment