ESCAPING OUR RESPONSIBILITIES

REF: The Great Escape, by Thomas Sowell_ TheTrumpet.com 8.266.09

The personal responsibility escape is: not taking responsibility for the consequences of our behavior. How did this society illness occur ? Who is to blame? Are we naturally a lazy, no-good, immoral, fault-prone race?

Society tends to look for external reasons for individuals lacking in integrity and

responsible behavior. Individuals find excuses: “The color of my skin”; “My folks were not rich”; “No one ever taught me responsibility”; ‘I did poorly in school”; No one liked me”. All perhaps true, but still placing the blame on external influences, or the lack thereof.

And yet are we not all a product of our environment , family, friends, teachers, heros and idols? These character shaping influences are perhaps more important than genetic makeup. The prevailing social mores often dictate our values.

Education:

According to Sowell, “education is not something that can be given to anybody.

Students either acquire or fail to acquire” according to the individual’s motivation.

“After many students go through a dozen years in the public schools, at a total cost of $100,000 or more per student — and emerge semi-literate and with little understanding of the society in which they live, much less the larger world and its history — most discussions of what is wrong leave out the fact that many such students may have chosen to use school as a place to fool around, act up, organize gangs, or even peddle drugs.

Medical Care

“The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s own behavior. Differences in infant-mortality rates provoke pious editorials on a need for more prenatal care to be provided by the government for those unable to afford it. In other words, the explanation is automatically assumed to be external to the mothers involved and the solution is assumed to be something that “we” can do for “them.”

While it is true that black mothers get less prenatal care than white mothers and have higher infant-mortality rates, it is also true that women of Mexican ancestry get less prenatal care than white women and yet have lower infant-mortality rates. But, once people with the prevailing social vision see the first set of facts, they seldom look for any other facts that might go against the explanation that fits their vision of the world.

No small part of the current confusion between “health care” and medical care comes from failing to recognize that Americans can have the best medical care in the world without having the best health or longevity because so many people choose to live in ways that shorten their lives.”

Economic:

“Economic issues are approached in the same way. People with low incomes are seen as a problem for other people to solve. Studies that follow the same individuals over time show that the vast majority of working people who are in the bottom 20 percent of income earners at a given time end up rising out of that bracket.

Many are simply beginners who get beginners’ wages but whose pay rises as they acquire more skills and experience. Yet there is a small minority of workers who do not rise and a large number of people who seldom work and who — surprise! — have low incomes as a result.

Seldom is there any thought that people who choose to waste years of their own time (and the taxpayers’ money) in school need to change their own behavior — or to visibly suffer the consequences, so that their fate can be a warning to others coming after them not to make that same mistake.”

Politicians:

“It is not just the “non-judgmental” ideology of the intelligentsia but also the self-interest of politicians that leads to so much downplaying of personal responsibility in favor of external explanations and external programs to “solve” the “problem.”

On these and other issues, government programs are far less likely to solve the country’s problems than to solve the politicians’ problem of getting the votes of those whose think the answer to every problem is for the government to “do something.”

So we come to the conclusion that despite or because of these external influences, individual motivation is the key to character building and willingness to take responsibility for our own actions or lack thereof.

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN