Individual responsibility

I think one of our soci­ety’s prob­lems is that most people don’t under­stand the simple con­cept of indi­vid­ual responsibility. The roots should prob­a­bly be sought where the causes of all our trou­bles usu­ally are, though that kind of search for a first cause usu­ally leads into the past and gives us noth­ing for the future.

For some reason people think that their single action, being part of a common pool of sim­i­lar actions by other people, has no effect on the over­all result. That with num­bers this large their indi­vid­ual action can be ignored.

Hey, haven’t you heard that one bad apple spoils the barrel?

Not under­stand­ing your own responsibility…

It shows espe­cially now, at the elections:

• when people vote not for the can­di­date they’d like but for the one who “can win”;
• when they choose the lesser of two evils, when there’s an option to choose neither…

But also:

in drop­ping litter in the street (“every­body does it, what changes if I don’t?”),
in giving bribes,
in saving water, or elec­tric­ity, or plas­tic bags…

People! When will you get some self-respect? When will you under­stand that you can be proud of your­self? Proud that you didn’t help liars get into power? Proud that you don’t crap where you live?

A feel­ing of pride in your right actions, pride because these are YOUR actions. What in the Universe can be more sig­nif­i­cant than YOU?

Your vote is the most impor­tant one! Don’t give it away to just any­body! Or five years of every­thing they do will be on your conscience.
Your cig­a­rette butt is the biggest one on our dump, because for each of us it’s “yours”.

Maybe psy­chol­o­gists, soci­ol­o­gists and other char­la­tans said all this long ago and have said it again since, but it really gets to me!