---
title: "Individual responsibility"
author: "Stan Voo"
url: https://www.99rabbits.com/blog/individual-responsibility
published: 2010-02-04
summary: "People think one action lost among millions changes nothing, so they vote for whoever \"can win\" and drop litter. But your cigarette butt is the biggest one on the dump."
---

# 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!