Personal Responsibility

Today, like never before in the history of my life, individuals and organization are blaming everything other than themselves for the results of their own actions. That's right, things not people or groups of people, although historically there has been plenty of the blaming others. The excuse, "He or she made me do It." is understandable if you’re listening to a child.

But blaming inanimate objects for individual personal behavior or the results from it are unexplainable in any accepted form of logic. Take the examples of cigarettes or guns.

First, cigarettes. Many individuals and their attorneys, and some states and their attorneys general have sued tobacco companies and settled or won substantial awards. Although, I don't personally know if any of them have been paid. I believe most, if not all are currently under appeal.

One of the premises is that the terrible tobacco companies deceived them. They were not told that nicotine, tar, and many other dangerous ingredients in tobacco and tobacco smoke would damage their health. Somehow, they and some juries have concluded these individuals had no personal responsibility for their fate.

They were told. The Surgeon General told them as early as the civil war. They are told constantly by the tobacco companies and have been since the sixties on packs and cartons of the products. The government, the media, and the courts have told them for years, cigarettes and tobacco products are dangerous to your health.

Surprisingly now, their illnesses, diseases, and deaths are attributed to these cigarettes or their faceless makers and marketers. These inanimate objects somehow forced money out of the pockets of potential buyers. Forced themselves into the hands, pockets and purses of innocent victims. Then forced them to use their considerable remaining resources to purchase dangerous fire producing tools. Then using unusual physical skill and an ignited flame device to start a controlled burn at the end of a cigarette making the proper human produced oral vacuum to maintain just the right smoldering smoke producing combustion. They nurture and sustain the smolder until the lethal device is nearly completely consumed, and then hopefully put it out without starting any unintended combustibles on fire.

These are unbelievable achievements for an inanimate object, and it’s ridiculous that they would be blamed.

These are willful acts by the eventual victim. They are deliberate. These acts require purpose, intent, organization, and considerable resources by people who know their fate and choose these acts anyway.

So how is it they, or more specifically their surrogates, successfully argue that these inanimate objects are to blame? Or even more specifically, that the inhuman enterprises that offer them for sale are to blame, and the so-called victims are blameless.

There is a cultural climate for this idea that those powerless objects, or the enterprises that offer them, are responsible for their use and misuse.

When did this ridiculous idea start? It began years ago. Who did it? We did. It began when we allowed individuals to assert that someone or something else, like their mother, disease, poverty, genetic disorder, social circumstance or whatever, was responsible for how they turned out. Abuse, maltreatment, embarrassment, poverty, bigotry, other people, other organizations, caused their situation. We allowed them to use that justification to foster programs, projects and advantages for the apparently aggrieved and disadvantaged.

The initial foray gained credence by exposure and by support from scholars like Sigmund Freud and others, who correctly identified these factors as the cause for dysfunctional individuals and families, but not as an excuse. Just as explanation. I doubt they expected at the time that these facts would ever be used in formal proceedings to forgive people for their violations. They were and are an explanation, not an excuse.

Once this idea ran its course, fell on disfavor, and stopped easily attracting resources, it was necessary to find something else to blame. Something with resources that could be easily demonized in the realm of often manipulated public opinion. All the active deliberate offenders had been tapped out. If they could convince juries that lifeless, inanimate, impersonal things could be blamed, especially those things that have income streams, resources, or accumulated capital, much more could be available. Many more apparent victims could escape personal responsibility. Many more attorneys, politicians, and dwindling state budgets could benefit.

Next lets’ examine guns. A different but similar situation exists. Recently the makers of guns have been sued for their misuse. It is just one more skirmish in the battle to accumulate public will, by the well meaning but uninformed, to stem the supposed tide of gun violence. Reports indicate gun violence is at an all time low per capita. You would not know it by the presentations of some media organizations, or the actions of politicians and congress.

The ownership and use of guns are specifically enumerated in the constitution. They have a long history of safe personal use in the United States. Some say more than 400 million guns are in private hands in the US. There are very few accidental injuries or killings with guns. There are actually fewer than 29,000 homicides (including accidents, criminal violence and Police homicides) in 2002 from these 400 million guns. That’s considerably less than 1%, it’s way less than a 10th of 1%(400,000), it's less 100th of 1% (40,000), its .0000725.

So what’s all the noise about? Manufacturers of guns and guns themselves are easily demonized. The events associated with their deliberate or accidental misuse are hideous, horrible and frightening, especially when displayed in “living color.” Again the ignorant or deliberate mal-users of guns are held blameless. Apparently anti-gun media, senators, and congressmen would have us believe these “evil” tools force these people to misbehave. Just because they were there, these innocent saints were corrupted to commit hideous crimes against people and property. Somehow locking up guns, licensing sellers and users, registering this evil hardware, persecuting all competent people who have one, will prevent criminals and idiots from hurting themselves or others.

No gun can transport itself, load itself, aim itself, fire itself, commit any crime by itself. To my knowledge, no gun manufacturer has ever committed or been found guilty of any kind of assault on any individual or group.

Why this prolonged unreasonable attack? The main reason is, these successful manufacturing companies have money. Ignorant people wishing desperately to do something about events over which they are powerless are trying hard to limit the horrible suffering brought on by firearm misuse. Blaming people would mean we ourselves share the guilt. It would mean years of social engineering at enormous expense have failed. It would mean we have learned nothing about the dangers of poverty, hopelessness, and discrimination against any group of impressionable people. Thirty years ago we thought that was especially true of young blacks and other minorities. Recently slaughters by poor white youths are duplicating these events by their minority predecessors. Why? Because they are persecuted for acts they did not participate in, or because bigots of all colors discriminate against them. No, because their chances for an education or a job have been destroyed by social and institutional prejudice. No wonder they feel the hopelessness and anger that others have, throughout history that have suffered similar plights. It's easy in feeble despair and hopelessness to strike one defiant blow, one loud scream for recognition.

The gun is blameless. People are to blame.

Individuals, parents, legislators, ethnic leaders, schools, governments, police and the “well meaning,” Oh! Yes the well meaning and uninformed, have to share the responsibility. They fostered this idea, believing with incomplete thinking and incomplete knowledge, that they were doing something good.

Shame on them for being so smug and elite to believe they had enough knowledge and experience to make such a decision for themselves, let alone for everyone. How self-assuming, ignorant and arrogant could they have been?