I want to know what happened to the notion of personal responsibility. Sometimes, when you screw up, it just simply is your fault. Its not because government didn’t offer you the right programs, because the girl at the grocery laughed when you dripped your atm card down the gap between the checkout parts, or because today it was raining. It is because YOU screwed up. What I really don’t understand, is when people do something stupid, and then sue others in order to ease their “pain”. Take some idiot in North Vancouver for instance. He was mountain biking on some trail, bit off more than he could chew, and broke his leg. I should mention that this particular idiot was 15 years old. His parents sued the GVRD because of the accident. Now, I just cannot see why this is. The parents should have been somewhat responsible for their kids actions. Secondly, barring the first point of parental responsibility, the kid who broke his leg should be responsible for being partaking in such an activity. But the GVRD? What responsibility do they have to a 15 year old kid who decides to drive his bike down a mountain? This is the kind of behaviour (the litigation) that ruins the fun for everybody. I don’t get it. If I had done that, even at 15, my parents probably would have asked me why I was so stupid to have tried something like that. And so they should. When I walked backwards off of a ramp in elementary school and broke my jaw in 5 places, the school was very worried that my parents were going to sue them. VERY concerned. Why? They could have taken all the things off of the playground, and covered the entire thing in level grass, and I still would have found a way in order to hurt myself. This is not the schools responsibility, so far as they don’t provide play equipment that is overtly dangerous, such as an archery version of dodge ball, or swings that are over pavement, not sand. My point is that people seem to far too often blame others for the consequences of their own actions, frequently ending up suing others. This lack of personal responsibility is only one of the symptoms showing up in or society. More on this later.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 18th, 1999 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Misc. Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.