RESPONSIBILITY! WHAT’S THAT?
By
Dr. Jimmie R. Applegate
“When you accept responsibility for your life it means that every single success and failure is because of your actions, and this very fact is often what causes people to keep the ‘victim’ mentality for so long. As a ‘victim’, your failures are never your fault; they are always caused by others and allows your ego to feel safe behind a wall of lies. It takes guts and courage to take responsibility for your own actions, to stop hiding behind the ‘victim’ mentality that keeps you safe from the reality that the reason your life sucks is because of you.” Author Unknown.
The author summed the content of these two
paragraphs in the final nine words, “…..the reason your life sucks is because
of you.” Eleanor Roosevelt said the
same thing in ten words, “And the choices we make are ultimately our own
responsibility.” I will shorten the
summary to three words, “Responsibility follows Choices.” My thesis in this post is that if you believe
your life sucks, it is because you have not accepted responsibility for the
consequences that resulted from the decisions you made. If not you, who is responsible for your
decision should your dollar bet or sweat equity investment not return your
anticipated financial expectations? Excuses
like “But I wanted it”, or “I needed it” do not cut the mustard. Neither does playing the blame game with
statements such as “It wasn’t my fault” or the amorphous “They caused it”.
The recent $26B mortgage foreclosure deal approved
by most states and five banks is a prime example blaming banks for poor
decisions that resulted in negative consequences when the housing bubble
burst. Sure some banks did not practice
due diligence in verifying the information submitted by applicants when they
robo-signed the documents. But wait a
minute, sloppy banking practices were unofficially encouraged by Senator Chris
Dodd and Representative Barney Frank who did not discourage cheap money and
less than effective business practices by arguing their support of easy money
was because of their belief that home ownership is a civil right and many, particularly
low-income Americans, were being denied that right. Banks blame congressional encouragement for
suspect home loans. And Americans who
borrowed the money dangled in front of them say they were deceived and tricked
into signing documents they knew nothing about.
“I didn’t understand what I was signing”, “No one advised me not to
borrow $100K with no collateral”, “It’s not my fault”, or “I thought I could
sell the house for profit” were common excuses.
Do any of them sound like “hiding behind the ‘victim’ mentality that
keeps you safe from the reality that the reason your life sucks is because of
you’? They all should! Unfortunately many Americans have become
practitioners of the art of being a victim.
Another example of using the “victim” mentality
strategy while playing the blame game is taking place as I write this on the
Pine Ridge Reservation. The Oglala Sioux
tribe filed a $500M suit against several large brewers, distributors and
merchants for “knowingly contributing” to alcohol related problems on the
Reservation. Alcoholism apparently is
rampant among the 20,000 tribal members.
But individual alcoholics are not to blame for their addiction because
the brewers made the alcohol available for purchase off, but near the
Reservation. “It’s not my fault”, “They
made it easily available to me”. Sound
familiar?
A similar suit was filed, and won, by 46 states
against the tobacco industry in 1998.
The tobacco industry agreed to pay more than $206B because as Mississippi
Attorney General Michael Moore argued “’[The] lawsuit is premised on a simple
notion: you caused the health crisis; you pay for it.”’ Previous lawsuits filed by individuals
against the tobacco industry failed because the industry took the position that the
individuals were personally responsible for their addiction. It is important to note that when the
industry was sued by the states because of the health crises they were alleged
to have caused, the states won, but when individuals sued they lost because the
industry argued the plaintiffs were personally responsible for their
decisions. Evidently the personal
responsibility for the decision to buy and smoke tobacco products that lead to
sickness and death is of lesser importance than blaming the tobacco industry
for making tobacco products available. I
can hear the cries “It’s not my fault”, “They
caused me to get addicted”, “They made and sold cigarettes knowing once
I started smoking I wouldn’t be able to stop”.
When individuals are not held responsible for the conditions of their
lives and instead are lumped into a class action lawsuit, personal
responsibility becomes irrelevant.
Similar blame games are played at the federal level
with illegal aliens caught in the middle.
Several states and multiple individuals and groups oppose the influx of
illegal aliens while Homeland Security and the Department of Justice do not
enforce the immigration laws of the United States. Not only are the laws not enforced but
government agencies reinforce the illegal actions of aliens crossing the border
from the South. Illegal aliens who file
tax returns claiming a refundable credit are paid a $1,000 tax credit per
child. So not only don’t they pay any
income tax, but they receive an outright gift per child. The Treasury Department estimates that in the
2010 tax filing year more than $4B in child credits went to 2.3 million people
who filed tax returns without social security numbers to “prove” they were US
citizens or legal immigrants.
Given this background do you suppose the illegal
aliens accept personal responsibility for “a life that sucks”? Of course not, and why should they when they
find themselves in a no man’s land with a convenient scapegoat. “I’m not responsible for the child credit
refund, or the “free” doctor and hospital care, or the “free” and reduced lunch
programs or the English as a Second Language programs”. “I am not responsible for the failure to
verify my immigration status”. “I’m not
responsible for being paid in cash under the table” and “Like everyone else I
know, I’m just accepting what is given to me for the asking”.
Sound familiar?
It should because it reinforces that ‘’’hiding behind the ‘victim’
mentality keeps you safe from the reality that the reason your life sucks is
because of you”’. The United States
needs a resurgence of independence, self-reliance, individualism and the “I
can. I can. I know I can” spirit that made America great and Americans
exceptional.
