1mo ago

We shower in a society, and we are responsible for it

So as a kid, I was raised on the idea of taking responsibility and accountability for mistakes, actions, and work. I have always been kind of neurotic about making sure all that I do is proper, but I've lately been questioning if it's even worth it.

Being an adult, all I ever see is evasion of responsibility.

Evasion of taxes Evasion of liability in car accidents Evasion of responsibility for mistakes etc.

For example, if you get into a car-wreck, the first thing anyone does is try to pin responsibility and liability on you for injuries and property even if you were in the right.

If something goes wrong, it's never that person's fault. If something goes right, it wasn't just your work.

Idk, it's a really random thought I had this morning. No one wants to take the blame, I get that, but the idea of evading responsibility is so deeply ingrained in our culture, that insurance companies use AI to auto-reject claims to avoid payouts.

I could go on with this little reflection, but I just find it so hypocritical that I was raised to act responsibly when American society's MO is the exact opposite in the most fundamental ways.

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I was in court a few times when I was younger. Nothing too major.
The first time, it really disgusted me seeing person after person get up before me and try to tell the judge how they hadn't done anything wrong with just transparent horseshit. My turn came up, the cop testified to what happened, the judge asked me for my side, and I just said that it happened the way the cop said. The judge was legitimately a little taken aback.
What the fuck, what am I supposed to say? Maybe it would have been different if it had been big charges or if I had been less naive or something, or if there was some wiggle room in what happened, but I just didn't see the point in wasting everybody's time and making myself look stupid and dishonest.
(Note: Do not do this. Court reality is different from everyday life honorable reality. Get a lawyer, don't say shit, fight to negotiate a better deal and threaten to waste their time and resources making them prove it if they don't work something out with you. That is what a person will do if they want a good outcome. My priorities were different, I guess, I don't know. I will say that in this case it didn't wind up getting me in any more trouble than I would have been anyway. Mostly I'm just telling what happened to me and how I reacted and why.)
- (Note: Do not do this. Court reality is different from everyday life honorable reality. Get a lawyer, don't say shit, fight to negotiate a better deal and threaten to waste their time and resources making them prove it if they don't work something out with you. That is what a person will do if they want a good outcome. My priorities were different, I guess, I don't know. I will say that in this case it didn't wind up getting me in any more trouble than I would have been anyway. Mostly I'm just telling what happened to me and how I reacted and why.)
  See, that's the whole fucking problem: as I've gotten older I've realized that even if you want to be ethical, systems in society have been designed by sociopaths to exploit that inclination and punish you for it. From a game theory perspective, trying to be a good person in 2025 America has become a losing strategy.
  The adversarial court system is one example, but increasingly fucking everything is like that. Tipping at restaurants is a tax on being nice. Deregulated utilities, insurance companies, telecoms, and all sorts of recurring-payment businesses like that form confusopolies to punish customers who don't threaten to switch to competitors every six months. With digital goods, rentals are misrepresented as sales. There are contracts of adhesion with mandatory binding arbitration clauses everywhere. Everybody tries to screw you at every turn, daring you to go full Karen to fight with them to honor their agreements.
I think its because of there has been a perversion of responsibility.
Like, it's super normal for bosses in the US to require you to come to work during incliment weather, and you don't get paid if you call out, and rent is already barely affordable. Then you hit an icy patch and slide into a BMW.
I wouldn't feel responsible, for one. I didn't want to drive in this, but I am because I don't want to be homeless. It's my boss's fault for not paying me enough to miss a day of work, but the court doesn't agree.
For two, if I accept responsibility, I am now on the hook for all the cost of replacing a BMW, and possibly medical bills. If I'm struggling to pay rent, where is that money going to come from?
Why is it "responsible" to abstain from medical treatment so I can afford to pay for theirs? Why should I have to lose my job because I'm out a car too, but can't afford a beater because I've got to buy them a new BMW? How is it fair to have a lifetime of debt, with no way of repaying it, because I was operating under duress?
- Maybe it's because I'm a pilot, but I think you have responsibility for your driving unless you're being physically forced to do it. Your boss doesn't know the conditions outside your house. Your boss doesn't know the condition of your car
  It's up to you, as operator of the vehicle, to not drive if the conditions are too bad. Final responsibility for safe driving rests with the driver
  ...Also it would be really nice if people didn't have to drive. I never have to worry if the subway will be running when it's snowing. Just saying
  
  If everyone dared to challenge the shitty practices and expectations of their superiors (while actively following through with the reasonable ones), then they’d (the superiors) have no other choice but to accept that the can’t just order whatever, contexts matter and life fluctuates, same as the world, locally and at large.
  Unions are the tool towards this. It’s the convenient hammer a worker can wield to dare build a more sensible environment for work.
  Anyone going against these superiors alone can rightly expect to get sacked or something to that effect. It’s not okay and shouldn’t be like that, but that’s the unfortunate reality.
  Do the same together, and unless they are confident in their capability of replacing everyone efficiently and quickly, somehow eating the time and cost of re-establishing the workflow and the silent knowledge previously shared between the senior workers and the new, etc, they have to bend and listen to reason. And I am pretty confident in saying that there isn’t a workplace that can ever be confident in all that, unless they only ever had a maximum of two workers and a very generic, easily learnt job.
  Lesson here is the old and tired union, nobody likes to hear it for whatever reason, but there exists an effective way to fight precisely this. Adapt and wield it. Make things more safe and sane for everyone.
  
  I was unaware that pilots are underpaid, skip meals to make rent, and could get fired for refusing to fly. If that's not true, then being a pilot isn't congruent with my metaphor.
  My point is that our hypercapitalist society forces people into poverty then compels them to act dangerously in order to secure the basic necessities of life. In such a system, claiming the individual has sole responsibility is a perversion of responsibility.
  I never have to worry if the subway will be running when it’s snowing.
  Nice. Over here the bus shows up when it wants to and can't be relied upon. It only comes by five times a day, and it can be up to half an hour late. I've had multiple interviewers tell me that relying on the bus made me ineligible for hire because I'm responsible for transportation.
  The fact that society views owning a car as a symbol of responsibility is part of the perversion of responsibility I'm talking about. It's the same perversion that requires you to go into debt, so you can prove that you're "responsible" with managing your money. Like, I paid off my student loan debt, so my credit score is now null. If I had to move and find a place to rent, not having a credit score will affect the prices I'm offered. By not maintaining a debt load, I am making my life more difficult, and that is fucked up.
- I disagree that the responsibly of an accident falls on what other people wanted you to do. What if you had to take someone to hospital and the same accident occurred? Is it the fault of the person that needed to go to hospital? What if you need to rush out to help a family member in distress? Would it be their fault for being in distress?
  I think it's not a good analogy for responsibility. Sometimes car accidents happen and you can't pin that on "it's not my fault because I didn't actually want to go to the place I'm driving"
  
  Okay, lets go with your metaphor here. Your kid has broken their leg and needs to go to the ER. You know that the ambulance company in your area doesn't take your insurance and just the ride will cost you six months of rent, the treatment will cost money too. It's raining and your tires are bald. Your kid is screaming and you need to make a decision right now.
  What is the responsible thing to do? Anything that goes wrong from this will be your fault.
  
  This whole convo just solidifies to me that the best way to go is no fault insurance requirements.
Most people (including myself) are cowardly and selfish. If we have the opportunity to avoid responsibilities, especially if no one is watching or if we can "get away with it" .... chances are most people would. I'm not saying that all people are selfish ... if they are being watched or there are witnesses, many people (I believe the majority) would do the right thing and take responsibility.
Which is why we need a world with checks and balances .... we constantly need to watch one another and set to systems where everyone is literally on a stage of sorts. Especially when it comes to politicians and government .... if we leave people to do things in the dark without anyone knowing, chances are very high that they will do terrible things.
- In a promo for his book, Nico Semsrott asked the audience if they would embezzle funds. Most people voted no. Then he asked if they would embezzle funds if it was guaranteed that nobody would check them. The vote widely swung towards yes.
My life rule is this: Be the person you would respect. If you can live with yourself after taking, or not taking a certain action (good or bad), that's who you are. Do you respect others that act like that? You have to live with yourself your entire life, no one else has to. And only you get to decide what kind of a person you are.
so hypocritical that I was raised to act responsibly
Children are also raised to believe that life is fair, and they should not treat others unfairly.
Virtue is its own reward, but I understand feeling like an outsider for at least valuing personal responsibility in American society. Stay strong?! 💪😅
What’s the alternative? I don’t see one. Becoming cynical because of what others do and then starting to behave that way yourself is just betraying who you are. I can’t make other people act the way I want, but I can keep living the way I wish others did. At the end of the day, at least I can stand behind my own actions and go to bed knowing I didn’t contribute to everything that’s wrong in the world.
- This is the conclusion I reached too in a different context.
  I see you're on feddit.uk, so you might appreciate my experience. Probably TMI so feel free to ignore :) I moved to London from South Africa in my early twenties. South Africans are much friendlier and more open than the Brits, and I was raised to be helpful and kind to strangers, except I wasn't used to the impact of public transport exposing me to so many strangers, or the difference in how people (mostly men) would interpret my behaviour. I had a large number of bad experiences, the worst one being a man following me off the bus one night, expecting to be invited into my home.
  Anyway, 6 months after moving there I realised I was walking with my head down, unsmiling, avoiding all eye contact, and not allowing any conversation with strangers. I was miserable, so I made a conscious choice to be friendlier again but to learn to set clearer personal boundaries. It is much harder to look someone in the eye, recognise them as a person, and then say no in a kind but clear way. I'm still not perfect at it and have undoubtedly given away more money than I should have but I'm much happier with who I am.
You were raised right. What you are describing is the “fundamental attribution error” bias. As an interesting side point, you are doing it with this post right now.
All humans tend to judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves. It is just the way our brains are wired. If it wasn't that way, then your parents wouldn't have needed to be so insistent on you being responsible and accountable. The fact is that, it is not a moral failure in itself. Everyone does it spontaneously and it takes a good deal of life experience and maturity to recognize it in oneself and to correct for it.
This is a different point from institutional and cultural patterns that you identify as hypocrisy or irresponsibility. Corporations are not individuals so they can't have morals. At most they can have ethical codes and people willing to police and enforce them. This is different from individual human morals.
- All humans no. Most humans maybe. There are certainly some humans that do quite the opposite, but they are certainly no where near the majority but I think enough that most people will meet them in their life.
I'm also very pro accountability.
I once screwed up and got into a minor fender bender. just a pushed in plastic panel on the other guys car, and a scrape on mine. immediately owned up to it and said yeah my bad and got his info and paid him back for it after he got a repair quote
nowadays, I would first judge the person in order to determine how I act. do they look like someone that cares about how their actions affect others? if not, then I'm going to treat them how they probably treat me. leave a shopping cart in the middle of the sidewalk? fuck you. have a giant ass car with LED headlights on pointing directly into a restaurant when you're not even in the car? fuck you. tailgate the shit out of me for no reason? fuck you. blow a stop sign and nearly run me over in the marked crossing? fuck you. have your shit laid out all over the bus and a bunch of people are getting on? fuck you. standing in the middle of the whatever blocking people from going by and you goddamn well know you're in the way? fuck you.
my point is that I am only going to bother treating other people well so long as they don't seem like they don't treat others well. otherwise, I'm just following the golden rule
Have you ever seen the movie "wall-e"?
So sure, you can be selfish. But even with a selfish attitude, ignoring responsibilities can have an impact on you. You're taking a risk, is it worth the potential consequences? Up to you. And yes, you can look at others and see some people get away with shit. But that doesn't imply you will.
On top of being selfish, you'll need a large ego to truly believe you will never have serious consequences.

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