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.
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.