The Warpfish Chronicles

"27 years on the planet, and I still haven't figured out what's going on."

Hiding from Responsibility -- March 23rd, 2001

Very recently, there's been a lot of talk in the papers about dodging the responsibility bullet. In particular, there's a case out in BC where a woman at a company drinking party turned down the offer of a cab, got into her car, and got into an accident. The company was found partly responsible, for not forcing the woman to take the cab home.

Whatever happened to the ability of a person to take responsibility for their actions? Isn't that a definition of adulthood? The message we're sending is that if you make a mistake, the fault lies in others because they didn't stop you from suffering from the consequences of that mistake.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the extreme here. If I make the mistake of hitting the wall with my car, I like the idea of seat belts and air bags to help me avoid the worst consequences of my mistake. But, if I hit the wall with my car becuase of something I did, then it's my fault. A person should have the courage to admit this.

The thing is, I don't really feel anger toward the woman in this case. Or in the other cases that have graced the paper, where people are going around saying "It's not my fault", even when it's pretty obvious that there's fault to be had. What I feel is dismissal. If a person is willing to go to these lengths to absolve themselves of responsibility, then they're no longer adults, and we shouldn't treat them like adults. And they're no longer worthy of our attention. There are much more important things for us remaining responsible people to take on.

In a slightly different note, I was reading an article in the Globe and Mail on a warning a psychologist was passing out concerning the publication of (and drawing conclusions from) test scores in high school in the media. I think it's pretty logical, and a valid warning -- if you read in a paper that 40% of the people failed basic literacy tests, and that economic performance is tied to literacy, and that you were one of those who failed the test, you'd be pretty stressed. (Whether that's a bad thing is a different point.) It's logical. Perhaps the warning is a little self-serving to the psychologist (it's a wonderful way to get press), but, it's logical.

However, the response printed in the paper, dismissing the warning, was rather distressing:

"It is rather naive to expect that readers will draw simple conclusions based on test scores...Members of the public are not malleable in that sense."

I'd like to know what public this guy was talking about. If anything else, the public has proven time and time again its ability to draw simple conclusions based on test scores, or on any other sort of score. And this person is the head of a Journalism school.

That's bloody frightening to me, if a person who's responsible in teaching people how to serve news to the public says stuff like this. One should not underestimate human intelligence. But one should not underestimate human stupidity either. History tends to suggest that, for all our accomplishments, human stupidity wins out.

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