Personal Irresponsibility
This is the age of personal irresponsibility. No one seems to want to take responsibility for his actions; no one wants to be held accountable. They duck and hide out, and if discovered they say that some outside force made them do it. Some things that people hide from are important and tragic. Hit and run accidents have become far too widespread. Drivers leave their victims bleeding to death by the side of the road because they are too cowardly to stop and help, and to step forward and admit responsibility for their actions. A couple of days ago an assistant district attorney in an upstate New York county was accused of running down a couple with his car, continuing to drive for another half mile with one of the victims impaled on the hood, then abandoning the car to escape by stealing another. The victim died; maybe he would have lived had the driver stopped immediately and tried to help.

Other things that people run from are, in and of themselves, inconsequential, but are indicative of the lack of backbone and moral courage in far too many individuals.

I own a townhouse in a community where the outside grounds are maintained by the homeowner's association. The other day I noticed one of their contract employees whacking weeds near the back of my house, which I thought nothing of at the time. Yesterday was a hot, humid day so I shut the windows and turned on my central air conditioning in the morning before I went out. It hadn't been running for some time because I generally don't like air conditioning and only run it on the steamiest days. When I came home later in the day it was obvious that the air conditioner was not working; it was uncomfortably hot and muggy inside my sealed-up house. I went down to the basement and poked around with the A/C unit (as if I actually knew anything about how it worked) but found nothing obviously amiss. Then I went into the back yard to look at the compressor and the problem was clear. The control wire running from the house to the compressor was in shreds, as was the insulation on the coolant line. Chunks of insulation had also been torn from the main power cable. The damage was fresh and the shredded pieces were still scattered about. It had to have been done by that weed whacker. There is no way someone could have inflicted so much obvious, visible damage and not have known it. But did he knock on my door to tell me about it, or report it to his employer or to the homeowner's association? No, he just slunk away from it hoping that I would not figure out how it happened.

Once I discovered what the problem was it only took me a few minutes to fix it at a cost of less than ten bucks for wire, wire nuts and insulation. I may be no expert on air conditioning, but at least I am capable of connecting up a new wire. If I had paid a professional to do it, however, I'm sure I would have had a $100 bill or more.

It was only a petty annoyance to me, but it would have been less annoying had I known about it, and had been able to fix it, prior to needing the air conditioning. Why wouldn't someone come forward to report such an incident - what was he afraid of? I am in my late fifties and I don't remember such a widespread lack of moral fiber and character in people years ago. It seems to be a very modern phenomenon. What could be the cause?


This is my opinion. What's yours? envelp.gif - 1664 Bytes rcasaly@albany.net