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“There are pockets of our society that are not just broken but, frankly, sick. For me, the root cause of this mindless selfishness is the same thing that I have spoken about for years. It is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society, people allowed to feel that the world owes something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities, and that their actions do not have consequences.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron

Something has been gnawing at me for some time now.  It tends to pop up and grab me during little moments in the course of the typical day:

• A driver at a stop light massages the keyboard of his or her smart phone; attention fixed only there, texting something undoubtedly of paramount importance, long after the light turns green.  A car behind our author beeps to awaken the moron…leading to some shouting, swearing or perhaps the international hand signal for “I love you too.”  In some extreme cases, the aggrieved communicator may go a step further.  After all, he/she was busy…
• A harried parent allows his or her young children to roam a restaurant at will, terrorizing the other patrons and intruding upon their meals.  The parents respond with all the force of a light summer breeze…until someone says something to them about their children.   A similar display of sorts takes place in our schools at all levels every day.
• The American people weigh in with waves of disgust at the “partisanship” on display in Washington D.C. over the course of a rancorous debt ceiling debate.  Everyone has an opinion, and few are tempered.   Some wish for the “rich” to be taxed.  Others wish to cut “entitlements.”  None, however, are willing to start at home, with their own entitlements or taxation.   We won’t even vote for the local school levy if we have no children in said school system.
• A defendant accused of a grotesque murder is found not guilty.  A nation of 24/7 cable infotainment viewers immediately decries the verdict, and decides that our legal system is “broken.”

These examples obviously don’t describe each and every person in our great land.  But, in my opinion, these sorts of things happen often enough to make me wonder how many of us stop to think about anything other than ourselves once in awhile.

There is no doubt that We the People are pretty angry these days.  Why not?  Our economy is stumbling like a drunken sailor.  We aren’t working (not many of us, anyways).   If we are working, we’re working twice as hard for less money. Prices at the store, on our utilities and at the gas station seem only to go up.    And our leaders don’t seem to have any solutions.  They’re too busy lining their own pockets, or perhaps indulging in the perpetual reelection cycle.  Common courtesy and social cohesion are things our parents told us about, but they’re not evident very often.  We’re not just angry; we’re belligerent.

Clearly, the system is broken…or so some would say.

I don’t believe it is.  I think WE are broken.

I led into this little diatribe of a blog with the above quotation not necessarily because I’m a Dave Cameron fan.  He wasn’t talking about the American people, but instead, his plans to address the senseless rioting taking place in London recently.  Maybe his plan will work.  Maybe it won’t.

Regardless, his words struck me as applicable to something palpable growing every day right here in our own society, in ways both small and large.

It worries me that, somewhere along the line, the individualism that made our society great somehow grew into something different.  Call it selfishness, entitlement, laziness…call it whatever you like.  While wistful calls for a return to the “Good Ole’ Days” are usually just a manifestation of “The Grass is Always Greener,” it’s my not-so-humble opinion that responsibility and initiative have somehow fallen out of the equation in the way we view the world these days.  That’s a problem.

We want jobs, but not all of us really want to work.  We complain about the jobs we have.  We look for excuses to stay home.  We coast where we can.  We pass the buck to co-workers.  We complain some more. We spend more time on CYA e-mails than we do addressing issues; fixing them.

We want to pay less toward taxes.  We want more money.  We expect and demand nothing but the finest municipal and community services.  Of course, someone else should pay.

When something goes wrong in our world—political corruption, economic fallout, a botched response to natural disaster—we spend inordinate amounts of time finding the cause, the reason….and it’s usually a “who” rather than a “what.”  When it comes time to work on preventing the same disaster in the future, we lose interest, preferring instead to shout invective at and about the perceived cause.

We vote, when we can be bothered to vote, informed only by our prejudices and political commercials.  Again, that’s when we can be bothered to vote.  Rarely do we take the time and energy to seriously think through the issues, and when we can do that, it’s not with the big picture in mind.  Rather, it’s done with a view only of what will help me, today.

We want to go where we want and do what we want, when we want.  And we want it NOWNOWNOW.  If that means screaming into our cell phones about the details of our latest colonoscopy on a crowded subway at rush hour, that’s our right.  It’s America, you see.  Now, if someone else is doing the same thing in the seat next to us….

We seem very well aware of our rights these days.  We don’t, however, seem aware at all that responsibility comes with those rights.  It’s someone else’s job to take care of the sick and elderly.  It’s not my job to maintain the streets or keep them safe.  It’s not up to me to pay my fair share of taxes—tax the rich!  Who are “the rich?”  Well, anyone making at least half a million more than me.

This isn’t an argument for the Tea Party.  This isn’t a message about why we need to cut taxes/raise taxes/give the government more power/strip the government of its powers.  It’s not a call to figure out how it got this way.  For all I know and care, a comet came too close to our planet 30 years ago, forever changing our outlook and willpower.  It’s irrelevant now.

Instead, I’d argue that the American “system” is just fine.  It’s flexible.  It’s as fair as any in the world.  It has withstood the tests of the first 200 years.  But what has made it strong in its flexibility has been the society supporting it. We’ve become a society of convenience over principle. As simplistic as it sounds, the past is prologue, and it’s time to look in the mirror.  Even our smallest actions can have an impact on the greater society.

Our system works just fine.  It reflects its society.  And it appears to be doing that very well right now, too.  Only we can change that.