Time that some responsibility was taken

There seems to be an issue of accountability today. It appears that somewhere along the line, personal responsibility was unceremoniously thrown out the window, and replaced with a widespread notion that anyone can do anything they want, and not suffer the consequences of their actions.

I write this from the perspective of a young adult male. Last weekend I went to a party in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, where a young man allegedly did something incredibly stupid.

This young man allegedly got in his super hotted-up sports car, drunk, in the middle of the night. He then allegedly drove it very fast up and down the street where the party was being hosted, until he crashed it through the front fence and into the yard of an innocent person. Idiot!

Luckily, he escaped with minor cuts and bruises, and no one else was hurt.

The action itself however, is not the worst part, rather the thought processes of those involved in the immediate aftermath of the incident, are.

For some reason the reaction was not, ‘I’ve done something stupid, now I’m in trouble, better ‘fess up and cop it on the chin,’ but instead, ‘how do I cover this up so that I don’t get into trouble?’

After a ‘meeting-of-minds’ to which I was not privy, the decision was apparently taken that the best way to deal with the moronic and potentially very dangerous actions of this young man, was to intentionally mislead the police investigation into the incident in an attempt to escape punishment.

And therein lies the problem. These young men, have completely missed the point, so I’ll spell it out very clearly for them.

Your friend did something stupid. Your friend will be caught, and he will be punished for it. Coming up with excuses to try and deceive the law will only land everyone involved in a lot more trouble. The only way to deal with such problems is to accept responsibility for your own actions.

It is an age-old paradigm, but every action has consequences, and if you don’t wish to suffer the consequences of your own stupidity, don’t do anything stupid.
Simple. The next simple step is to make the consequences match the crime.

Thomas Andronas is a regular contributor to NKEE and works at 3AW.