Why I’m Angry Today
My brother got his car broken into last night.
His job requires him to drive around Southern California, and stay in various locations while working on IT issues for a major healthcare company. During the night, his car (which sat right outside of his hotel room) had the back window broken, and he had the following stolen:
Now this bothers me not only because he’s my brother, who I care about deeply, and hate to see upset, but I’m also bothered on a social level.
The people who do these things truly believe that they aren’t doing anything wrong. They don’t believe they are bad people. The United States (this is not a right left issue, this is a parent issue) has managed to raise a generation of over psychoanalyzed children for the last 30 years that have learned that nothing is their fault. Whether it be society, parents, social class, skin color, sex. Any actions that people take today bears no personal responsibility…the idea that right now, there’s a group of people playing an X-Box that they didn’t purchase, talking about how they’re entitled to it because someone in someway wronged them, therefore justifying that they violently destroy someone’s property to get at more property, which they are allowed to just take…and yet, they’re not bad in their own minds.
That’s why I’m angry. We’ve raised a country that has no personal responsibility…where everyone is a good guy, and their actions are only responsive to their oppressive environment. In the meantime, my brother who works his ass off, get robbed.
I’m sorry Jason. Don’t let people blame you for this…the other approach…”you had things in your car…so it’s your fault.” As if you’re guilty of a crime by putting something in front of animals who have no self control…
I’m very sorry for your brother. But Stout, this happens all the time and has always happened throughout time. It’s just another one of those “It’ll never happen to me” deals that reside in one’s subconscious. But when it does, suddenly the world isn’t as right as it apparently was before the event.
What bothers me is your uncanny apathy on your self-proclaimed (through action) ability to put yourself in the shoes of the anonymous thieves and then point your finger at some fictional group in your head just so you can tell yourself you understand the situation. Sure, you can understand it…to an extent. The same extent that anyone can. But to try to understand something so much that you’ll conjure up fables to believe, just to make yourself comfortable, is an act that leads to more, bigger problems in this “oh that’ll never happen to me” world.
Do you think that the people who do this believe that they are doing something unjustified and wrong? Do they deserve to be related to? It’s not a loaf of bread they took.
It did happen to me…remember the CD incident…150 CD’s taken from my car…some of which were signed.
OOoooh buzzkill!!! Sorry 2hear about J2…or is it J1…vascular event alert?
It has always been a big bad tough world of haves and have nots. The acuteness of these newly “numerous and heinous” acts can be partially attributed to our “information” age over publishing what sells and to the distancing of ourselves from the struggle that life once was. We now have time for all sorts of extraneous activities none of which contribute one iota to our winning that struggle.
The BAD people that stole these items from J2 are just that, BAD people, nothing more and nothing less. There are no excuses for their behavior, their choices.
SiR you pretty much got the motivation right if not the generational/temporal ID, just plain VERY old fashioned greedy BAD people.
Mark got it right a bit also in that these irrational acts, as measured by our feel good village, are just that irrational. There is no making sense of BAD people, no reason we can measure in their actions…
Hopefully between auto and property insurance J2 will recover some of his “stuff” loss. Just think of the ramifications if it was his winter firewood and food caches…
GoingThere
I really appreciate all of the comments on this issue thus far. The social implications of this topic are numerous. However, I can hardly think that it is something we can’t understand. I don’t know about you, but I grew up poor. My parents never went out and stole a dang thing just so we would have it, no matter how much we begged. We made do. We worked our butts off. We sacrificed. I think that there is an innate moral and ethical aspect that we all maintain. Some just choose to ignore it or justify it away.
We do have a culture of instant gratification. We live in an “aspirin” world, so to speak. You have an ache? Take an aspirin. Don’t feel pain. Don’t struggle. If you don’t have something and you want it bad enough, you can get it now: just steal or put it on a credit card. Responsibility and integrity are traits that are rarely found in our culture. How else do so many people make buckets of money suing the tobacco company when they get lung cancer?