Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley<\/p>\n
All rights reserved<\/p>\n
We live in an age in which the entire concept of personal responsibility has become suspect in the popular mind. This is especially true in the West where secular psychology has encouraged the idea that we are victims of anyone and everyone but ourselves. While psychology is not necessarily evil in and of itself what is evil is the tendency to use its legitimate observations on the effects of abuse as an excuse for moral license. This has led to a \u201cPop Psychology\u201d that reacts to individual misconduct as something perhaps justifiable because the person involved in the misconduct was mistreated by someone earlier in life.<\/p>\n
Of course this kind of assignment of blame for our wrongs to someone else is nothing new. Human beings have been blaming each other for the entirety of human history. It always appears far easier to put the onus for my bad behavior on someone else. What has changed is that our society is far more open to endorsing that kind of responsibility-shifting. It has been said that in contemporary Western culture \u201csin has gone mainstream\u201d, but that only covers one aspect of the change in the ethical landscape. Beyond that behavior which is still considered morally repugnant is increasingly being excused by resorting to the proposition that someone else\u2019s abuse of the perpetrator made it almost impossible for him or her not to do the perpetrating.<\/p>\n
The problem is that by not holding people responsible for their actions we are weakening, perhaps fatally weakening, the ability for a civil society to continue. Two principles must be adhered to for a civilization to avoid self-destruction. The first is belief in a transcendent morality that is universal and applies to every person. The other is a corporate willingness to punish violation of that morality for the common good; to set an example for those who might otherwise reject it. When a people discard these principles the historical result is moral anarchy and the breakdown of civilization.<\/p>\n
Of course there has to be an ultimate arbiter of the transcendent morality we speak of. In Judeo-Christian culture that Arbiter has been the God of the Bible. As we move towards what appears to be a \u201cPost Judeo-Christian\u201d culture it behooves us to ask a question vital to the survival of our society. That question is this: who or what do we expect to replace that God? Who or what do we expect to become the ultimate referential authority required to ensure that the rule of law, as it relates to personal responsibility, is enforced? The answer to that question will determine whether Western Civilization survives.<\/p>\n
As a believer in the aforementioned God, and someone who is personally familiar with the pervasive influence and ultimately disastrous effects of blame-shifting, I hope the replacement we come up with isn\u2019t the god of Pop Psychology.<\/p>\n
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Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved We live in an age in which the entire concept of personal responsibility has become suspect in the popular mind. This is especially true in the West where secular psychology has encouraged the idea that we are victims of anyone and everyone but ourselves. While psychology is not… <\/p>\n