That is the victim approach, where people seek to escape responsibility for their actions by blaming others. People have committed crimes against me; nevertheless, I am responsible for my careless actions that make me lose things that matter to me.
Since you dislike the milk example, let's use a more adult one. If I am careless and wreck my car, I am responsible for repairing it, or getting a new one. That is true even if the dealership overcharged me. That is true even if an unscrupulous employer bilked me out of $10K in overtime. That is true even if the cop that stopped by afterwards was really rude to me.
Briefly:
• So, now we winnow to "careless actions that make me lose things that matter to me". Yes, that's a bit more specifific.
• Well, if your argument about taking responsibility was effective, then nobody would overcharge, and cops would actually do their jobs properly.
As with the milk example, your argument gives license to the harm inflicted against a person: They just need to grow up and take responsibility for the decisions and actions of someone else.
Again, most of these iterations are about feeling better for having said so; this kind of talk is usually about self-gratification insofar as the apparent source of morality in such cases is wholly invested in the beholder. It's why the common aspect between diverse tellings is that the nearest definition of what it means to grow up and take responsibility for oneself is to do and say whatever that person wants.
But there is also this:
Yes, people definitely have responsibility for others as well. In the car-wreck example, if I am careless and damage someone ELSE's car, I am responsible for fixing that car as well. Even if the driver is stupid, or yelled at me, or was uninsured.
Now do Covid.
It is not insignificant that you turned away from the Covid example.
So, yeah, it's a little tougher for Covid, isn't it?
These explanations of growing up and taking responsibility for oneself always rely on inapplicable simplification.
‡
In 2020, conservative activist
Bethany Mandel↱ declared, "You can call me a Grandma killer". Around the same time, in discussing
harm inflicted↗ for the sake of belief, we had occasion to consider a woman who declared herself
covered in Jesus' blood↱ as prophylaxis against Covid.
Throughout the pandemic, we were told stories about people's regrets, including the loss of families. But by your telling, the technicalities of quarantine and prophylaxis policy are irrelevant, and, sure, I get it insofar as the decision to bring that one choir together for practice was deadly E&O that failed to calculate a difference between just being there and exerting themselves, and even that might not really have made a difference. But, in any case, not all of the participants died, so at least one person who decided the choir practice should happen might countenance the fact of so much damage inflicted by that gathering, beyond the individuals who participated.
Others made even worse decisions. Some took pride in their defiance. And some will blame the government, or Bill Gates, and all that, and in the end it doesn't really matter what you or I think of how they regard their contribution to another's mortal absence. What does it mean to you or me that someone grows up and takes responsibility for communicating death unto their spouse, and chronic illness unto their child, for the sake of pride?
And what do you tell a child left behind, that they must countenance the absence of a parent who died for pride? When they grow up and take responsibility for themselves, they need to be able to acknowledge ... what? It's their fault for what, being sad? Not having the same perspective as someone else living in a different circumstance?¹
I can see why you wanted to skip out on Covid.
Here, what does it mean to take responsibility for one's role in the deaths of thousands, and chronic illness of even more? To the other, it's quite clear what it means for the afflicted to take responsibility for themselves: It was their fault for having a job at Union Carbide, or living in that part of Bhopal. They shouldn't blame circumstance, or the government, but just grow up and take responsibility for themselves. Compared to living out the remaining years of one's life without ever having to answer criminal charges, protected against extradition, we start to see the purpose of these simplistic moral prescriptions about growing up and taking responsibility for ourselves. They are feelgood exercises in condescenscion, intended to put other people in their proverbial places. Do we hope he at least felt badly about it? Would it even be proper that we should?
Consider that describing blithely antisocial dysfunction as an obligation to society is only incorrect because it is internally contradictory; this take on responsibility disregards other people. Thus, blithely antisocial dysfunction is an obligation to
what?
And if you wish to suggest I'm applying the disqualification of other people in the wrong direction, then you are describing a one-way obligation,
i.e., don't "blame" other people while otherwise obliged to account for and satisfy them.
It's one thing if people need to grow up and take responsibility for themselves, but solipsistic moral relativism is not reliable, and thus no useful basis for telling people to grow up and take responsibility for themselves.
____________________
Note:
¹ There is a point at which the difference between one experience and the next boils down to it's someone's fault for being born, and compared to the history of cavalier moralization about growing up and taking responsibility for ourselves, we need not wonder why these arguments still cannot account for the everyday realities of reality. It's almost like the argument can't quite grow up and take responsibility for itself. And, no, that's not because the argument itself is inanimate and doesn't do things like grow or think for itself; rather, the gap can't be filled because it is not supposed to be, as these moralizing formulations are more about the satisfaction of the moralist than anything else.
