(Planet Me)
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
 
Pay The Price.

With great power, apparently comes great responsibility. But responsibility needs to know when it does, and doesn't apply.

In the recent witchhunts for someone, ANYONE to blame, one theme has become clear. Someone must be responsible. Even if no one is responsible, someone must be seen to take the blame. Someone must pay. Sometimes, stuff just happens, and the best decision in the world can be the wrong one. Sometimes, there is never a right decision.

/ And whilst Gordon Brown may be lambasted for presiding over the financial meltdown of 2007 and the recession, the question few ask and less answer is that Would it have been worse under someone else? Could anyone else have done better?

And, whilst the newspapers criminalise the BBC for not detecting the recent, documented cases of Jimmy Saville's paedophilia, the issue here is about raped children : not about the BBC. The issue here is about the actions of an individual in their personal life. Would, for example, the employer of Myra Hindley, or Peter Sutcliffe, or any other company be made culpable for the actions of their employees in their allegedly private lives?

The demonisation of companies and people within them is a vulgar sign of the vile victimisation and bullying in this world. Someone must be to blame. Find Someone. Sack Someone. Ruin Someone's life. There is a trap closing around even the best of us. In complex situations, faced with a multitude of often very complex, detailed issues, where there are hundreds or thousands of variables, making a perfect judgement is practically impossible. No one person can get everything right all of the time. This fatal trap is closing, where risk is the king and ruler, and where everyone faces immense risk all the time, and paralyses action, for fear of being responsible. And yet this failure to act is a dereliction of responsibility itself.

There is no such thing as an accident anymore. No such thing as a unforseeable circumstance. No such thing as a correct judgement when the unlikely happened. It is always a failure of competence, an ignorance, someone out of their depth, incompetent, incapable. It is always blame. Always negligence, stupidity, and the wrong decision, magnified a million times to see a trail of broken careers, public humiliation, ridicule and demonisation. These days the judgement is always to see everything in the unkindest light : there is never a good decision, always incompetence. There is never best intentions and experience, but a criminal prosecution for being unable to predict exactly how severe an earthquake is (even if the science for this doesn't exist yet). An army of pointing fingers, prepared to crucify anyone and everyone for everything , distorting and perverting beyond all recognition responsibility into some kind of bonfire of the inanities, where every error is a death sentence, where seven seconds of carelessness undoes a lifetimes good work. And, in the quest for blame, the question is never “Does the punishment fit the so-called crime?”. The answer is always They Fucking Had It Coming.

And even if you did nothing wrong, if the balance of evidence can stain you, blame culture will fit the crown of thorns onto you. Because someone has to pay.

Pay. Pay The Price. Pay. For Nothing's Fair.


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