Great article. We all want maximum freedoms to make any choice we want to make but when those choices, unfortunately, blow back in our faces, we all blame others for the consequences. Now, in some cases, it's indeed the society's fault, but in many cases, it's our own fault.
For instance, we love popping pills. Something small happens to our bodies, & we are crying the world to the doctor. We are happy at getting a prescription. But when those pills start causing harmful side effects, the whole medical profession gets the blame. Question should be asked to those people that who told you to run to your doctor for every small ailment & why not try taking better care of your body & health by yourself.
Another case is people immigrating to foreign countries. Before immigration, those people have a nice picture of their future home. After moving to that place, when they are having difficulties in securing a certain level & kind of job, reaching a certain social status (preferably, the same one they had back home), & overall, securing the same kind of life they had back home, those immigrants don't blame themselves for moving themselves & their whole families to another country, all based on a little ideal picture they had in their mind, but they blame the host country. Perhaps, those immigrants should've verified their rosy mental picture of their future home against the reality.
Similarly, people choosing to eat sugary, fatty junk foods & then not taking responsibility for its consequences. People choose to smoke but blame the cigarette companies after getting cancer. Americans want to have their "rights to guns" but when people are killed for no reason, whatsoever, guns get the blame. Nobody is forcing anyone to smoke, drink alcohol, eat sugary & fatty junk foods, or buy & use guns in the public, become an immigrant, or become an addict of popping pharma pills, but when the outcome is unpleasant from those choices, don't blame the society for your ills.
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We live in an era of unprecedented choice & personal autonomy.
Beyond the massive range of options in food, merchandise & entertainment that are made possible by a global marketplace, of even greater significance is the freedom we now possess to make independent decisions about our own personal identities & lifestyles.
It has become an indispensable component of modern Canadian life that neither law nor society should have anything to say about an individual’s choice when it comes to such once-controversial topics as sex, abortion, gender, marriage, parenthood, divorce or any other manifestation of life as it is lived. ...
Our range of choices is continually expanding, pushing far past the limits of old taboos. The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled, for example, that we now have the right to choose the manner & timing of our own deaths, in cases of terminal illness & with the assistance of a physician. Given events in the US, as well as recent policy discussions in Canada, our laws on marijuana may soon be shifting toward greater choice, as well.
This sanctification of personal choice above all else has become so deeply ingrained that, when a high school student in Toronto was told by her principal that she couldn’t wear a sports bra to school, she organized “Crop Top Day” to give voice to scantily clad teenaged girls demanding the right to wear whatever they want, whenever they feel like it, school dress codes be damned.
By & large, all this choice is a good thing. While there may still be sound reasons to require appropriate attire in certain circumstances, the notion that adult Canadians ought to be given wide latitude to live their lives however they wish is to be applauded. Indeed, with many of these issues, such as sexual orientation & gender identity, the matter is not a choice at all; rather, society is simply recognizing & respecting personal destiny. As it should.
Yet there’s another important, but little discussed, aspect to this veneration of choice that requires recognition. At some point, we need to acknowledge that behind all these choices we’re making lie heightened expectations for personal responsibility & liability. It is clearly inappropriate to demand maximum choice, then blame others when the outcome proves unpleasant or unexpected.
That’s not what happened last week, when the Quebec Superior Court awarded smokers $15.5 billion as compensation for the consequences of their own decisions.
At issue in the class-action lawsuit was the degree to which smokers themselves should be held responsible for choosing to smoke in the face of ample evidence, some of it dating back to the 1950s & 1960s, that smoking was a dangerous & addictive habit. The individual decision to start smoking, according to Justice Brian Riordan, is “essentially stupidity, too often fuelled by the delusion of invincibility that marks our teenage years.” Yet, remarkably, the judge held that “we do not attribute any fault to dependent smokers who did not quit for whatever reason” later in life. The court ruling thus absolves individual smokers from culpability for their own continuing situation. Instead, the burden of guilt falls squarely upon cigarette companies for knowingly selling a deadly product. That said, as nasty as tobacco may be, it still requires willing buyers & a permissive government to complete the market. In defending his massive award, Justice Riordan asked: “If the companies are allowed to walk away unscathed now, what would be the message to other industries that, today or tomorrow, find themselves in a similar moral conflict?”
This is not a rhetorical question. In fact, there are numerous other products—some of which are marketed & sold by government — that today pose identical moral conflicts. Alcohol is an obvious comparison. Fatty, salty or sugary foods are other examples of legal products with potentially unwelcome consequences. Yet, in the face of a constant barrage of public health announcements, media campaigns, & political statements on obesity & healthy living, people continue to consume these products. And while we properly celebrate the right to be able to make such choices, what happens when some of these folks later come to regret the exercise of their personal autonomy? Based on the cigarette ruling, decisions of these kinds will be sloughed off as mere “stupidity,” & given official forgiveness. But why should the ultimate responsibility for bad outcomes always lie with someone else, preferably, a corporation that can afford multi-billion-dollar payouts & that’s made to play the scapegoat?
In an age of unlimited choice, we must learn to accept greater responsibility for the consequences of the many choices we make, even if the courts are eager to let us off the hook.
For instance, we love popping pills. Something small happens to our bodies, & we are crying the world to the doctor. We are happy at getting a prescription. But when those pills start causing harmful side effects, the whole medical profession gets the blame. Question should be asked to those people that who told you to run to your doctor for every small ailment & why not try taking better care of your body & health by yourself.
Another case is people immigrating to foreign countries. Before immigration, those people have a nice picture of their future home. After moving to that place, when they are having difficulties in securing a certain level & kind of job, reaching a certain social status (preferably, the same one they had back home), & overall, securing the same kind of life they had back home, those immigrants don't blame themselves for moving themselves & their whole families to another country, all based on a little ideal picture they had in their mind, but they blame the host country. Perhaps, those immigrants should've verified their rosy mental picture of their future home against the reality.
Similarly, people choosing to eat sugary, fatty junk foods & then not taking responsibility for its consequences. People choose to smoke but blame the cigarette companies after getting cancer. Americans want to have their "rights to guns" but when people are killed for no reason, whatsoever, guns get the blame. Nobody is forcing anyone to smoke, drink alcohol, eat sugary & fatty junk foods, or buy & use guns in the public, become an immigrant, or become an addict of popping pharma pills, but when the outcome is unpleasant from those choices, don't blame the society for your ills.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/we-must-remember-the-flip-side-of-free-choice-is-responsibility/
We live in an era of unprecedented choice & personal autonomy.
Beyond the massive range of options in food, merchandise & entertainment that are made possible by a global marketplace, of even greater significance is the freedom we now possess to make independent decisions about our own personal identities & lifestyles.
It has become an indispensable component of modern Canadian life that neither law nor society should have anything to say about an individual’s choice when it comes to such once-controversial topics as sex, abortion, gender, marriage, parenthood, divorce or any other manifestation of life as it is lived. ...
Our range of choices is continually expanding, pushing far past the limits of old taboos. The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled, for example, that we now have the right to choose the manner & timing of our own deaths, in cases of terminal illness & with the assistance of a physician. Given events in the US, as well as recent policy discussions in Canada, our laws on marijuana may soon be shifting toward greater choice, as well.
This sanctification of personal choice above all else has become so deeply ingrained that, when a high school student in Toronto was told by her principal that she couldn’t wear a sports bra to school, she organized “Crop Top Day” to give voice to scantily clad teenaged girls demanding the right to wear whatever they want, whenever they feel like it, school dress codes be damned.
By & large, all this choice is a good thing. While there may still be sound reasons to require appropriate attire in certain circumstances, the notion that adult Canadians ought to be given wide latitude to live their lives however they wish is to be applauded. Indeed, with many of these issues, such as sexual orientation & gender identity, the matter is not a choice at all; rather, society is simply recognizing & respecting personal destiny. As it should.
Yet there’s another important, but little discussed, aspect to this veneration of choice that requires recognition. At some point, we need to acknowledge that behind all these choices we’re making lie heightened expectations for personal responsibility & liability. It is clearly inappropriate to demand maximum choice, then blame others when the outcome proves unpleasant or unexpected.
That’s not what happened last week, when the Quebec Superior Court awarded smokers $15.5 billion as compensation for the consequences of their own decisions.
At issue in the class-action lawsuit was the degree to which smokers themselves should be held responsible for choosing to smoke in the face of ample evidence, some of it dating back to the 1950s & 1960s, that smoking was a dangerous & addictive habit. The individual decision to start smoking, according to Justice Brian Riordan, is “essentially stupidity, too often fuelled by the delusion of invincibility that marks our teenage years.” Yet, remarkably, the judge held that “we do not attribute any fault to dependent smokers who did not quit for whatever reason” later in life. The court ruling thus absolves individual smokers from culpability for their own continuing situation. Instead, the burden of guilt falls squarely upon cigarette companies for knowingly selling a deadly product. That said, as nasty as tobacco may be, it still requires willing buyers & a permissive government to complete the market. In defending his massive award, Justice Riordan asked: “If the companies are allowed to walk away unscathed now, what would be the message to other industries that, today or tomorrow, find themselves in a similar moral conflict?”
This is not a rhetorical question. In fact, there are numerous other products—some of which are marketed & sold by government — that today pose identical moral conflicts. Alcohol is an obvious comparison. Fatty, salty or sugary foods are other examples of legal products with potentially unwelcome consequences. Yet, in the face of a constant barrage of public health announcements, media campaigns, & political statements on obesity & healthy living, people continue to consume these products. And while we properly celebrate the right to be able to make such choices, what happens when some of these folks later come to regret the exercise of their personal autonomy? Based on the cigarette ruling, decisions of these kinds will be sloughed off as mere “stupidity,” & given official forgiveness. But why should the ultimate responsibility for bad outcomes always lie with someone else, preferably, a corporation that can afford multi-billion-dollar payouts & that’s made to play the scapegoat?
In an age of unlimited choice, we must learn to accept greater responsibility for the consequences of the many choices we make, even if the courts are eager to let us off the hook.
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