Let’s stop blaming others
It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it? Behave badly and it’s someone else to blame. It’s CYF’s fault, it’s Corrections’ fault, and best of all, it’s the colonisers’ fault.
Whenever is it going to be the fault of the people who perpetrate the crimes and the appalling behaviour? We live in an age, particularly in this country, of passing the buck, of dodging personal responsibility, of looking to blame anyone but oneself for everything from recidivist criminal behaviour to child abuse and neglect.
Offloading the blame on to some government department has become par for the course in these islands. Children living in absolute squalor, dog shit covering the carpet: oh, it’s CYF’s fault. Maori criminal stats and reoffending sky high: oh, it’s Corrections’ fault.
When are people going to grow some balls in this country, accept personal responsibility and front up to their own culpability?
Looking for excuses and providing them has become a fine art in New Zealand. The recent classic case must be the murderers of Moko.
Not content with hiding behind a manslaughter charge these people now have the effrontery to appeal their conviction. T
Such moral vacuity is exemplified in the recent proposal of offering monetary bribes as an incentive for people to report child abuse cases. That authorities feel the need to stoop so low is an appalling ethical indictment on things as they stand in this country. While one appreciates the motivation behind such a move, the thing in itself is a shocking commentary the level of moral bankruptcy that exists in certain sections of the community here.
The fact is, some people seem not to know how to behave as civilised human beings and providing them with excuses and outs is not helping.
The majority of well-balanced New Zealanders fall in the middle part of the spectrum – Maori, Pakeha, Pacific Islanders, Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern.
They take personal ownership of their lives, mature and selfcontrolled enough to operate responsibly. And they don’t look to blame others if they happen to fall short of the mark.
But here’s a curious irony. Perhaps the under-controlled ones who lack their own inner resources, unable to handle the world of individualism, need the authoritarian and fascist control of a Gloriavale-like commune, living inside a kind of pre-modern tribal unit where not only rigid hierarchical structures operate, but strict taboos are enforced and overlaid with the fear of divine retributions.