Dear Friends,
It seems to me, if one can’t be held responsible, one mustn’t have responsibility. Responsibility or authority, invested in someone without accountability or consequences, can only end in disaster. This is because people are people… we are dissimilar in many ways, but in self-interest we’re blood kin. Authority, power, and responsibility all require consequences for unethical behavior and accountability for failure, or else those invested with them will exploit those powers. Saints are few and far between and usually busy themselves with improving the lot of Mankind, rather than living in opulence while lowering it. Moreover, saints hold themselves responsible, accountable, and their conscience applies the consequences. So giving irresponsible people authority gets us disaster and catastrophe.
People who are irresponsible are easily detected. Their lives are a mess, their homes are a disaster, and their relationships are chaos. Moreover, a truly irresponsible person will blame everything and everyone else for their failings. Such people are often a raw nerve. They go from zero to superluminal in one second flat. Often this is a coping mechanism to distract from the criticism that comes their way so often. Other times it’s a means of escaping consequences or accountability. The irresponsible person will do what it takes to escape responsibility. These are ways to pick them out from a crowd. Look for the chaos that surrounds them and you have identified them.
This isn’t to say that irresponsible people are lazy… quite the contrary. Many irresponsible people are very hard workers. This is because responsibility and a work ethic are related but by marriage. I have seen people work their fingers to the bone with terrible results. Such people consume more in inputs than they return in outputs. This is due to their failure to responsibly plan their work and self-correct as they work. They are diligent without diligence. I would also say that simply having the quality of irresponsibility doesn’t make someone a bad person. Often they are scatterbrained but good and decent people. They can’t help it if they cause disaster. No catastrophe caused by their actions is intentional… catastrophe just happens around them.
Irresponsibility generates disaster like a mechanical loom generates cloth… efficiently. Neither of them needs human input, they work on their own. The irresponsible person creates catastrophe as a consequence of daily routine. Often they work very hard to make those catastrophes much worse. Not because they want them worse, but because their irresponsible effort makes everything worse. This brings us back to why irresponsible people should never be allowed to have authority or power of any kind. This isn’t because they are bad people, indeed many are very good folks. It isn’t because they are lazy, many are very hard working. The problem is they’ll wear themselves out making chaos. It’s because they create disaster and catastrophe.
Putting irresponsible people in positions of authority is like taking Sinbad on a sea voyage… it’s not going to end well for the crew. Chaos surrounds them. Possibly the best way to identify irresponsible people is to listen to them. Many openly avow how irresponsible they are. If one can’t be held responsible because of hormones, they indict a whole class of people. where a lawyer gets away with a crime because of ignorance of the law, they’re not just admitting personal irresponsibility, but suggesting all lawyers are by association. When elites claim charging them with a crime is vindictive, for vindictively exploiting law for political purposes, they are exclaiming they are irresponsible. The examples go on and on… look at who’s in charge and remove the irresponsible.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
