Other

Everybody Else Does It.. Is Not An Excuse

Everybody Else Does It..Is Not An Excuse

It's been almost 10 years ago now that my mom was stopped by a traffic cop who gave her a ticket for speeding as she exited the freeway. She still talks about it like the cop had a vendetta out for her. "But everyone else was speeding, why did I get a ticket?!?" And always, I say the same thing to this now sad and tired story...."were you speeding? Yes. Did you break traffic laws. Yes. Well then you got a ticket. Something cannot be unfair to you if you admit that you were breaking the law and are only upset because you got caught."

This whole, "but everyone else does it," is used by so many people in attempt to justify one's own actions or a wrong doers actions. For example, I was just reading something about body shaming a woman, and someone wrote in the comments that it was basically fair that this happened to this woman because it happens to men too. By saying that, that doesn't address the issue at hand. Instead arguments like that seek to totally dismiss the problem, like if someone over there is doing it, then this makes this case perfectly okay. The rhetoric should not be, it's okay because it's happening to other people. It should be, this case is wrong, and it's also wrong when it's done to men. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Another story I ran across was posted from a friend who wrote about a case of a young man shot and killed by police for no other reason than he was black. He was not committing a crime, he had no weapons, no drugs, etc. The cop that shot him essentially just thought he looked guilty and that was cause enough. Instead of condemn this ONE officer for his actions, another one of his friends decided to post an entire stat list of black on black crime. It was the most disgusting response I've ever seen and almost everyone let his friend know how disgusting it was. Literally, his friend was not so subtly implying that because there are statistics that black people kill black people, this cop, who was not black, was somehow justified in killing him.

I think people should really ask themselves why they are so ready to seek out justification for another person's wrong doing, rather than condemn that person and/or their actions for what they are.

Everybody Else Does It.. Is Not An Excuse

This is a major problem because when there is an issue that someone brings to you, if your first response is to immediately dismiss it and then rattle off what everyone else is supposedly doing, you aren't listening. You aren't hearing that person or what their issue actually is.This is why there is so much tension running through the veins of so many people because we're almost living in a time where it seems like no one is being held accountable for their actions or seeks to take responsibility for their actions when they are in the wrong. When you make a mistake, you apologize. If you break the law, you serve your time. If you're wrong in what you're saying or doing, YOU are wrong, not well, everyone else says and does it which is often not the case anyway.

Everybody Else Does It.. Is Not An Excuse
Post Opinion