Responsibility Is for Suckers

I have a dog, but I don't have a backyard. Thus, I walk my dog several times a day. So do dozens of my neighbors -- but evidently not all of them carry poop bags, because the neighborhood is becoming increasingly poop-filled.

This makes me wonder about the mentality of people who think it's okay to let their dogs poop on someone else's lawn, or in the middle of the sidewalk, and just leave it there. Clearly, these are not people who buy into the concept of cleaning up after themselves, or being "good citizens," or respecting anyone else's property.

These are the people who've figured out one of life's little secrets: personal responsibility is for suckers.

Why We Reward Mediocrity, Miscreants and Motherf*ckers

Despite what all 78 variations of Law & Order would have us believe, it's actually quite hard to get caught doing something wrong, and it's even harder to get punished for it. The reasons for this include:

* Evildoers tend to be smart, highly-motivated or both
* There's not enough time to right every wrong
* Justice suffers from scalability, and
* Most people just don't care

At the end of the day, after we're done bickering about which heinous offenses are worth our time and effort to punish and remedy, the fact remains that most wrongs will never be righted because, quite simply, there are too many of them to act upon. How can we care about child soldiers in Uganda, corruption in our government AND poop on our sidewalks?

So the mediocre, the miscreants and the motherfuckers tend to get away with murder. Not because we condone it, but because we simply lack the Batman-like vigilance it would require to take each and every one of them down AND STILL HAVE TIME to enjoy the positives in life (if we could even appreciate them after a marathon of righteous ass-kicking).

Plus, practically speaking, what's anyone going to *do* about it? Nothing. If someone else's dog (or child) shits in your yard, you have to deal with it. Unless you know who it was, but even then, what are you going to do? Demand that they clean it up? How? With what? And where's your leverage in that argument?

Evildoers know that justice may be on your side, but our universal avoidance of conflict is on theirs.

If You Can't Beat 'Em...

Last week, someone broke glass all along the sidewalk. The glass is green -- maybe a car window? -- and, initially, was confined to an area between two houses. The problem: one of those houses is for sale, and the other is occupied by people who don't care. So that glass has been sitting there for about 10 days, unattended, scattering itself across the full width of the sidewalk over time. It's reached the point where I have to pick Rufus up when I walk him down that block, because the odds of him stepping in glass are too great for me to risk it.

I know what you're thinking: if the glass bothers me so much, why don't I clean it up?

Because if I stopped to clean up someone else's mess on the street, where do I draw the line? Do I start cleaning up messes in other people's yards, too? Do I carry a broom, shovel, dustpan and gun with me everywhere I go, "just in case"? (Okay, maybe that's overkill; I don't really *need* the shovel...)

All of which means I'm just part of the problem. The person who broke the glass didn't clean it up, the people who live beside the broken glass won't clean it up, and now neither will I.

And why should I? Responsibility is for suckers.

Photo by What What.