Becca thinking about personal responsibility

After watching “The Light Through the Shadow” video in class and having a long discussion about it, it really got me thinking about taking personal responsibility for our actions. The way that I see it, the main thing about most problems in our society, whether it be racism, sexism, or any other institutionalized problem is that people are not willing to take responsibility for the actions of these institutions. Many people, both in the United States and South Africa, are not willing to look at the institutions that they have established with a critical eye and see that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. In South Africa during the State of the Nation address here a couple of weeks ago, where the rights of the people to access information was denied because of the government decided to jam the cell phones. And later on when people asking Zuma about this and other accusations against him and the ANC, he outright laughed at these comments. But South Africa is not the only one here who have major problems with institutions in our society. The United States has had years of problems associated with racism, whether it is violence involving shootings between police officers and people of color, or whether it is women still not being paid the same as a man for the same position. There are so many institutionalized problems so deeply rooted in both of these nations and everyone has to take responsibility to fix these problems.

While I do say this, I also fear that some people will use the excuse of “society” as a way to not take personal responsibility for their own individual action. I am not really sure how people in general can fix these problems when people won’t take responsibilities for their own personal actions. I see this constantly in the clinic, where many of the patients at the clinic are known as “defaulters”. Defaulters are people who do not take their medication properly and don’t come in to pick up their medications on a monthly basis. And yet they come to the clinic complaining of either being in pain or headaches, come to find out later that if they had just taken their medication none of these problems would be occurring. So I am extremely weary of people trying to fix and change institutionalized powers if they can’t responsibility for their own personal actions. I think once people learn and accept the responsibility and consequences that go along with their own actions, maybe then people can work at fixing institutionalized problems in our society.