Lies, Damned Lies and Excuses

https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1721110-Lies-Damn-Lies-and-Excuses


I have heard every excuse you can imagine and have used more than a few of them myself. So you see, I am something of a connoisseur of the genre. That is why I can no longer abide them in others, for I understand their capacity to disable and disempower. The better one makes them sound, the cleverer one is at fooling oneself; far cleverer than merely fooling others.

I hate excuses because the people under the most pressure, with the best reasons to use and the fewest resources both material and personal to resist, are the ones at most risk, most quickly and most damningly!

The poor, the marginalised and the ethnically and gender oppressed are all the more victimised by the claims of victim status and the cloying self-help defeating sympathy that comes with it. Their condition already brings out enough of the worst in them without that as well. Instead of honestly focusing on overcoming obstacles and being challenged to empower themselves, they are taught to become expert at every kind of deceitful rationalisation.

Their failure, poor behaviour and dysfunctional values are denied, smoothed away and not their fault. If it were their fault, they didn’t mean it. If they did, they couldn't help it. If they could, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Even if it weren't, it was just ill luck that it turned out badly. And they have to be cut a bit of slack, because hell, they are 'disadvantaged' and/or 'misunderstood'.

No one is responsible because shit happens. Accidents and lack of foresight are an inevitable part of life that has to be endured rather than dealt with. Effective management is always just out of reach because of this, just that and merely the other.

I hate excuses, particularly from the young, who should look to us for truthful guidance. They are completely at our mercy for what we give them to conduct their lives. They are cruelly betrayed at their very beginnings by a culture of excuse making.

The people who indulge excuses become complicit accessories to the lies and evasions that that every excuse carries. Worse, the indulger’s complicity in the pretence of others meshes very neatly into their own pattern of lying and evasion, whereby they can pass it off as ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’ which then becomes the standard for all to use. Thus fairness and justice, which should be priceless treasures in any culture, become leering parodies to mock us in ours.

Those who have the temerity not to indulge excuse making therefore have to deal with people who have come to expect that their excuses are legitimate. Ergo, anyone who denies this is by definition 'unfair'.

Moral firmness is seen to be 'inflexible' and 'judgmental'. 'Flexibility' is not seen as weakness. 'Judgmentality' is not considered to be the simple exercise of judgment.

No one is allowed to question the culture of indulgence. Moral authority is denied. Even if it isn't, no one has the stature to presume to know what it is, or how it applies. Paralysis rules.

Calling the bluff of people who have long been allowed to get away with poor behavior and shoddy values involves a lot of protest and indignation, especially if they have become culturally institutionalized. Corruption of this kind has a way of ganging up on anyone who challenges it.

Coming to grips with corruption always has to end in a fight, because no one willingly gives up illicit gains. And corrupt practice always has powerful friends. Anyone who confronts it is putting a lot on the line and can so easily lose.

In the real world, making moral stands can make one look marginalized and foolish, One may have to learn to hold one's tongue.

But defeat is only final if one accepts it in one's heart. I don't. I look forward to the day when the delusional follies of the age we now live in start to deconstruct, under the weight of their colossal size and ineptitude.

Then perhaps people like me will be able to land some real blows on these enemies:

"So you expect fairness! When was the last time you were fair to anyone? For you fairness means getting more of what you want, or evading responsibility or the consequences of your behaviour. You have absolutely no understanding of fairness, let alone how to exercise it.

When you have learnt to be honest; when you have started to be considerate and regarding of the rights of others; when you begin to balance the boundless demands of desire against a sufficiently strong bulwark of reasoning, then and only then shall I give you your first lesson in its meaning and calibration. Until that happy day, you are going to eat humble pie and think yourself lucky that anyone gives you the slightest consideration and regard at all."

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