Take responsibility

If you are in a sharp suit, carrying a logo emblazoned handbag and are heavily bejewelled when you turn into a dark unlit street, with no passing traffic or other pedestrians, it should come as no surprise when you are mugged. Not that you wanted it, not that it makes it right because you put yourself in a position to be a target, nonetheless society still owes you a duty to track down the perpetrators but you did rather ask for it.

When you tumble from the club late of night out of your tiny skull with drink or drugs, unable to composure your standing or your mind, when you are dressed to display off your fine physique, broad shoulders, narrow waist accentuated lined eyes. That you are picked by a stranger, taken somewhere then raped should come as no surprise. It is not that your asked for it, it is not that it in anyway makes it right just because you exposed a vulnerability, nonetheless society still has a duty to treat the assault as a violation of you and to track down and punish the perpetrators but you did rather put yourself at risk.

When you as a non-parent adult put yourself into a position where you are with a child alone in a non-observed spot for a length of time it is within the realms of foresight that that child could go on to broadcast tales of abuse, whether fantasised, imagined, misconstrued, culture clashed or overreacted, it hardly matters, clearly, as a responsible adult your actions would be constrained, but we all know that children or even young not yet adults have vivid imaginations and can slant events beyond any reasonable interpretation. Nonetheless society has a duty to protect the young and prosecute any potential violator or predator of the young and vulnerable.

When you design your store so that in every direction the eye meets a continuous cascade of inviting and mouthwateringly tempting candy and when you place the only cash desk in some deep remote spot, way out of the way of fast selling lines, manned by one overwhelmed cashier with a six deep queue impatiently waiting their turn, dont be too surprised if customers take to walking out with your candy and not paying for it. Clearly you do want payment for your candy, offering it so temptingly does not confer any rights to take without payment and of course society must seek out and reprimand those who do succumb but you do rather ask for it by making it so easy to take, yet so tortuous to make payment for.

If you do not have a head for heights, dont climb rocks, you will fall. If you cannot swim dont jump into the water at the deep end, you will drown. It really is that simple. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions, we all have to constrain our hopes, desires and enjoyments so as to not put ourselves at undue risk. Just because society has a duty to sweep up and care for those those unfortunates who by mischance, lack of judgement, inexperience befall fates they did not expect does not confer any rights on anyone of us to be reckless. Just because society takes on itself a duty to apprehend and chastise those who set out to deceive, trick, entrap or overpower those who are weak, gullible or naive does not relieve each one of us of the need to exercise caution, a degree of circumspection, when dealing with strangers. Society is there as the backstop to pick up all those weird, wonderful and totally unexpected twists that life throws up, not as a day by day buffer shielding us from our own stupidity..

If your display of wealth is ostentatious, you take care. If your are sexually desirable, make sure you can stay alert to the risks of unwanted attention. If you let yourself be put into a compromised position do not rely on charging the other party of misconduct. If you rank making the sale way above protecting your stock dont claim the public are thieves. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions. It not for society to bail us out each and every time.