What is Going On: Rights and Responsibilities

I decided to start a section of my blog called, What is Going On, and I don't ask that question in the way you would ask a friend that you are meeting up with to go see a movie.  I ask that question in the same way you would ask it if you just heard about something so incomprehensibly stupid you couldn't believe it.  

In this post of What is Going On, I wanted to talk about something I have noticed regarding rights and responsibilities.  Recently I read a quote by someone whose name I can't remember, and knowing Facebook, it was likely not attributed to the correct person anyway.  Regardless, the quote went something like this: What has gone so terribly wrong in the world when the majority of people clamor for rights but shrink from responsibilities?

When I first read the quote I thought that it was a pretty good description of the current state of affairs when it comes to the political inklings of most of my peers.  Now, I have thought about this a lot over the past four or five years and I don't think that this quote is too far off the mark but off the mark nonetheless.  When you look at the demands of most special interest groups and lobbyists, you'll find that they all make requests for more of "this and that" but none of them make reciprocal offers regarding what they'll do upon receipt of "this and that."  To me, this is a tell tale sign of immaturity which seems to be a defining characteristic of my generation, or at least the more vocal and publicized of my generation.  Most of my peers want everything done for them and a scapegoat for all of their problems.  Obviously, the problems I am talking about are much more complicated than all of that but I think that simple, one sentence, summarization will suffice for now. 

So then I started thinking about why that is the case.  Why do so many people around me, "clamor for rights and shrink from responsibility."  The short answer is,  I don't have an answer.  If I did, I probably wouldn't be writing a blog that hardly anybody reads but, I have a lot of ideas and that's really why I write about stuff like this.  I hope to get others thinking and maybe together we can find some answers.

Truthfully, I don't really care for the previously referenced quote.  While I think it is pretty accurate, it certainly doesn't help the problem at all.  Almost anybody can identify a problem but it takes someone great (more often a group of great people) to find a solution.  And that is why I don't like the quote.  While it is true that my generation has it's flaws, I feel that these are at least in part a product of the wreck that is our inheritance.  That being said, I think our flaws are overemphasized by the media that thrives on pessimism and negativity.  I have been inspired by several movements to make the world a better place, all started by the people of my generation.  This gives me a lot of hope that we will make things better than we are expected to.  

Let me know if you find a cause or an organization that inspires you to make the world a better place.