"As Long as it Doesn't Hurt Anyone Else..."

One of the problems that comes with our focus on and demand for individuality, self-reliance, and independence is that every decision that we makes affects not only us, but everyone around us. We are not an island in and of ourselves. We are not self-sustaining nor are we simply self-affecting. It's easy for us to look at our lives and our world and try to convince ourselves that we are only responsible for our own actions. Our mentality becomes one in which it doesn't matter that i do what i know is not right it only affects me. As long as it isn't hurting anyone else i can do what i want.

This is a concept that really frustrates me and gets me upset. It very much reminds me of the the Beatles song "All You Need is Love". That song practically became a motto for a generation. It's a beautiful concept that brings lots of warm fuzzies. People applied it to their lives, their marriages, how they raised their kids, etc. In the end living by that motto and mentality destroys us. Love is a whole lot more complex than an emotional reaction. Love (the way our world sees it) in itself does not and can not sustain anything. Our love fails, and when our lives are built on this concept, they collapse as well.

The same concept is true of this mentality of being able to do what we want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. It is becoming the motto of a generation, unfortunately it is even more destructive than the last. The reality is that there is nothing that we do that does not affect those around us. Everything that we do affects and defines us. Our hidden thoughts and actions are the seeds of our lives. A person who in their alone time sits down and looks at inappropriate pictures and watches raunchy videos is going to have a very difficult time having a healthy relationship. As is a person who sits and reads books and watches tv shows and movies in which the relationships are scripted to draw out our emotional reactions and have no real resemblance to what a healthy relationship should or does look like. These things develop in us views and mentalities of who we are, who others are, and what a relationship is that in turn create cracks and weak areas in us which ultimately destroy us our relationships and those around us. Yet the view is that as long is it is not hurting anyone else, it's all right.

I think that what surprises me the most (or maybe it doesn't) is that there are people out there that actually believe this concept. It doesn't take a philosopher or a theologian to recognize the problems with this view. All it takes is a 12 year old with two minutes of dwelling on it to to put more holes in it than swiss cheese. Yet time and time again we either knowingly ignore the holes to our own destruction, or we don't even take the two minutes needed to recognize that there is a problem with the very philosophy and foundation that our lives are based on. Then somehow we are either surprised that our lives are falling apart, or we think that that is the way it is supposed to be.

Image from goatopolis used under cc license.