Mea Culpa

Maybe it’s just me, but lately I’ve gotten the feeling that nobody wants to take the responsibility for their own actions anymore. Admittedly, it was never a popular pastime. That’s why we have scapegoats, sacrificial lambs and other such phenomena used to place culpability on something or somebody else or at least re-direct it away from our own guilty behinds.
There is a Latin phrase that used to be in vogue among classically educated persons: Mea Culpa. Literally translated it means, “My fault.” Don’t hear that much anymore, in any language. About as close as you’ll come is occasionally you’ll see an athlete, after making a bone-headed mistake in a game, tap him or herself on the chest and say, “My bad.” A rather lame 21st century substitute.
In ancient times, people expected to be punished by the gods for their transgressions, even when they had no idea what those transgressions might be. The gods of the phoenician, Greek, Roman, Norse and Celtic pantheons were notorious for taking offense at some pretty insubstantial stuff and inflicting strange and gruesome punishments on unsuspecting mortals. In the mythological tales of these ancient religions, people were constantly getting changed into animals, rivers, constellations and all manner of other non-human things just because some weirdo in a gauze nightie on Mount Olympus got hacked at him or her over something or other.
Naturally, folks were anxious to avoid this kind of divine retribution and were willing to go to considerable lengths to keep from being turned into a newt for no known reason. As a result there usually was a long line of penitent mortals at the temples of these easily offended gods, standing in line waiting for a chance to sacrifice something to avert the gods’ anger. In some cases, they sacrificed somebody. Human sacrifices were known in Europe and the Near-East as late as the twentieth century.
This is the kind of behavior that made the priesthood very popular as a vocation, since the priests not only didn’t get sacrificed, they were the ones who ended up getting the money, precious stones or metals, or food the people sacrificed. P.T. Barnum may have been the guy who said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but the concept is much older than that.
Whatever we may think of the gullibility of these people, at least they were willing to accept the responsibility for what they did, even when they didn’t know what it was. The mindset these days is quite different.
A 24-year-old man holds up a liquor store and shoots the sales clerk, but, according to his lawyer, it’s not his fault. He was traumatized by his parents’ divorce when he was three years old.
A woman drowns her children, but she isn’t to blame because she was under “unbearable mental stress, and mentally incapacitated” at the time.
A number of years ago, a San Francisco city alderman shot and killed the mayor, then blamed it on an addiction to Hostess Twinkies.
These are extreme examples, I realize, but they are still indicative of a pattern that is pervasive throughout our culture.
“It can’t be my fault. I just couldn’t be that dumb, selfish, irresponsible or incompetent. There must be some other reason for bad stuff happening.”
Bad news, kids. In 999 cases out of 1,000, the bad stuff happened precisely because you really are that dumb, selfish, irresponsible or incompetent. And you really should be turned into a newt.