Is there now a lack of personal responsibility?

Bollocks! She sounds like a lazy cow who is quite happy to watch everyone else work while she plays on her phone. If she had the choice between work and get paid or don’t work and starve I’m sure she would be able to ‘ work’.

Yes, I think there’s a HIGE issue with lots of people thinking the world owes them a living - whether it’s as big an issue as it’s always been, I don’t know. But I do think that personal responsibility has been declining since the Industrial Revolution and starts in tiny ways such as millions of us not being prepared to wash our own cars any more and preferring to drive around with them filthy instead of making the effort to clean them ourselves if we can’t get to/afford a car wash.

Taking care of your things is a base level of responsibility that SO many people I know just can’t seem to fathom. People who can’t even sew on a button or clean a pair of shoes, FFS!

in a wider sense, I’ve just left a job working with THE laziest bunch of twats imaginable - all under 30 - who couldn’t understand why they had to do, well… ANYTHING at all to earn their pay. Constant moaning about being tired: ‘…. like SO exhausted…’ 🙄, working through the simplest of tasks at a glacial pace to avoid taking on anything else, whining about absolutely everything and taking great offence at being told to shut up and stop talking for five minutes which might have enabled their miniscule attention spans to cope with their tiny workloads. They couldn’t concentrate or focus properly on ANYTHING and everything was always someone else’s fault.

How old is your colleague? She will aim to get her children diagnosed with sn or some kind of nd so that she can claim benefits for them. Then she’ll work part time and claim carers allowance. She knows how to work the system and the system is so crap that it will let her.

Except in the past when people had large families they didn’t expect anyone else to pay to house/ feed them.

Quite the opposite for me.

My parents would never have considered providing activities or training or education or financial help. They saw their job as to feed and clothe a child, nothing more. They assumed the state would provide everything else

I chose to bring ds into the world. I have raised him to adulthood, providing sports tuition, social activities, commercial training, helping him get a first job, . Now I will do everything I can to pay his university fees and help him in to his career because I have no faith in the state, which quite clearly will not.

Thank goodness for parents who can let their minimum wage age earning children live with them until they can afford to move into a house share. A single person working minimum wage can always work another job!

ADHD is not a mental health condition. She sounds like a neurodivergent person doing their best whilst being judged by people like you. All these things you find so objectionable are common traits and she may be having more support as part of reasonable adjustments.

You know fuck all about her yet feel happy to decide her disability is an 'excuse'. Lovely.

I think mental health has become a blanket excuse for a lot of things.

I was sent to work a new contract last week and the woman they sat me next to wasted no time in telling me that she had ADHD and that her brain was a lot faster than mine as it was bouncing around making all these connections while I was talking to her. It didn't take me long to discover that she kept hijaking the conversation back to herself at every opportunity.
In the old days (I'm 59), we would have called her behaviour and conversational style, 'borish.'

She spent all afternoon fiddling with her phone and when I glanced over at her and she noticed me, she then told me in a matter a fact way that ADHD people become hyperfocused on things - but didn't really explain how or why she'd spent all afternoon without doing a stitch of work (we are supposed to be doing the same tasks). The next day she also did very little as well. She talks a lot about herself, and loves to throw labels around: Her husband is undiagnosed autistic and she says her children probably all have ADHD as well as that when they are older she will get them tested. Every conversation seems to consist about herself and her mental health or other people's mental health. I've tried a variety of general conversational subjects (food, travel, books, music, TV, etc) to no avail as she her favourite subject seems to be herself.

I was told when I was brought in (temp) that it was because they had fallen behind with work... you don't say!

Yes true my mother and aunties are in their mid to late sixties now and describe just being given lovely new council homes merely because they had children. Upgrades when they had more children and one aunt still regularly moves using the hone swapper fb group they just scroll through and pick who they want to swap with. No issues with stamp duty or anything an home owner would have to deal with. Another aunt brought hers years ago for a really cheap price.

No ill will that was just the done thing at the time but it kind of irks to hear them complain about freeloading youngsters.

Certainly there are unavoidable links between rights and collective responsibilities.

If everyone has a right to access something (healthcare, education, transport infrastructure, a justice system etc) then we somehow have to collectively pay to make those things available.

If too many people opt out of the responsibility of contributing then it eventually becomes impossible to grant the rights.

Oh yes, I remember the bottles of vitamin C orange and a berry type drink that was added to water. They used to hand out at the clinic.
Don’t get that these days

Maybe a Ukrainian does?

I couldn't disagree more. Your rights don't trump mine. We're responsible to each other's rights. If you chuck rubbish on the street, you have no right to clean streets. Etc (I can't be bothered to keep coming up with illustrations).

Tony Blair's government in all but name abolished personal responsibility, I think.

MIL stopped taking her kids to the health visitor clinic when they stopped giving out free stuff. 🙄

I think perhaps it is more a lack of acceptance of their fate. Every generation has its struggles and has to rise to it. Some elements are better than before, some are worse. Look at your own family and compare your life, your mum, gran and your daighter, if you have one. 4 generations, who didn't struggle at some point? Look at the men in the same way. No one ever had it easy all their lives. That's in the general sense. Taking things more personally, do you know anyone who plain sailed all their lives? Think of friends, colleagues, neighbours your age. While we know life isn't fair and some are dealt a much poorer hand, on some level everyone has a cross to bear and it's up to each individual to own it and work with what they have. These days less and less people accept their fate. They complain about their struggles blaming everyone else or society or the economy etc. Yes those factors might be the cause of the problem but it doesn't change that it's your fate and you just have to suck it up and do your best.

As somebody in their 50s I would say it was our parents. I remember my auntie’s and parents just getting new council houses and flats at the snap of a finger. Single men too.
And then once they’d been able to save considerable sums of money as a result of no rent and Partners living and contributing to the family.
They would just buy houses for less than three times their salaries

Anyone who has ever studied ‘rights’ know that these are inalienable and entirely separate to responsibilities or they truly aren’t rights…if something has a demand it isn’t a right

Personal responsibility is code for ‘we refuse to acknowledge people start in different places’ …health, finances etc.. and pushing that agenda is what has led to the decline in UK infrastructure and society. What it will lead to now is the removal of free NHS services, safety net benefits and a myriad of legal protections for the working class majority.

So have at it for disparaging people you don’t feel are as a strong as you from a place of privilege ..maybe good health, age or some other advantage.

My house was peanuts the cost of an energy bill now …I know I was extremely lucky and ‘personal responsibility’ is just taking from people in need

Yes there definitely has been a shift towards lack of personal responsibility.

In the industry I work in my boss is always saying what a big difference he’s noticed between our customers’ behaviour now vs 10-15 years ago. In terms of taking personal responsibility.

Well, I don't totally disagree, but I don't think it's entirely new. Last night I watched a fascinating documentary about the Hatton Gardens Heist. They interviewed one of the gang, who had been a career criminal and he blamed being born in the war and playing on bomb sites for his dishonest life...

I mean... world events do affect the individual, in the sense that things like the cost of living, the practicality of working and travelling abroad etc are affected. But yes, some people are overly dramatic about the extent of those effects. I don't think that really constitutes some kind of universal crisis of lacking personal responsibility. In other words, they are exaggerating, but so are you.

Yes, I have tried to engage with a couple of those

I don't think I've had an answer to any rational question as yet....

I think one reason why some of us were surprised by your question is that it feels like you're saying "water is wet". I absolutely agree with you. I'm just puzzled that you felt the need to point it out.

I try and keep away from those really crazy people though. I just hope they don't take over in the UK.

My responsibility lies in living within my means, I am a pensioner and can't really earn more by working more hours, so I don't heat my house adequately because I don't have enough money to pay for the gas or electricity, I don't travel to visit my sister's as the fuel for my car is too expensive. The fact that these things are too expensive for me, is not my responsibility as I have no power to change it.

OK - your thread may have been better framed as "Is there now a lack of critical thinking and logical reasoning?"

In which case, I'd say yes but it's far from new.

Re personal responsibility: as PPs have described, people do seem to have become more distanced from a sense of involvement in the world - and, so, from the understanding that their own actions have effects. A lot of people are big on 'rights' without 'responsibilities'. That's never going to work for them.