Moderation & Common Sense

Do people have a complete lack of ability to moderate themselves? I know that it's difficult in our society to tell ourselves 'no' and stop eating that dessert, or treating ourselves to McDonald's, but what about common sense?

Every day I drive I always find someone driving like an idiot. Now, this may just be me, since I have the tendency to find fault with everything. But sometimes I wonder who gave them the power to break all the traffic laws? I'm sure they can read, but they seem to regard stop signs as suggestions, or turn signals as purely unnecessary. What happened to politeness? What will be their defense when they kill someone? Will they even feel guilty, or just assume it was a random accident?

One of my biggest pet peeves is the way my generation seems to raise their children. I realize that the laws have changed since we were kids (and we're not that old) and you are not really allowed to spank your kids anymore. However, there is a happy medium between not disciplining your child at all and beating the hell out of them. Did we just watch too much television and eat too much sugar? Did it completely rot out the basic common sense we should all have? I find that people my age tend to want to be friends with their children, instead of parents. This leads to children with wildly uncontrolled behavior and parents who want to tear their hair out. I realize that all generations have a few kids like this who are just naturally rambunctious, no matter what style of parenting you use on them, but still! Who told them it was all right to parent this way? Where did they even see it?

I guess my main point is in the title. Why can we find no middle ground? If we're told we can't do something, we go out and do exactly the opposite, which is probably not good either. This problem resonates throughout society. Even our government is guilty of this. In politicking, we see or hear things like "If he's not supportive of the war, he's unpatriotic." There are lots of ways to love one's country without believing that going to war will answer all life's problems.

Another example is abortion. When it was made legal there were no restrictions in place. So we went from all forms of abortion being illegal, no matter what, to anyone can have an abortion at any time. Really, there needs to be some restrictions. The problem is, of course, enforcing them. Again, here is where common sense comes in. How do you deal with someone who didn't know she was pregnant? Answer: her common sense should have told her something was either wrong with her cycles, or she was pregnant, and she should have seen a doctor. Normally I am not for forcing a woman to carry a baby to term as a punishment for being lazy or having unprotected sex, but if your period stops for a good 3 months and you don't notice or care, that's just stupidity. There's a difference between a mistake and just being stupid.

Common sense also comes in during legal proceedings like the whole McDonald's coffee debacle. The woman got paid millions because she spilled her hot coffee on herself. Regardless of the fact that the cup did not say "Caution: contents hot," wouldn't you think her common sense would have told her this? I think one of the biggest problems with America is that we keep having to dumb everything down to the level of the stupidest person in society. Not unlike Kurt Vonnegut's story Harrison Bergeron, where everyone is actually forced to be equally stupid, our society is heading in that direction. It's only a matter of time when you can sue the car that hit you after you walked out into traffic during rush hour. "Well, they should have known I was there" will be the defense. We'll know when the country has gone to shit when they actually win.