I bought a digital camera in a supermarket near my home. It is made by a well known multinational company. It worked fine for 3 months. Then the screen went blank. I took the camera to the supermarket customer service desk. After a long queue I came face to face with a young man. I explained the problem to him. He looked at my receipt and said that as it was bought within one year it was still under warranty and will be repaired free of cost. I asked him when can I come and collect it back. He laughed and said that I was going too fast. He explained the supermarket has nothing to do with the repair as the warranty was with the manufacturer. I will have to ring a premium telephone number to the warranty provider for the manufacturer who will then advise me as to what was covered by the warranty and where the camera should be sent to be looked at. The supermarket who took my money does not take any responsibility.
I came home. After being on the phone and listening to lo-fi music for almost one hour I managed to get an address where the camera was to be sent. The whole episode left a very bitter after taste in my mouth and caused a serious dent in my trust in both the supermarket and the manufacturer. When you really come to think of it, you can not blame the companies. It has become the norm in our society to dissociate action from consequences. A surgeon removes wrong kidney. The patient does not get to talk to the surgeon or even the hospital but to some other agency in a different city altogether involving General Medical Council and Medical Defence companies etc.
But why blame them. I and you are also doing the same as without doing so we can not live in a modern society. The travel insurance, car insurance, home insurance, all are in a way, a device to delegate the responsibility. And the insurance company has also taken insurance from another insurance agency and that agency has bought bulk insurance from another company in another country and so on. The distance between action and consequence is increasing at an alarming rate.
As this distance increases, action and consequence do not see eye to eye, proportionality is completely lost. I may not even get my camera repaired or I might get a brand new camera. The patient might get millions of dollars or nothing at all. The surgeon might go to jail or just continue as nothing has happened.
I think this is happening because taking ownership of one's action and accepting responsibility for it has lost its intrinsic moral value. Before taking responsibility of our actions we think of our necks first. As the great moral philosopher Immanuel Kant would have put it taking responsibility has become a hypothetical imperative instead of a categorical imperative.
