The Individual Must Experience the Consequences of His Actions

Modern society, in its misguided benevolence, seeks to sever the link between action and consequence, as though the natural law of cause and effect were an error to be corrected. It cushions the reckless, shelters the ignorant, and shields the feckless from their well-earned ruin. This is not kindness; it is sabotage, for it dismantles the very process through which wisdom and resilience are forged.

To act is to invite consequence. A man who places his hand in the fire should be burned. A fool who spends without thought should suffer deprivation. A man who shirks hard work should have no claim to the fruits of the labour of others. These are not injustices but necessary truths, for they arise directly from an individual’s own will. Yet society, in its zeal to correct imagined injustices, obstructs this natural order, insulating individuals from the consequences of their actions. The world is not unjust for allowing them, nor is it improved by pretending otherwise.

In its perverse compassion, society has become an accomplice to human frailty. It places barriers where caution should suffice, lest a man suffer the smallest bruise of reality. And when suffering eventually finds him it arrives not as a teacher but as a catastrophe for which he is wholly unprepared, never having been tempered by the repercussions of past follies.

And what of the belligerent? He is met not with resistance but with appeasement. Soft words, quiet retreats, concessions made to keep the peace. Yet unchecked, he will take submission as permission to dominate. To deny him consequence is to encourage his tyranny.

This is society’s gravest mistake: it treats its citizens like children, and thereby fosters infantilism. By shielding individuals from the full weight of their actions it breeds dependence where there should be resilience, and weakness where there should be strength.

The child must touch the flame to know its bite. A man is only truly free when he is permitted to fail.