Sydney's Blog

I think that almost everyone would agree that falsely accusing someone of a crime is a bad thing. It is really unfortunate that people are being falsely accused of rape, as it ruins their life even though they did nothing wrong. That being said, rape cases are very often simply a case of "he said, she said," so it is very difficult for courts to decipher who is innocent and who is guilty. In theory it should be easy; there would be no accusations if it did not happen, but that is not how life works. When there is the possibility that someone may receive a very large payoff at little cost to them, there will always be people who value this money over someone else's life. This brings up a much larger problem within society, and that is the abuse of the legal and civil court systems for personal gain. A very good example of this would be the law suit that was brought upon McDonald's in the early 2000s. They were sued for millions of dollars because people felt that their food was too fattening, and people could not control themselves. They ate too much of their food and became fat. The law suit was successful and McDonalds as a result decided to nix their Super Sized option for fries and a drink. Obviously changing this would be very difficult, and I do not see any way to do so, but it does irk me that someone will ruin another person's life for their own personal gain. 

Selfishness is something that we all suffer from, but it is not always a bad thing. It is our primal instinct to put ourselves above all else; it is what keeps us moving forward. In a capitalistic society, it is what takes us to the top and supplies us with money. That being said, where do we draw the line between looking after our own self-interests and being so selfish that we will ruin other people's lives to get what we want?