Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin and Paying for Others Mistakes
The moral case for understanding why people might want you to pay for things you didn't do.
People do bad things.
For this, we like when people are punished. How much punishment often depends on just how bad the thing you did was. If you get into a car drunk and crash into someone else's car, it seems obvious that you should be punished for that. But is that actually where the guilt ends? What about the other people who were hurt? How much are they responsible for getting into the accident? Maybe they did something to cause the accident which makes them just as responsible as you. Even if you assume that you're entirely to blame, the problem doesn't necessarily end with you. Someone let you get into the car while drunk, another person allowed you to get drunk in the first place. You could've been driven to get drunk by a person you love when you got into a fight with them. It's far from clear that the guilt ends with whatever you did to crash your car.
Yet when we talk about the guilt of a person, we tend to limit it to the people involved in the incident itself. Those other people even if they are partly responsible for what lead up to this car crash couldn't have known how their actions were going to affect the future. In a lot of cases, the victims of a car crash or any other kind of destruction will blame those around them. Family of the one who did it will be looked at by others as suspicious. As deserving as some kind of punishment for the small part they played. Being able to express guilt from these family members doesn't end the angry looks. The family of the victims are given pity and support but the family of the one who did it are shunned.
It's hard to say that this way of doing things isn't justified. Blame is easily passed around and it makes those placing it feel better about themselves. There's very little downside for people who engage in it, except for those who are on the receiving end. At a certain point however, it becomes harder to justify blaming people. Like the kids of someone who committed a crime. You can make the case that a child is more innocent than a parent, even if the kid was of a certain age. But even then, you can sometimes find people who blame children for the sins of their parents.
Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is very much about what happens when you want to blame someone for the sins of their parents. Imogen Adams, as played by Bailee Madison, and her friends weren't even alive when the crimes their parents committed happened. They are perhaps the most innocent anyone can be. However, because what they did never got resolved, someone has to pay the price. You could make the case that those who were wronged deserve it. Despite the fact that the ones this punishment is being given to might not.
The line between guilty and innocent is far from clear when you get right down to it. But it's important to at least try.
Do yourself a favour and explore what it means to pay the price for someone else's mistakes by checking out Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin when you can.
You can find Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin on Apple as well as HBO Max and Amazon.