Ideas that destroy Responsibility

[Flip Jackson]

You know, I think its time we all discuss the sorts of attitudes and ideas that make people believe they aren't responsible for certain things. I will list a few of what I consider detrimental to the concept of responsibility. I'd like some discussion and other ideas if you've got them.

1.) It's My Life/ My Body-- This one is huge. While I agree that we can decide to do what we want to ourselves, the concept has been taken to such extremes in these days that responsibility has gone capoot. First, we have to consider that other people care about us if we hurt. We hurt them by hurting ourselves. Second, when we look only at doing what we want to, we often forget to see how we affect others.

2.) Can't Change My Future-- This is more of a religious idea, but it really bothers me. People think destiny, fate, or God has already predestined what will happen to their lives. This keeps people from doing anything productive, because, hey, they can't change a thing, anyway. It also keeps them from being responsible. They think that everything that is supposed to happen, will do so of its own accord instead of by their actions.

3.) Nothing I Do Is Wrong-- This can be a religious idea, or the idea of someone who thinks there is no "right or wrong." Some people think God loves them and will allow anything that they do, because He loves them and wouldn't want to lose them. This is disastrous. This means God basically gives permission to do anythign and everything.

Gotto go. I finish this later.

[Protostar]

One question: What does this have to do with Politics, News, Government? Sounds like it should be in Philosophy and Religion to me.

[Flip Jackson]

Terribly sorry! I really meant to put this in the religion/philosophy page! Could someone relocate it to the philosophy place? I was in a hurry and didn't pay attention to what I was doing.

Oops. :)

[Pooeypants]

Ahem Protostar, if you've been given mod powers, you may move threads that obviously need moving.

[SteveA]

I agree with your views on 2 & 3 but not #1.

Believing your body is someone elses responsibility or controlled by someone else removes the self of self-responsibility for it. Knowing it is yours and up to you to determine what to do with it brings this fact into obvious recognition.

I realize your post regards responsibility in general and not simply self-responsibility, but responsibility for someone elses body is a priveledge that is granted by the owner of that body, not a right inherent to someone else. We need to be careful to respect the freedom others have, especially with regard to something as intimate to them as their own body/person. It's very likely when someone attempts to assume responsibility over someone elses body the "owner" feels less obligated to assume the responsibility themself.

[Protostar]

Quote by: Pooeypants Ahem Protostar, if you've been given mod powers, you may move threads that obviously need moving.

Alright. I just thought there needed to be some sort of confirmation before I did. Sorry I didn't though, I was taking a nap.

[SteveA]

Another way to look at #1 and see the problems of people not taking a private/personal view to their bodies is to consider a bathroom.

Which bathrooms are maintained better? Public or private ones?

Something that "everyone" owns, noone owns and it's generally treated as such.

You might reword #1 to have them more accurately reflect the desires some people have concerning the bodies of others and the issues these result in.

Oh and a sidenote for #3, I agree that there's right and wrong but you've got to be careful with the definitions. I don't believe anyone truly knows what absolute regarding right and wrong. There are general principles most everyone can agree upon but there are a lot of details that people need to fill in for themselves, I believe.

Basically regarding #3, people need to be able to agree to some extent on what's right and wrong simply because we interact in various ways and some issues are important to resolve in areas where those interactions are unavoidable, but as things become more private and there's less necessity for a common consensus, then the resolution of right and wrong is only needed between the individuals in that arena or even simply the individual themself.

So I agree on #3, but just want to emphasize that truthfully everyone determines these for themself. We just need to try to assure that in our interactions with others the conflicts over these are limited and not unjusted imposed.

[northtexan]

Quote by: Flip Jackson You know, I think its time we all discuss the sorts of attitudes and ideas that make people believe they aren't responsible for certain things. I will list a few of what I consider detrimental to the concept of responsibility. I'd like some discussion and other ideas if you've got them. 1.) It's My Life/ My Body-- This one is huge. While I agree that we can decide to do what we want to ourselves, the concept has been taken to such extremes in these days that responsibility has gone capoot. First, we have to consider that other people care about us if we hurt. We hurt them by hurting ourselves. Second, when we look only at doing what we want to, we often forget to see how we affect others. 2.) Can't Change My Future-- This is more of a religious idea, but it really bothers me. People think destiny, fate, or God has already predestined what will happen to their lives. This keeps people from doing anything productive, because, hey, they can't change a thing, anyway. It also keeps them from being responsible. They think that everything that is supposed to happen, will do so of its own accord instead of by their actions. 3.) Nothing I Do Is Wrong-- This can be a religious idea, or the idea of someone who thinks there is no "right or wrong." Some people think God loves them and will allow anything that they do, because He loves them and wouldn't want to lose them. This is disastrous. This means God basically gives permission to do anythign and everything. Gotto go. I finish this later.

Ideas that actually destroy responsibility:
(1) It's my money, why should I have to pay taxes to support (fill in the blanks) for someone else, when I don't even use (same filler)?
(2) It's my company, why should I have to deal with (a. a union; b. government regulations; c. fair-trade practices)?
(3) Everything is socially-determined, so I can't be blamed for what I do.
(4) Everything is determined by individual choice, so I have no responsibilty for the (poverty, lack of education, accidents) of others.
(5) The President has taken us to war, so I have no responsibility nor right to publicly protest or resist -- I should just follow orders.

Hey, let's add more!

[SteveA]

Hey, let's add more!

Sounds like fun. Let's add some random stuff :)

4) Don't worry, it's insured!
5) Still living at home (despite other requests)
6) I already voted.
7) Not flushing a public toilet.
8) I've done rosaries (or prayed, or recited something etc.) and am now saved/forgiven!
9) Using police to do something you could have done face to face.
10) Feeling that someone else is responsible for your actions/attitudes/conditions.
11) Placing blame on someone you willingly follow.

[Livemike]

Quote by: northtexan Ideas that actually destroy responsibility: (1) It's my money, why should I have to pay taxes to support (fill in the blanks) for someone else, when I don't even use (same filler)?

How does that "destroy responsibility"? If there is a responsibility to support something then that responsibility exists regardless of whether thugs with guns say it does. The fact that they want to extort money from you to pay for something doesn't make it your responsibility to do so. If it is your responsibility then you can take care of it even if nobody forces you to.

Quote by: northtexan (2) It's my company, why should I have to deal with (a. a union; b. government regulations; c. fair-trade practices)?

Why should you have to deal with a union? If they don't want to deal with you on terms you find beneficial they can get lost. Same thing with the government. Forcing people to deal with you is the essence of irresponsibility.

Quote by: northtexan (3) Everything is socially-determined, so I can't be blamed for what I do. (4) Everything is determined by individual choice, so I have no responsibilty for the (poverty, lack of education, accidents) of others.

Don't know anyone who thinks that.

Quote by: northtexan (5) The President has taken us to war, so I have no responsibility nor right to publicly protest or resist -- I should just follow orders. Hey, let's add more!

Well let's expand (5) to "The President, or some other government official has used force to solve what he/they see as a problem, so I have no responsibility nor right to publicly protest or resist -- I should just follow orders."

[SteveA]

Thank you, Mike. I almost did that too, but resisted.

[snotmare]

I would have to agree with flip_jackson on all his points, but here are a few comments on # 1.

As a parent of two little girls and husband, what I do with my body, my time, and my energy vastly effects my family. If I party all night long and neglect my family, I am selfishly stealing quality time from my wife and kids. Especially for my kids, their future depends largly in part to how I train them. If I neglect them, they will grow up with a poor outlook on fathers, and on men in general. Rather, if I balance my time between things I like to do for myself and sacrificing my time for them, they will have a much better up-bringing.

So, in this sense, I do not only belong to me, but to my family. They depend on me, and I am responsible to them.

[Athena]

Snotmare, thank you for your statement!

I think the biggest problem is we stopped educating for democracy. Education for democracy teachs our actions effect others. Also our failure to act, such as ignoring the drug problem in the slums (this is before it was a wide spread problem) leads to the proplem getting worse until it can no longer be ignored.

Education for democracy teachs everyone is responsible, and one reason we have the responsibility is, that by working together we can improve our conditions. Unlike some countries where people are incarcerated for criticizing government, we have encouraged this with the goal of identifiying problems and mobilizing people to correct the problem.

Democracy is about all our relationships and morality. Our government is only one expression of democracy. Preferably, education manifest a culture where few laws are needed. This is essential to our liberty and we were making progress, until education for technology threw us into a materialistic tail spin.

How about this- the bottom line of business is personal profit= outsource to reduce production cost and increase profits= community looses jobs and revenue.
The bottomn line is my relationships with the people in my community= operating a business so that everyone in the community benefits= community has jobs and revenue.

Right now US is using the outsourcing model and India is using the community model.
Because in India families are protective of each other and adult children still respect the wishes of their parents, companies built around receiving outsourced work from US, provide a high level of care for their employees. Which country do you think will do better for the next several years?

[tinybear]

The guy who shouts "I have my rights!!!" without a thought about his responsibilities or the rights of others is the guy who destroys responsibility. Yep, when responsibility is ignored, it is destroyed.

[Flip Jackson]

Thanks for all the good responses so far! This has turned out to be pretty interesting. Sorry I ended the intro so abruptly, but I try to squeeze my forum time in between other things, so it is tough to write for extended periods of time.

Steve, I'd like to clarify what I meant by #1. We shouldn't think our body is someone else's responsibility. What we should do is be careful with our actions and pay attentionas to the effects they can have on those around us. Snotmare gave an excellent example of this.

As for #3, this one is tough. But I need to talk about the secular part as well. There are people who think right and wrong don't exist, maybe because there is no God, so no definate boundaries can be set. This too causes problems because, if there is no wrong, then how can there be responsibility. We have to recognize that right andf wrong exist, then we need to be careful about the exact definitions. Key Point. We also have to recognize that each of us has the ability to do the wrong things. By seeing that we can make errors, we take responsibility for correcting those errors.

Definition of wrong things? Here are a few. Murder. Theft. Assault. Most people know about these, but what about the fuzzier points? Well, we have to be careful here but some general rules apply. 1.) Am I taking care of something I caused? Raising kids, cleaning messes you make, fixing something you broke, admitting to an error that could have harmed someone else if left unmentioned. Not doing these things could be considered wrong or irresponsible, although to different degrees. 2.) Am I taking advantage of someone? This might include passing your kids off to someone else, putting people on guilt trips to get your way, using a nice person to get your work done, cheating off someone and getting credit for thier work. You get the idea. People do these things to "pass" responsibility, but they are obviously wrong, or seem to be to me.

I am sure more rules could be formulated. But merely the recognition of right and wrong, and the realization that what we do could be wrong, is enough to keep responsibility alive, even without clear cut boundaries.

[Flip Jackson]

Mike, I thin kI have seen and heard of people who think like the cases in northtexan's (3) and (4).

For example, the socially determined thing. Some people might think affirmative action falls under that category. "Society has put me in a harder position, so I will let someone else make my way easier." Now I have heard some good arguments for affirmative action, so before you chew me out, remember I was just giving an example.

And plenty of people think that because everyone chooses where their life takes them, we don't have to care for others. "The poor people are poor because they were lazy, or didn't try hard enough. They chose to be where they are, so I shouldn't have to support them through my taxes." This destroys a lot of responsibility

That leads to my Number 4.
4.) Thinking we got where we are on our own. While we should work hard and expect others to do the same, we should almost never push aside reponsibility because we don't think someone has worked hard enough to earn our help. How arrogant is this? No one can achieve what they do entirely on their own. We all need help now and then, and we have a reponsibility to help society as a whole. We should help others, then they in turn should help as soon as they are able. Societal responsiblity is a cycle, one has about reached its end in our day, unless we start realizing that we aren't the only people that are important.

[SteveA]

Definition of wrong things? Here are a few. Murder. Theft. Assault. Most people know about these, but what about the fuzzier points? Well, we have to be careful here but some general rules apply. 1.) Am I taking care of something I caused? Raising kids, cleaning messes you make, fixing something you broke, admitting to an error that could have harmed someone else if left unmentioned. Not doing these things could be considered wrong or irresponsible, although to different degrees. 2.) Am I taking advantage of someone? This might include passing your kids off to someone else, putting people on guilt trips to get your way, using a nice person to get your work done, cheating off someone and getting credit for thier work. You get the idea. People do these things to "pass" responsibility, but they are obviously wrong, or seem to be to me.

Sounds good to me. Yes, I agree with you on these.

There's the still another issue at least from the ever present political spectre that I seem to drag around in conversations ... let's a assume a few people in some society, whether or not they understand or agree with them, simply don't follow these. They expect other people to take care of their children, they don't clean up after themselves, or want to live in your home etc.

How do you address these? There seem to be 3 possible solutions to me:

1) Use a bunch of police and laws to micromanage everything.

2) Tolerate it and try to live with the consequences (this seems difficuly because it doesn't provide any way to resolve things and can't ultimately allow things to continually get worse as fewer and fewer people want to pull their weight)

3) Good fences make good neighbors approach - simply put, people are held responsible to live with the consequences of their own actions.

I think the history of our country was originally a combination of #3 and #2. Then we tried to use #2 as a model but some people have a hard time with this so we're trying #1 and it's not working either - we create too many laws and people disagree on details, and the costs and harm done by this are too large. I think #3 is the best way to deal with irresponsible people. It's simple and intuitive. You don't even have to predetermine what's right or wrong really, except for the few obvious ones and people can learn what's right or wrong from there on because they directly see what results from their actions. The problem is some of these people don't want #3 available. They see people in terms of global/national/social/military/democratic/environmental etc. and don't leave much elbowroom. What to do? I think many people have been trying #1 and #2 for a long time without any real success. We need something new. What's are your recommendations, Flip?

[Flip Jackson]

I thought of a number 5. Steve, I will answer your question. I am trying to formulate the best answer I can muster, so be patient.

5.) With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility- While on the surface this seems like a fair concept, it has major problems. We are bombarded with this kind of thing. Think about all the superhero movies. The quote "With great power comes great responsibility" is actually from Spiderman. So where is the problem?
The problem is that it is implied that only those with power have the great responsibility. We don't have authority, superpowers, or the ability to change things, so it isn't our responsibility. WRONG! The responsibility lies with every one of us. For those of you who saw Spiderman 2, there is that part where the main guy lost his powers, and walks right past this dude that is getting mugged. This is the problem! How many of us walk by other people who need help because it's "not our problem?"

In this day, we aren't encouraged to step up enough. We can all make things better. We don't need great power to take responsibility for other people and things.

Here is Flip Jackson's challenge to you. Don't wait for someone else to get something done. Do it yourself. Step up and take charge over what is going on. Do it now!

[Flip Jackson]

I am finally going to take a stab at how we deal with people who do not feel like living up to the responsibility. I haven't had an epiphany or anything, but I thought I should answer before this thread was completely forgotten.

The three solutions you gave all work in certain areas, to certain extents, but are all lacking or faulty somewhere, as you seem to have noticed. The problem with one is that if you are using laws to manage responsiblity, then the laws could get out of control as authorities decided what our responsibilities are. Such as being required to give up your house to a corporation that will provide more income for the city. A foolish law that pushes responsibility off of a corporation. Also with one, we do not have the means to police everyone into being responsible. It is impossible. Laws would be broken everywhere. We should not make laws that cannot be realisticly enforced. Otherwise their existence is useless.

The problem with two seems obvious to me. If you just allow people to meander around not taking care of what they cause, then laziness spreads like wild fire. When other people see that someone is getting away with the easy life, then they think it is ok for thwem to do the same. I think has happened majorly in society today. We see so many people taking the easy way out and figure it will work for us too. Then we the problems of our irresponsibilities arise, the buck is passed all over the place. We CANNOT just allow this type of behavior.

Three seems to be the best answer at first, but only if we could have perfect understanding of everyone's situation. How can people, who are naturally objective, decide when another person has received the consequences of their actions, or if they have just been dealt a poor hand? We generally say that our situation isn't our fault, but everyone else is eating the fruit of their labor. I think that we should make people responsible for their situation, but shouldn't shun responsibility to help those who earnestly try.

So where do we draw the line? How do we solve this dilemma? The three possible solutions seem to all have negative effects. I cannot give an answer that will fix everything, but I will try to explain what I think is necessary for us to head the right direction. I'll save that for the next post.

[Flip Jackson]

First, we must make marriage and divorce more difficult, especially divorce. Also we need to educate people better on how difficult relationships really are. Why is this important? Because families are the smallest unit we have. That is ultimately where all the blame lands if things are going wrong. Families should be the ones aiding each other, not the government. If your brother is in a tight spot, then you should help him out, not let welfare cover him.

Many people make think families aren't important, but think about it. How could our country function if their were no familial ties at all? So many laws and responsibilities rely on family.

Here is what I think. If you have a kid buy someone you aren't married to, you should have to get married. Why? Because a kid is now involved. You have given up part of your life to bring that kid into being and should bear the burden of raising it. No amount of money could cut it. When one parent bails, the child will think responisibility isn't necessary. If you get married and have a kid, divorce should be nigh impossible, because a kid is involved. This forces parents to take care of their kids, and imprints the kids with the impotance of finishing what you start.

If this basic foundation is made and strengthened, then many other problems will fade. If parents have to stay together and actually work things out instead of ditching at the first scuffle or argument, then the families will learn to live together and take care of each other. Then the family will help those members in need. Hurricane victims can take shelter at a relatives house for a bit, instead of expecting everyone else and the government to handle things. If we had many strong families, the responsibility would be one them, and we wouldn't need laws to fix all the problems.

Good families are necessary to instill reponsibility in people.

Second, I would change the way we handle education. Almost no responsibility is required to pass public eduation. We want kids to graduate so much, we fudge rules, ignore rampant cheating, and give bonus out the wazoo. Kids learn no responsibility from school these days. To fix this, cheating would have to be cracked down on. More in class work, to make sure the kids do their own stuff. Also, don't make rules that won't be enforced, and strictly enforce the rules that arer made.