I've been looking at several events in the past and how people reacted on the Internet. As a result, an interesting question recently came out of me: have we, as a people, finally lost all senses of compassion to the near-fanatical obsession on responsibility? Have we finally become desensitized to our natural filter -- our empathy -- and fallen victim to the cold, lifeless, and almost mechanical calm of the impersonal society?
Responsibility has always been dreadful for me. It's a word I'd prefer never to hear, a feeling that just keeps scratching away at my stomach, making it turn in agitation. There is nothing biological that demands every one of us maintain some sort of mandatory responsibility that we would otherwise not want. And yet, as a culture, we have embraced responsibility -- work, study; routine suffering, pain, misery, and just about everything unpleasant -- as punishment for fulfilling ourselves.
Of course, we need to have people working, taking some sort of responsibility, and being productive in order to have a self-sufficient society. But I think it's quite a ludicrous thought to immediately go from this point to the assumption that personal responsibility is somehow required of all people, and that to take no responsibility somehow burdens others and even society as a whole.
Many people speak of biological evolution as an example and maintain that it should also be the norm in society as well (i.e., survival of the fittest). Others simply follow the libertarian school of thought, thinking that it's up to each individual to work and toil for their own survival. Whatever their reasons and assumptions are, I find that they have sacrificed their empathy and compassion for ideological agendas.
Personal responsibility is a term that probably calls to mind many negative results that the lack of it may supposedly lead to. Frivolous lawsuits, poverty, and endangerment of life and things ("property") are probably amongst the most popular images people visualize. I find it incredible that society has allowed this cultural prejudice to go so far that compassion and empathy have become nothing but weasel words.
Do I need to point to anything but Darwin Awards, an apparent attempt at humour that reeks of blind contempt to me and feels like a spiteful move to marginalize critics and non-participants of the ideology of personal responsibility? Its popularity on the Internet is certainly undeniable, and I have so selfdom encountered criticisms of the meme that it seems like a cultural norm.
I suspect the desensitization to tragedy introduced by the frivolous depiction of poverty, decadence, and death in popular culture has thoroughly worn out our empathy towards fellow human beings. And indeed, we only need to look back in time at parallels.
Has responsibility to the state not for a long time been a prevalent cultural bias in history? Hasn't that responsibility overridden compassion and empathy numerous times? Warfare, I suppose, is a great example. It was more glorious to fulfill responsibility to the state, to fight to the death, than to feel compassion for the war dead on either side.
More troubling than that, for example, were the unexpected results of the feminist movements; whereas the activism brought more rights to women, its many failures also produced an ugly progeny. Women were encouraged to become more like men, even though their place in society had not changed dramatically enough to justify this. Therefore, the sense of responsibility as traditionally applicable to men also came upon women, without enough of the associated rewards.
It's my belief and philosophy that when people decide they are good enough to challenge their own assigned places in society, they are welcome to do so, but to force that challenge and the subsequent changes on everyone is extremely foolhardy.
Would I prefer that all humans beings be treated equally as people of average intelligence and abilities? Certainly, and those that are more intelligent would be encouraged to exceed expectations and excel. Nevertheless, it is when these people decide that all human beings need to be subject to the same criteria set for the exceptional that I feel things are getting out of hand. This is precisely why I still consider myself a conservative, even though I identify more with far-left anarchists.
The criteria I speak of here, of course, would include responsibility. I need to stress that those who feel they can take extra responsibility should be commended, but those who cannot should not be reprimanded, punished, or marginalized; they also should not be forced to bear more responsibility than they can handle.
Thus, I believe that society needs to recognize this new idea and do away with old prejudices regarding responsibility. Some people simply aren't born to handle it, and as much as advocates of survival of the fittest may think to the contrary, human beings as a species do not always need to obey biological tendencies, especially when they are twisted theories that serve a specific social agenda.
What we may do to alleviate the stress and workload is to destroy our reliance on discipline and expectations and the wrong assumption that everyone needs to take some sort of responsibility in their own lives. People need to have a passion in what they do and not feel like they are carrying a heavy burden and walking uphill all the time. People need to have compassion and empathy on and from others, so that they learn to maximize safety while minimizing the need to show disdain towards others for being not strong enough (whether physically, mentally, or psychologically) to survive in a harsh environment.
I truly wonder why so many people jeer at my idea. It may not lead us to a utopia, but it sure will make the world a nicer place.
