The Enigma of Personal Responsibility

Practically everyone believes in "personal responsibility", whatever that is.

I hear it espoused as a political plank:  what's wrong with this country today is that no one takes personal responsibility, and too many depend on support they haven't earned.

I see it, less explicit, in the class consciousness of the economically insecure middle class and below:  each person has to keep themselves afloat by their own skill, if necessary by clawing their way up over the bodies of friends, neighbors and co-workers as well as competitors. 

I feel it as a damning reprimand to a certain generation of young people:  they're spoiled, they never learned personal responsibility.

I hear it presented as a core concept in a completely different context, New Thought religions:  in order to advance, a person must come to the realization that their life circumstances are their own responsibility.

I see it as the unspoken basis for most corporate marketing:  it's your personal responsibility (and we'll sell you the means) to lose 30 pounds, control your blood sugar, defeat your depression or anxiety, have a cleaner house, a happier spouse, smarter kids, etc, etc, etc.

And I believe it's taken for granted as a basic principle underlying our very way of life:  what we think of as our entire western democratic system is based on personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility.  So what could possibly go wrong with something so universally adopted and dearly loved...?!

(I thought you'd never ask.)

The first problem is not in the concept itself, but where and why it's invoked and what it produces. Especially in political, economic and corporate contexts, its biggest effect (not unintentional) is to divide and distract and so displace real responsibility from where it belongs. One of the best ways to avoid seeing and addressing a whole-system problem is to redefine it as an individual's problem.  

For instance:  might there be some really big basic problems with our whole food supply, which factor into our epidemics of obesity, food allergies, diabetes, cancer, childhood behavior and learning problems, among other things...?  No?  No, of course not; there are simply personal opportunities to purchase expensive products from the profitable diet industry, to become dependent on the newest expensive drugs and medical devices, to remain an indentured employee in order to preserve company-paid health care benefits (or find a way to earn enough to pay exorbitant private insurance rates, or live without), and finally to spend one's savings at a hospital (and then go bankrupt) fighting some seemingly inevitable and eventually terminal but completely preventable disease.  All these "solutions" are simply examples of "personal responsibility":  meaning, individuals are saddled with problems that are systemic and not individual at all. "They" make us feel responsible, so we pay for their debts. Problem solved.

Another example concerns where blame is laid for our current extreme economic inequity, and where remediation is demanded.  Yes, of course, there's "the 1% vs. the 99%".  But there's also a strong case that a bigger (and more accessible) problem is "the 10% vs. the 90%".  (See "We Are the Aristocracy" reference in the sidebar.) And how does the top 10% (that would be us) contribute largely to the suffering of the bottom 90%?  By struggling mightily and justifiably to not fall into that suffering ourselves.  Fighting tooth and nail.  Clawing.  Scrimping, saving. "Shopping wisely", going to Walmart, KMart, MightyMart, Shopko, Costco, making our own sagging wages and dwindling savings go further (livable worker wage where we shop be damned). "Preserving our standard of living" by buying cheaper "conventional" instead of organic and fair-trade foods (farmers' well being be damned, and earth's).  By doing our best and making compromises, by taking personal responsibility for ourselves and our families. By taking personal responsibility when the responsibility for the whole mess is actually not personal and individual, but social and corporate and shared.

Once we're good at accepting personal "responsibility" (blame) for what's not individually ours, it feels natural to assign the same kind of blame to others, to entire groups.  Our American "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" mythos is easy to turn outward: they (blacks / women / Mexicans / vegetarians) should just quit whining, take responsibility, and get it together, like we did.

But then, of course, we actually didn't. Didn't do it ourselves, didn't earn everything we have with our own individual effort.  We used our "privilege".  Privilege is what makes certain things easy;  it's invisible and non-existent when we have it, and impossible to avoid or counteract when we don't.

Of course, "personal responsibility" doesn't always mean only distraction and misdirection, even in these limited contexts.  But there's enough undeniable abuse of the concept by self-serving profiteers, both corporate and political, that the very phrase makes me queasy, and I start to smell "rationalization of privilege", "shifting of responsibility" and "externalization of costs" more and more...

  

But there's another more inward problem with "personal responsibility".  Even when it's correctly applied -- when responsibility for action really is personal, and not a code word for some phobia or privilege; when it's actually self-chosen rather than being assigned by someone with an ulterior motive -- even then, it still doesn't work.  Here's why:

If individual responsibility means anything, it means that I affect on my own circumstances. What happens to me is determined by what I do. Completely. Always.

Otherwise it's conditional: "When it turns out good", and "When I've made the right choice", and "When I excel but not when I suck".  "When I am going to benefit."  "When it's a little thing but not a big thing."  "When it's something I understand, but not when it's beyond me."  And, yes, of course "When there's not someone else to blame".  (And there are more: we are imaginative.) Whatever we like to assume responsibility for, we do; whatever we don't, we don't. So that's not really personal responsibility at all.

Personal responsibility is either "always", or it's conditional.  We see all around (and in) us that these conditions are unavoidable.   We simply do not embrace complete and "always" personal responsibility.

What's going on with that??

Well, our minds can't really handle absolute responsibility.  First, because it doesn't make logical sense to them. ("How can I be responsible for something somebody else did?")  Second, because a mind can't understand responsibility for failure as anything but fault and blame. But most importantly, because a mind's job is to protect its self integrity (its survival), and joyfully claiming responsibility for every single slip, flaw, goof, mistake, failure, botch, and SNAFU is not a survival strategy for the mind.  It never evolved that ability.

So.  

Stuck.

Right?

Wrong.

We've got another hammer in the old tool belt:

"Not-mind." 

Not-mind is smart and powerful, and it actually DID evolve the ability to joyfully accept absolute and complete unconditional personal responsibility!  

And everybody's got one of their very own!

Problem is, mind doesn't like not-mind -- for the same reason (it thinks) that it hates true personal responsibility: mind believes not-mind is a threat to its own survival.

Ahh, but what mind doesn't know is that not-mind actually loves mind, and is on its side. Not-mind is able and willing -- eager -- to partner up and work right beside mind for the benefit of both. (And let's face it, "mind" as a species -- AKA "human" -- kind of needs all the help it can get right now...)

So what exactly is not-mind?? It's that thing inside that accepts responsibility. Learns from mistakes, and loves it; knows that every mistake is a lesson, an actual "opportunity for growth", and then is compassionate and patient enough to never criticize or blame, to always comfort and encourage. The thing inside that never ever has to protect itself, or take offense or get its feelings hurt, or win in order to prove something. That recognizes that I can't get ahead at the cost of someone else. That loves everybody just the same! The thing inside everyone that places the good of the whole above personal advantage -- and lives to serve!

-I know, I know, that sounds terrible doesn't it.  Which is EXACTLY why we delegate all this goody goody stuff to not-mind: mind absolutely hates it...!! It will NOT do these things -- so we simply learn to turn mind off, even for a moment at a time, and let not-mind pipe up with some little suggestion, and then act on the suggestion.  Give the poor old overworked mind a little break, and ask somebody else in there for an opinion once in a while.

So:  "personal responsibility"...? It's almost always a load of crap, and when it's not, it's impossible.  I don't even use the phrase anymore.  I like "higher self" instead, but that's just one name for not-mind -- you could say "conscience", or "soul", or you probably have your own name.  But that's where personal responsibility eventually ends up. That's the only place it can actually happen.