OpieCunningham

When people refer to the problems of welfare they often state that people need to take responsibility for their actions.

Same applies to living a healthy lifestyle - don't eat at McDonalds. Don't drink sodas. Exercise. Be responsible.

What does that mean - "be responsible"? Is responsibility an inherent human attribute? Are we all born with it?

What does it mean to be irresponsible? Is it irresponsible to eat a McDonalds salad instead of a McDonalds hamburger?

Does your concept of responsibility and irresponsibility mean that nothing that impacts your life is out of your control?

Is it irresponsible to be born to parents who are irresponsible?

(I put this in Politics because 'being responsible' is frequently offered as the final solution to so many problems and issues in society for which political 'solutions' are commonly used.)

djtestudo

Responsibility is acting in a way that doesn't hurt others. It is also knowing when to do something that adversly affects you in order to help another.

That's about the best I can come up with. Personally, I think this is better placed in Tilded Philosophy, but I see why you put it here

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powerclown

It can mean a lot of things.
The definition I'll offer is: "Being accountable for your actions."

OpieCunningham

Being accountable for your actions is post-factum. A responsible act versus an irresponsible act requires prior intention.

Or is it irresponsible to do something you believe is responsible only to find out it was, in fact, irresponsible? Are you responsible for consequences of an action for which you believe there are no negative results?

Cynthetiq

responsibilty and irresponsibility are culturally distinguished in the context you are using them.

In Iceland, they bundle up the baby and leave the baby outside in the winter time with temperatures in the low 30's sometimes the 20's. In US we'd never leave a baby outside in the cold.

I use this definition:
responsibility

n 1: the social force that binds you to your obligations and the courses of action demanded by that force; "we must instill a sense of duty in our children"; "every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty"- John D.Rockefeller Jr [syn: duty, obligation]

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OpieCunningham

So responsibility is conformity to society?

Who dictates society?

Society changes constantly - therefore what is deemed responsibile and what is deemed irresponsible shifts accordingly.

As such, something which you perceive as a responsible course in this society may be perceived by someone else in the same society as an irresponsible course, dependant on each of your perceptions of society in accordance with societal shifts.

Sounds like there is no such thing as responsibility and irresponsibility as it applies to a society as a whole. They are not objective to a society even as some aspects of each may be mutually agreed upon by everyone, or many, or few within a society.

In which case it comes back to the individual - the individuals perceptions of society dictate what they feel is essentially responsible and what is not. The lower overall experience of an individual in society, the lower degree of mutually agreed responsibility within that society.

Experience and education drive an individuals ability to recognize conforming responsible actions within their society.

So how does one use responsibility to determine the worthiness of another?

ubertuber

Opie,

I am confused by your response.

Are you saying that you could not make a case that what is meant by responsibility is having prior intention to be accountable for your actions and then a post factum commitment to following through with that, even if those consequences are not predicted? To be honest, whether or not you believe that this definition is appropriate, I think it is what most people mean when they use the phrase "be responsible".

To answer your last question, yes, I believe one is responsible for the consequences arising from an action which that person believed had no negative results. Making mistakes is not easy or fun, but all of us do it. As I see it, taking responsibility for the results of our mistakes is important.

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powerclown

It might help the discussion if we take this out of the world of abstraction and into reality? Can you cite an example of what you might mean?

ARTelevision

The idea of personal responsibility sounds good. I see it as a concept most typically applied to others - in the sense they are accused of lacking it. I almost never see anyone using it in any other way than to blame other people for not taking responsibility for their lives, etc. Such defensiveness borders on denial. Personal responsibility is something that is either enforced or it doesn't happen in most people's lives.

It takes a lot to convince me that anyone ever takes personal responsibility for anything. To assume so can't just be naivete because many good people who are not naïve are very passionate about “personal responsibility” being the way to fix most of our human problems. But I think what they're doing is substituting idealism for practical possibility.

IMO, personal responsibility is either enforced or it doesn't exist in any statistically significant way. The same goes for social responsibility - except it's even more rare than personal responsibility. I don't accept people proclaiming their personal and social responsibility from the rooftop. Self-serving rhetoric isn't the same as the way things actually are.

The problem is one of proper perspective on idealism and its place in the scheme of things. Wishful thinking doesn't make things so. What makes things so is negotiating from positions of power in the real world. As far as humans are concerned, power and fear trump everything else - especially idealistic hopes and dreams. We either enforce things that are desirable for optimal societal performance or they do not occur - except among a tiny minority of personally and socially responsible individuals. This group is statistically insignificant and can not be taken as a representative sample of the human condition.

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prb

Responsibility:
If you open it, close it.
If you turn it on, turn it off.
If you break it, fix it.
If you make a mess, clean it up.
First, try to avoid harming others, but if you do harm someone through carelessness,make it right.

roachboy

there is a considerable gap between what folk might undserstand and assume as their personal responsibility and how the term "personal resposibility" functions are a political trope---like kierkegaard said, the former is mostly an inward thing, where the latter is ironic, in that there is necessarily a gap between what it ostenibly refers to and what its signifieds come to be.

politically, the notion of "personal responsibility" is a favorite amongst those who, often against their own interests, argue for privatization, for example. it is an empty term that functions in opposition to a series of equally empty terms that "designate" the effects of state functions like the redistribution of wealth.

the function of this set of empty terms is to operate as a figleaf behind which the contraction fo the state can occur and be legitimated---a reduction that is about reducing the political risks for the state in a period of considerable uncertainty. and nothing other than that.

for example, you have a reconfiguration of the requirements corporations would impose on the labor pool--requirements in terms of training say, which there is no coherent plan to address, because along with that comes the question of what to do with entire segments of the population that once might have been understood as working class in a context where the functions they used to fulfill have been either eliminated through technological development or shipped away to lower-pay more repressive locations (o those pesky unions and their unreasoable demands that workers be paid enough to live)....

having no idea of how to react, and faced with a political problem on top of it that makes considerations impossible to voice publically, the best route is retreat.
and if you can figure out a way to misdirect people by floating false oppositions and empty terminologies to cover that retreat even further, then doing so can seem almost reasonable.

none of this has anything to do with any ethical committments people might have, that they apply to themselves and to those around them--assuming that the category of ethics makes sense apart from the political (a different matter).

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OpieCunningham

What is the difference between intentionally doing something irresponsible and doing something irresponsible by virtue of lack of knowledge?

Are you referring to this, specifically:

Society changes constantly - therefore what is deemed responsibile and what is deemed irresponsible shifts accordingly.

If so, a simple example would be healthy eating habits. It is responsible to eat healthily - but the knowledge of what is and is not healthy is constantly changing as we learn and study how the body reacts to various substances under various conditions. Society's definition of health changes, therefore, the actions which are deemed responsible when it comes to health must also change.

powerclown

Great example.
I can't disagree with what you say in regards to the variable nature of Responsibility.
I mean, there are baseline measures of 'health' in the medical field, ie., cholesterol levels, blood pressure, cardiovascular health, aerobic capacity of the lungs and on and on, and being inside/outside of 'established parameters' constituting good/bad health, but then you hear about people with perfect numbers keeling over dead, out of the blue. I have my own idea of responsibility that makes sense and works for me, but I can't say that my definition is a universal one and applicable to all. Your final comment, "Is it irresponsible to be born to parents who are irresponsible?", and the ramifications thereof, only reinforces to me the highly philosophical nature of your question. I don't see a simple answer to such a complex question.

cthulu23

How do you back up this incredibly broad statement? The majority of humans on this planet are just like you and me....they scrape an existence out of an indifferent world and hopefully find some happiness. Hell, the majority of people probably have it much worse than you and me. What makes you think that most of them have no sense of responsibility?

One additional question: do you consider yourself among the "tiny minority?"

ubertuber

Hey Opie

In answer to your question, I guess I'd say that I don't see a difference between intentionally doing something irresponsible and doing something irresponsible by virtue of lack of knowledge. In practical terms, I think that these two would amount to the same thing, right?

A similar question is "is it irresponsible to be born to parents who are irresponsible?" My first reaction is no - because it is hard to imagine how a person could be responsible for something they can't control. Control is not the same as intent or knowledge of context.

Two points:
I am discussing this with you in good faith - meaning I am trying to work it out as we are going. Secondly, I am trying to figure out where you are going with the question you asked me. I am wondering if the relationships between the first and second questions I have answered in this post will lead next to a point about how children born into situations with irresponsible parents spend their lives dealing with the consequences of the actions of another person... As I am thinking about this, it occurs to me that this doesn't seem fair, yet of course, as we all know life is not fair. I guess (again) in practical terms, you can only play the hand you are dealt. Do you have thoughts on this?

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ARTelevision

cthulu23, it's a personal opinion based on my interpretation of the people I know, have known, and have read about. I see people doing things for reasons of self-interest.

I don't apply the concept to myself at all. It doesn't seem like a necessary one. So it could be said I have no sense of responsibility. I do things for practical and aesthetic reasons.

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cthulu23

Art,

I guess I'm not sure exactly what it is you are calling personal or social repsonsibility. I didn't realize that both categories were mutually exclusive with self-interest. Could you give a few examples of people who do fit the category?

ARTelevision

Well for me it is simply a different way of viewing human motivation. The smartest people seem to comprehend that their self-interest involves the things that are typically denoted by the terms personal and social responsibility. The ones who do not seem smart to me behave as if they see a conflict between self-interest and the things that are typically denoted by the terms personal and social responsibility.

Because the conventional mythological framework that adheres to the concepts and terms of personal and social responsibility seems completely problematic, I prefer not to employ those terms in my thinking or discourse.

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