Why should people take responsibility for how they affect the lives of others? What is the basis for differentiating responsible behaviour from irresponsible ones? And how can society help its members act more responsibly?
According to the general theory of responsibility, these questions can be answered with reference to three interrelated sets of issues:
• Our concern for each other
• Our reasoning with each other
• Our decision-making involving each other
Through looking at these issues and their implications, we will get an overall picture of how responsibility connects in a way that is crucial to advancing our wellbeing. We will begin with the first of these in this essay (and in parts 2 and 3 we will look at the other two sets of issues).
Mutual Responsibility: our concern for each other
Responsibility matters because of our concern for each other. This is not about pure altruism, or about instrumentalist help for others to secure gains for oneself, but essentially about reciprocity – in caring about the wellbeing of others as we would want others to care about our wellbeing. It is embodied in the Golden Rule which, over the course of history, has been found to run through the emergence of the earliest civilisations down to diverse contemporary social structures. It endorses our treatment of others as we would have others treat us, and castigate attitudes and actions that go against this. Mutual responsibility – the recognition that we need to account for how our behaviour may support or hinder each other – is an unmistakable social reality that is at the heart of human existence. People who would pay no heed to how their behaviour might impact on others, could expect others to treat them with similar disregard.
The Problem of Indifference
As concern for others is the foundation of responsibility, its absence leaves us with the first key obstacle to responsible behaviour - indifference. Some people may not feel any concern for others because of their unfortunate upbringing, acquired prejudice, psychological trauma, or some form of pathology. There are also people who reject concern for others on different grounds: for example, philosophical egoists who refuse to accept that we can ever genuinely care about the wellbeing of others; free-riders/exploiters who without hesitation neglect the wellbeing of others when they seek to take advantage of them for their own benefit; or adherents to some extremist doctrine that celebrates apathy or even disdain towards the suffering of others, and leads them to care nothing about how their actions may impact on others. If we allow indifference to persist as a result of any of these factors, we would end up with more people perceiving others as beings whose feelings count for nothing, and hence lack any sense that they should take responsibility for how their behaviour may affect others.
Empathic Thoughtfulness
We cannot solve the problem of indifference by invoking some ‘absolute’ justification for our position. Our sense of mutual responsibility comes from our interpersonal connections with other people. To avoid such connections becoming deficient, we should cultivate empathic thoughtfulness by means of education, social support, and where necessary, rehabilitation. We know from developmental psychology that empathy and a propensity towards mutual concern grow from infancy under normal caring conditions. There are techniques for strengthening these sensibilities, and methods to restore them if they have been depleted. They can enable people to appreciate how others could be/have been hurt by their actions, and reflect on what changes they would want to make in the future. There is no guarantee they would always work, and in cases where we are dealing with those whose irresponsible acts cause harm or pose a dangerous threat to others, then proportionate forms of punitive as well as restorative response may also be required to remind transgressors of the implications of not taking others’ wellbeing into consideration in their behaviour.
Togetherness as a Socio-Political Goal
Beyond dealing with individual cases, there are society-wide challenges to counter the neglect of mutual responsibility. We need to promote togetherness across communities by means of: [a] the development of shared missions, so that people can recognise and appreciate the threats and opportunities they can handle much more effectively by working collaboratively, and learn about practical ways to help achieve common goals; [b] the championing of mutual respect, through formal protection of everyone’s entitlement to dignified treatment, systemic countering of prejudice, and impartial adjudication of complaints against discriminatory acts; and [c] the provision of coherent membership that explains why people are admitted as members, what mutual commitment is entailed by being a member, and the transparent basis on which membership terms may be revoked or restored.
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To be continued in ‘The General Theory of Responsibility: (part 2)’: https://henry-tam.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-general-theory-of-responsibility_11.html
For an overview of the theory and a guide to further reading, go to: https://hbtam.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-general-theory-of-responsibility.html
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