Month: November 2016

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Election day

A disclosure: I am not American. Hence, my interests in American elections may be very alien to actual Americans (same as the interests of the candidates may be alien to me). I have a different background, my political views (as in: what should be a priority and what are good means) are clustered differently. I also have a strong hype allergy. Long story short: I have the freedom of not having to choose and the possibility of saying “I strongly dislike both candidates” without having an impact on the outcome. The reasons are manifold, but just to give you a hint: I dislike Trump for his far-right campaign and his attitudes. I also dislike Clinton for the “vote for me, you sexist pile of shit” campaign sentiments and her rather hawkish policy.

I went to sleep on Tuesday with the thought that I missed an excellent opportunity to bet on Clinton against some politically active bloggers. On Wednesday, I woke up and the first word on my phone’s display my mind has recognized was “immigration office”. I then thought that not betting was actually a wise move (and like many wise moves, this one was due to laziness). And then the Internet exploded with pain.

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Responsibility

I had twice an opportunity to talk about responsibility and thigs related to it, and probably I should sum up not only my but also others’ thoughts on the topic.

The first, and foremost, requirement for responsibility is the possibility to consciously decide on an action. Not deciding is also a decision, but being unable to decide has nothing to do with responsibility. Hence, learning responsible beahvior cannot be done by passively observing other people, the actions of other people, or the results of actions of other people. This does not mean that you don’t have to observe; this means that you cannot be called a responsible person kust because you have visited a (generalized) museum, read some books, and know some more or less relevant facts.

It’s a little like math:  Responsibility is an ability. You are not a math graduate just because you can cite the Banach-Tarski result on cocktail parties. Instead, you are a math graduate because you know how to apply your knowledge to new problems. Applying the same reasoning to responsible behavior, we get that being responsible means having an idea what the results of your actions will be, making a choice that will benefit te people you care about, and not denying accountability.

One can see that in this reasoning, the group of beneficiaries is not clearly defined. Moral or economic imperatives may alter the definition of benefit. The core, however, stays the same: You have several options, you choose the Right Thing™, you accept the outcome.

To sum up, “let’s look at others’ experiences to learn responsible behavior” misses the point completely.