personal freedom and public responsibility

[sophiaserpentia]

As a sort of counterpoint to my last post, about how the government does not exist to tell us how to run our lives, i think it is worthwhile to comment also on personal responsibility to the public good.

My thoughts on this come down to what i've written before about the ethics of taking. Ethically, we each have a responsibility to other people, to society, and to the ecology. "How we live our lives" must be tempered by an ethical awareness.

Our answer, to date, is to push this off onto the state. The state becomes the regulator of business, the protector of the environment, the keeper of the peace, the caretaker of the elderly and disabled. Then we act as though anything we do without the state's intervention must be ethically okay. Money and laws and property deeds free us of the burden of pondering the ethical rightness of poverty, wage serfdom, and perpetual debt.

The state does not share our interests or reflect our needs, so ultimately we cannot go on letting the state pretend to be our conscience. The best answer is for each of us, individually and collectively via mutual aid socities, to regulate our own business, protect our own environment, keep our own peace, take care of the elderly and disabled. Each of us plays a role in that and we must ethically own that.

This is nothing other than what just about every religion has ever taught... so this is nothing new. What keeps it from happening?

Comments

[neitherday.livejournal.com]

What keeps this from happening is that not everyone will choose on their own to act ethically. Not everyone will choose to act for the public good. Not everyone will care about the environment.

Some will inevitably attempt to take advantage of the system, to work around it. Without a government and a legal system it will be pretty easy for them to do so.

Others will seek to do harm out of hatred and anger, or to gain power. Who will stop them? Will the individuals of society collectively organize and rally to protect themselves? If they do, what will they have created? The beginnings of a new government. A new state.

Humans are humans, and are prone to corruption as well as good. Prone to violence and hate as well as love. Humans can collectively make progress and move towards the ideal, but will never quite reach the ideal. Making society better is a worthy goal, but relying on humans to be perfect is deeply flawed.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

This has been my answer in the past, as to why i do not support doing away with the state. So i do not disagree with you.

What i'm wondering is why. I'd like to see people's thoughts on why some people will cheat and take advantage, why some will use violence and coersion.

Is this part of the natural order? Is it typical animal or mammal or primate behavior? I've called this behavior cannibalistic in the past, though it's debatable how accurate that is.

Perhaps it has more to do with our capacity for intelligence. Maybe some people naturally favor slight short-term benefits even at the cost of long-term deficit?

Or maybe we have a natural propensity for cooperation and compassion, but some people are just fundamentally miswired. Maybe there's something to the "monkeysphere" idea.

I've speculated in the past that maybe PTSD is what makes oppression possible. Perhaps the malfunction comes about because so many of us have been traumatized?

Maybe it is some combination of the above. Or none of them entirely.

[neitherday.livejournal.com]

Maybe it is some combination of the above. Or none of them entirely.

That hits the nail on the head. No single issue is at play, which makes the problems all the more intractable.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

I would agree with all of this, and suggest one more piece: the tragedy of the commons. Many believe that if they take their due and just one little bit more, no one will miss it; after all, there is plenty.

But if too many people take just one little bit more, not only will all the extra be gone, but there will be none left to meet the actual needs of those who are last in line.

[threeandnine.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you added this post. Providing an outline for personal and social ethics is exactly the ideal purpose of organized religion, however misguided the execution of that purpose has been throughout history.

Government-- flawed; religion-- flawed; humans--flawed. I'm starting to see the correlation ; )

I don't think our collective conscience has caught up yet with our technological advances. But we are about to be forced to have to work on that.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

What do you think the flaw is? Whatever the answer to this question is, greatly affects the right solution.

For example: if the problem is simply that we are unruly animals, then maybe more stringent methods of discipline and domestication are the best answer.

[threeandnine.livejournal.com]

I'd like to think we aren't unruly animals (actually, I see my dog act more compassionately and lovingly on instinct than, sadly, some humans I've known), but there is an element of Darwinism at work here, I'm sure. Survival of the fittest. The easy way out is to not see the long-term merit of making a choice that does not put one's own immediate gratification ahead of all other options.

It's like bad economics: increased spending may keep the GNP afloat for a while, but sooner or later, someone has to pay the bills.

Some people have hair-trigger ids, others have more well-developed super egos. The only way to control the id, unfortunately, is to present it with consequences. That's why you have the state muddying its hands in the business of legislating morality in the first place.

What keeps it from happening?

[kitkatlj.livejournal.com]

What keeps it from happening?

Population size exceeds easy communication & easy views for everyone of the environmental situation. Read Eleanor Ostrom (fantastic stories of Turkish fishery commons solutions & California water supply commons solutions--in her mind, the state is still necessary as a place to take mediations & disputes) & Jared Diamond (small island stories--he's the one who added the details about communication & views).

OR

With a large population, no one has enough of a "my property forever" feel about the area to see what's going on & care about it. See Jared Diamond (Japan for a few hundred years up till the mid-1800's, the Dominican Republic in the 1960's & a few subsequent decades).

[cowgrrl.livejournal.com]

What keeps it from happening?

Part of the problem is the anonymity of the big city. I'm guessing in at least some smaller communities people really do look after each other, though I'm not sure how true this is in modern-day America. Certainly it's true in cohesive communities such as the Amish.

And this is at least part of why some city-dwellers form communities such as cohousing, or intentional community.

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

[sushil-yadav.livejournal.com]

The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.

The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.

Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.


Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.

If there are no gaps there is no emotion.

Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.


When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.

There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.

People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.

Emotion ends.

Man becomes machine.



A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.



FAST VISUALS /WORDS MAKE SLOW EMOTIONS EXTINCT.

SCIENTIFIC /INDUSTRIAL /FINANCIAL THINKING DESTROYS EMOTIONAL CIRCUITS.

A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY CANNOT FEEL PAIN / REMORSE / EMPATHY.

A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY WILL ALWAYS BE CRUEL TO ANIMALS/ TREES/ AIR/ WATER/ LAND AND TO ITSELF.


To read the complete article please follow either of these links :

PlanetSave (http://www.planetsave.com/ps_mambo/index.php?option=com_simpleboard&Itemid=75&func=view&id=68&catid=6)

EarthNewsWire (http://www.earthnewswire.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=89&page=viewtopic&t=11)


sushil_yadav