Freedom and responsibility

I find that most people have a very hazy idea of what is meant by the word "responsibility". I would like to offer a somewhat different perspective and definition.

Responsibility is not the same as blame. "Blaming" is a childlike response to something wrong, and its entire aim is to identify someone or something as the "fall guy(or gal)". The goal of blaming is to assign the task of guilt to someone. Some people assign guilt mostly to others; some assign it to themselves. In any case, once the assignment has been made, the designated "blamee" is expected to feel badly, experience remorse, regret, self-blame, and to display them. Only one person needs to do this, and the group is satisfied to exonerate the others who may have been involved. This display is considered by many to be a "good thing", as if we were all benefited by someone's feeling badly. We even give extra punishment to those convicted of a crime if they don't display adequate self-blame. Why does this gratify us?

Guilt and self-blame have their appropriate place in human development. When we observe them in a child, we are reassured that they are beginning to internalize rules of behavior. This is important because they are able to respond to internal rules, not just external ones. When a child feels badly about something s/he has done, we know the child is accepting our moral values and applying them to self. We know then they belong to our flock. The ones that don't feel badly when they have done wrong scare us, and rightly so. We know such people may develop into psychopaths with no respect for law or the rights of others. When they feel guilty, we feel reassured.

Responsibility, however, is an entirely different animal, and a sense of responsibility can only develop later as the child becomes more intellectually mature. My definition of responsibility is a simple one: I recognize and accept that all the consequences of all my decisions are mine, whether I anticipated them or not. Responsibility is something you have whether you want it or not. It is always 100% and is never divisible. "Accepting responsibility" only means that I consciously recognize that the consequences of my choices are, in fact, part of the choices. It's arbitrary to separate choices from consequences in any case, since everything is connected.

We experience personal freedom when we recognize our power to make choices and accept their consequences as part of the same package. I'm asserting that freedom and responsibility are simply different aspects of the same concept and can't really be distinguished from one another. As a free human I recognize that every moment of my life I am choosing my next step, and that with that choice I accept all the consequences that belong to it. This is the opposite of "living on automatic”. Living on automatic is a way of freedom.

Recognizing your freedom is like opening your eyes and discovering that you are standing in an open plain with no paths to guide you other than your own values. Sometimes people are forced to open their eyes because the paths they were on stopped working for one reason or another. Many times they just want to close their eyes again and go back on automatic because it’s comfortable and predictable. Not everybody wants life to have the excitement of freedom.

Comments are welcome, as always. I do wonder if anyone is out there.....