Individual and Social Responsibility

[Surlethe]

I was mulling the topics this weekend, and came up with this mini-essay. What do you all think?



This past weekend, I heard an interesting – and potentially very helpful – tip about marriage: if you and your spouse have a problem with your marriage, try to figure out how to fix it. You and your spouse are a team, working to solve the problem, instead of at odds with one another. This is, of course, standard fare for marriage advice; the fascinating way is how it was phrased: treat the marriage as a third entity, sit down – you, your spouse, and the marriage – and figure out how to fix the problem in the marriage.

It sounds kind of like two mechanics getting together and repairing a car, except that in this case, the two mechanics are the car. The situation is confusing and recursive; the two spouses together are the marriage, right? So how can they sit down with the marriage and figure out how to repair it – the marriage isn't actually a different entity apart from the two spouses, right?

Well, let's think about this. Before they met, the two partners in the marriage certainly didn't constitute a separate entity; after they met and formed a relationship, and especially after they were married, they had responsibilities to each other. But these responsibilities can be seen from a different perspective: the commitments involved are not to the partner, per se, but to the health of the relationship itself. This is a more succinct and, to be frank, much more elegant way of looking at relationships: not in terms of individual responsibilities to others, but in terms of individual responsibilities to the relationship.

This chain of reasoning doesn't apply just to relationships; it generalizes to any situation where individuals work together. Whenever humans interact, there is an implied (or, as the case may be, explicit) standard of behavior – i.e., each human has responsibilities to every other human with whom he interacts. As with the two-person relationship, this set of responsibilities can be seen as commitments to the body of people as a whole with whom a given person may interact.

In some sense, a relationship involves a contract between two people; marriage makes it explicit, of course, but a certain standard of behavior is generally assumed, married or unmarried: don't cheat, don't lie, don't be abusive, etc. Similarly, a certain standard of behavior is generally assumed in a person's relationship with all the humans in the society; this is what is known as the “social contract”.

Consequently, we all have responsibilities to each other, whether we've met or not; from a different perspective, because we all form the society, we have responsibilities to the society as a whole; these include paying taxes, voting, driving on the right side of the road, and not killing people. It would be difficult to list them all, because they're almost unconsciously imbued within us from the day we're born. In fact, people who don't recognize this commitment to society give normal people a sense of vague horror: they're known as sociopaths.

So the next time you fight with your significant other, ask her (or him, as the case may be), “What can we do to solve this problem in our relationship?” And the next time you think about a political, social, or economic issue, ask, “What can we do to solve this problem with our society?” As inherently social animals, we would all do well to recognize our responsibilities to the social entities we form through our relationships.

[Darth Wong]

I'm tempted to say that this should be considered obvious, except that the divorce rate clearly indicates that what is obvious to me is not obvious to an awful lot of people out there.

To a large extent, I often view marriage as a canoe with two people in it. If either one really wants to be uncooperative, you'll never get anywhere. If one of you is downright hostile, you're probably both going into the water. If either of you decides that you just don't care and would rather jump into the water, it's over. It takes commitment from both people to make things work. And when you have kids, they end up sitting in the canoe with you, so you have to be doubly careful.

Taken to a larger scale, this visualization strategy works even for nation-states and leaders. A captain whose leadership style revolves around identifying inferior rowers and throwing them overboard will probably not achieve quite the results of a captain who excels at motivating all of his rowers to work in unison. Hence the problem with the George W. Bush method of being a "uniter"; he clearly meant it in terms of having a united country ... once he marginalized or exported all of the undesirables. The political equivalent of walking past the oarsmen and deciding which ones to throw overboard, in the hopes that those who remain will be united, ideologically pure, and superior.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

I'm tempted to say that this should be considered obvious, except that the divorce rate clearly indicates that what is obvious to me is not obvious to an awful lot of people out there.

Indeed, the problem with thinking something utterly obviously, is the number of people who are utterly oblivious.

Still, it's a decent way of breaking it down for people who have never thought about it in any real way.

[Kuroneko]

It's not even that some don't find this obvious; certain "common sense" ideologies outright deny that this sort of abstraction has any validity; that sort of holistic thinking is un-individualistic and un-American. Society, according to them, "is just a name for 'other people'."

The above bit comes (even the 'un-American' part) from some book I've come across in a small bookstore catering to home-schooled kids, as part of an exposition on the numerous ways in which liberal and socialist ideas are silly. This came up as an explicit example. The store was owned by couple belonging to the same church as a certain friend of mine, who once taught weekend math classes there. Due to some family business, he asked me to take over for part of the year.

There were other classes taught there. Even the physics textbooks were written "from a Biblical perspective" ("Apologia Physics", etc.), although they weren't that bad... compared to the biology books, the less said about which, the better.

[Winston Blake]

I think it's good. It reminds me of the part in 1984 where it says the best books are the ones that tell you what you already know. The trick is that you might 'know' something, but in a vague, distorted, poorly retained or disorganised way.

Having something straighten that out, fill in the gaps and put what you already know into a sensible framework can be a significant advance. In a loose sense, its 'multiplying' your capacity rather than just 'adding' to it.

So the next time you fight with your significant other

Except I think this part accuses the reader unnecessarily.

[Darth Wong]

It's not even that some don't find this obvious; certain "common sense" ideologies outright deny that this sort of abstraction has any validity; that sort of holistic thinking is un-individualistic and un-American. Society, according to them, "is just a name for 'other people'."

It's funny; America completely rejected Ayn Rand's anti-religious viewpoints, but the language she used in order to portray society as the enemy of the individual has firmly taken root among large swathes of the American populace. I find this to be true regardless of their religiosity, although religiosity adds an extra dimension of bellicosity and obstinacy to their approach when challenged.

The above bit comes (even the 'un-American' part) from some book I've come across in a small bookstore catering to home-schooled kids, as part of an exposition on the numerous ways in which liberal and socialist ideas are silly. This came up as an explicit example. The store was owned by couple belonging to the same church as a certain friend of mine, who once taught weekend math classes there. Due to some family business, he asked me to take over for part of the year.

There were other classes taught there. Even the physics textbooks were written "from a Biblical perspective" ("Apologia Physics", etc.), although they weren't that bad... compared to the biology books, the less said about which, the better.

The really sad thing is that their approach is not unreasonable, provided you accept their premise that the Bible is an ultimate form of evidence. If a Biblical passage is regarded as evidence, on the same or superior level to a picture taken by a telescope, then it makes perfect sense to create a whole new version of science which accounts for this extra "evidence".

Of course, I could do the same thing with Bugs Bunny cartoons, with results which are almost as hilarious as Bible-based Geology.

[FA Xerrik]

It's funny; America completely rejected Ayn Rand's anti-religious viewpoints, but the language she used in order to portray society as the enemy of the individual has firmly taken root among large swathes of the American populace. I find this to be true regardless of their religiosity, although religiosity adds an extra dimension of bellicosity and obstinacy to their approach when challenged.

Could you provide some examples of the language which originated with Rand? Since I haven't read her work, I'd be really interested in seeing how widespread her ideas or phrases might be. Alternatively, if there are specific works of hers which you had in mind as having become particularly disseminated in the public consciousness, I'd like to know which ones you had in mind and I can go look them up myself.