“Responsibility”

Something my mom used to say was “work gets in the way of everything” and OMG is she right. It takes up SO much time, and then when you have time you’re just tired, what the heck? How could anyone think this is OK? I want to do my part to continue our species’ existence but it just…. does not… have to be this way. We do not need to work so many hours, we do not need to have ANY jobs that someone can’t comfortably live off of, we do NOT need a system that makes it so hard to be happy. Go ahead and say ” well it’s up to people to make their own way” because sure, yeah, whatever, but how the fuck does that translate to ” let’s make living as HARD AS POSSIBLE because people are responsible only for themselves and the system has no bearing on how many people are happy”??????????

I had a thought today about the concept of “responsibility.” I hear so many people say “we are only responsible for ourselves” when I try to talk about systemic barriers and mental health. Their conclusion seems to be that despite any obstacles a person has to overcome, where they end up is solely their doing. This just… sits so so very wrong with me. How can we as a society be so callous?? How?… like yes, It is hard to help people who don’t want to help themselves… but have you ever stopped to think that maybe, if you had lived their exact life, with all of the conditioning they experienced and all of the predispositions… that you would have ended up EXACTLY where they did and made the EXACT same choices?? If there is even a sliver of this being possible, it means that our current concept of “responsibility” is quite flawed and is currently being used to basically damn people for things that they are not the sole reason for, if in many cases much of a reason for at all.

I believe that we should stop caring who is “responsible” and just focus on who has the most power to fix it. With a lot of people, I genuinely believe that about their only way to getting better, is help. Because of the specific combination of hurdles they endure that ME AND YOU PROBABLY DO NOT… they just aren’t able to decide to get better. It’s 100% the equivalent of telling a quadriplegic to just stand up and they’ll be better. It just does not work like that. This means that they need help. This also means the only way they could get better is if someone helps them. Of course even with help it’s hard and the person has to eventually learn to want to help themselves BUT they have no way of doing that without the help in the first place.

This ultimately concludes to something I do not apologize for believing which is WE ARE IN PART RESPONSIBLE FOR ONE ANOTHER… If someone could have a better life and YOU choose not to help them, then YOU are in part responsible for their suffering, not just them. How… How have we gotten so wrapped up in the idea of individuality that we do not see the desperate need to act as a community. Can we please start seeing the failure to help one another of as much of a failure as not making a profit? Better yet, can we move profit WAY down the totem pole of priorities and raise things like well being, happiness, enjoyment, health, community, enlightenment… Just WTF? We can do better than this. We can and will do better than this, but it’s going to take, among other things, people being brave enough to stop looking for the silver lining in EVERYTHING and being willing to consider that maybe some things… are just bad… and we need to fix them.