Posted by
atomicturtle on Saturday, June 02, 2007 6:09:46 PM
A lot of people confuse Free Will and Freedom. Free will is simply the ability to choose your own destiny. FreeDOM, on the other hand, is the individual, autonomous ability to act unhindered by force or fraud by others (which, by implication, means that I am equally restricted from imposing force or fraud on the actions of another). I can see how that might be mystifying to most liberals, what with them living in the land of smoking bans and seatbelt laws and mandatory recycling programs and mandates on pharmacists and so forth - but, to illustrate... crap like that, that's freeDOM-depriving as opposed to free WILL depriving. (However, what voters choose to do with in state is their right - under federalist principles... which, ironically, liberals tend to hate.)
To get back to the point though, neither the definitions of free will nor freedom have anything to do with personal responsibility. Personal responsibility means only you are accountable for yourself and your own actions. For instance, someone who believes in personal responsibility is necessarily against social welfare and free public health care - why? Because your life and your livelihood are your OWN personal responsibility and not anyone else’s. Think of a Wall Street player who loses his shirt. Terrible thing, but he made his own choices - he acted freely - regarding his investments, and therefore he has nobody to blame but himself for his predicament. That's personal responsibility. Even if you're stuck in a crummy situation that you didn't cause - say you grew up a minority in Poortown - again, your life is your problem and not anybody else's.
However, in this day and age (especially in the more left-leaning areas), the term "personal responsibility" is often and erroneously equated with "social responsibility" (or "social conscience" or "affirmative duty to others"). Personal responsibility is not the same thing as social responsibility. In fact, there really isn't such a thing as "social responsibility" (hence, I suspect, why leftist spin doctors try to equate it with personal responsibility) since man has an inalienable right to his life, liberty, and property. "Social responsibility" means that man does NOT have rights to his life, liberty, and property - rather that he is indebted to (eg. "responsible for") society simply because he exists in it. This is similar to the Judeo-Christian notion of Original Sin. Original Sin, simply put, means that existence itself is sinful and must be repented for. Which is, of course, absurd on its face - because we are not slaves. We are not born into bondage to our society, but rather, with free will and freedom to act (or, at least, the very convincing appearance of it).
You know, there's an example I love to give when I'm talking about this subject that people just find abhorrent. Imagine a kid drowning in a lake. I walk by, I'm a strong swimmer, I've got no place to be, I could easily go out and help him - but I choose not to, and the kid dies. What can I say? I just didn't feel like getting wet. Most people find this notion to be unfathomable. They cannot possibly conceive of someone who would refuse to jump in a lake to save a drowning child. They're quick to label him an jerk and make it a point to tell everyone around them why they should hate him. But what exactly is the wrong here? Do I owe that kid an affirmative duty to help simply because he's in need and I have the ability? The answer, much to the majority's chagrin, is no. The fact of the matter is, that drowning child is NOT my responsibility. My freedom means that I am free from the obligation to help that drowning child if I choose not to. Maybe it would make me an jerk (in fact, it almost certainly WOULD make me an jerk), maybe it would make damn near everyone hate me - but how the mob reacts to something has no bearing on whether or not it is wrongful, or whether or not I owe a duty or a responsibility (personal, social, moral, or otherwise) to it.
Buuuuut, of course, a lot of folks don't like to actually THINK about what personal responsibility actually IS, rather they simply entertain these fluffy, altruistic, nonsensical notions of a world where everyone is essentially a Care Bear. So, they blather on about stuff like "personal responsibility" despite the fact that what they're advocating is the exact opposite of personal responsibility, in (what I suspect is) an attempt to make people feel guilty for the "sin" of existing and make them amenable to being a willing slave to their "social responsibilities."
I'm not saying it's bad to help people. I'm not saying we shouldn't help people. All I'm saying is that freedom means that whether we want to help people or not is a CHOICE, not an obligation. I'm saying that we don't owe a duty to provide for neighbors, strangers, society, god, country, world, mother earth, future generations, etc etc. I'm saying that personal responsibility means taking care of yourself, not taking care of everyone else. If I choose not to recycle, if I choose not to give to the poor, if I choose not to volunteer for charity, if I choose not to fight in a war, if I choose not to limit my resource consumption, if I choose NOT to help that drowning kid - it's all a perfectly legitimate exercise of my freedom, and it is in no way a breach of any personal responsibility that I have or assented to having.
And, of course, this necessarily begs the next question: since I'm under no obligation to help, or even care about others (be it neighbors, strangers, society, god, country, world, mother earth, future generations, whatever) - why should I?
A lot of people use fear tactics in response to that one. "You should help because one day you might be in a spot where you need help yourself! OOoooOOOoo! BEWARE!" But, that's bogus - because even if that DID happen, we're back to personal responsibility. Another of their favorites is "Because it makes you feel good." Aside from that being a subjective notion at best, so does a cigarette - and having a smoke takes a lot less effort than jumping into a lake. Another of their favorites is that it's "cumulatively beneficial in the long run." You usually hear this one in terms of "if education/health care/whatever is freely available, society as a whole will benefit from having educated/healthy/whatever workers." Of course, this is a specious argument and its very easy to imagine how this is not the case when you consider it on the level of the individual beneficiaries (ask yourself how the asthmatic accounts payable manager with his degree in psychology in his 6th year at a random retailer will EVER benefit society at large from having been educated and provided health care at the expense of others (yes, this is a real person I know that I'm describing). He doesn't. You could put a bullet in his head and society at large wouldn't skip a beat. And there are a lot more generic routine worker bees who live out their pointless little life and then die, than world-altering folks.)
So, the answer to the question “why should I” is: "Because I want to." And if you don't want to, then you SHOULDN'T help or care about others. That's the true joy of freedom that most people don't realize: It's UP TO YOU. You're an individual, and you have the autonomy and ability to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, however you want to do it - free from force or fraud by others, be it people or the government, so long as you extend that same right to everyone else. Of course, if certain factions in America had their way, it WOULDN'T be up to you - but lets hope that at least a handful of people continue to have brains enough to identify those kinds of people and beat the intellectual crap out of them as often and as publicly as possible.