Personal Responsibility

By • on August 17, 2009

It’s all your fault. Personal Responsibility is the 600 pound gorilla in the front row no one wants to acknowledge.  It is considered uncouth in some circles to mention that people might be responsible for their own decisions and lives.  That consequences come with actions and choices.

Choices lead to actions, actions lead to consequences.  Smoking two packs of cigarettes a day  directly impacts your bank account in a very detrimental way.  Yet we have all heard people around us complain of being short on money, usually while lighting another cigarette because they are “so stressed out” by not having any money.  Suggesting that they quit usually draws an indignant response, outlining how it isn’t their fault they have no money.  Then they usually buy lottery tickets.  Their problems beget themselves.

On long term consequences, smoking is hardly the most worrisome problem we have.  Obesity, is much worse.  Have you ever considered how much more fuel vehicles must burn with the increasing weight of America’s population?  The increase in the amount of consumption of foodstuffs, which in turn drives more industry, manufacturing, shipping, packaging, and waste?  Those are the third order consequences of obesity.  The primary consequence of obesity is simple – fat people have more medical problems than fit people.  They cost us, the public, more medically than fit people.  Yet fat people aren’t pariahs like smokers.  We try to keep fat people from having “self image problems”.  They should have a problem with being obese, they are harming themselves through their actions.  If you tell someone you smoke cigarettes, they usually look at you like you have leprosy and want to hug them.  If you wander into a restaurant and gorge yourself, that’s perfectly normal, yet you’re still hurting yourself.  How often have we heard people complain they can’t lose weight – after the fifth doughnut of the morning?

So why do we have people with self-inflicted wounds?  Why is obesity so prevalent?  Why are self-destructive lifestyle choices extolled as virtues?  Why do we cherish our status as victims of circumstance?  The core answer is cultural.  We don’t take responsibility for ourselves.  We are told it’s not our fault we are the way we are, we blame our jobs, our parents, our genetics, our childhoods, our environment, everything but ourselves.  Blaming ourselves for our problems is apparently forbidden in today’s society.  We try so hard not to damage our self-esteem we end up killing ourselves on the inside.  Instead of taking charge of our lives and living how we chose, we allow ourselves to become victims of circumstance.

The first step back from this pit of misery is to take responsibility for ourselves.  This is an alien concept today, people tend to be shocked when someone actually admits fault.  It is also an acknowledgment that external forces, while powerful, do not control us.  The doughnut, did not leap from my plate and force its way into my mouth.  Just because you drive by fast food restaurants every day doesn’t require you to eat at them.  The next step is to make positive choices in life.  The culture of personal responsibility is – and while I strongly dislike this term, it fits here – empowering.  Personal responsibility means that the only way you become a victim of circumstance is if you let yourself be one.  Being personally responsible teaches people they make choices that directly impact their lives.   It teaches that people control themselves.

These choices, require another quality rarely lauded in today’s society, namely self-control.  Self-control is the core of personal responsibility.  It is the decision that you control yourself.  This idea is somewhat odd, as there aren’t any mind control rays out there, so if you aren’t controlling yourself, who is?  Clearly, when you aren’t exercising self-control, you are still the only one in your head, but you aren’t exercising any control.  That last word is the key.  Self-control could be better written as control-self.  Self-control is living life rationally, not driven by your wants or needs, but by your choices.    The ability to deny a need to attain something else is what makes us in charge of ourselves.  People have starved themselves to death with food available to make a point.  The human will is not to be underestimated.

It is all your fault.  That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  Once you accept it is all your fault, you realize you control yourself and you are responsible for yourself.  Then the exercise of will comes in, and the freedom of choice to take action.  The consequences are up to your choices and actions.  Live accordingly.

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