Responsibility

What is my responsibility as a humanist in society? I carry this question with me throughout my day. This is an element of my personal practice. 

Much is made of the concept of personal responsibility in modern politics. The debates over nanny states, entitlements and universal health insurance are all about personal and social responsibility. A recent situation in Massachusetts about a severely psychotic and dysfunctional woman has raised the question of personal responsibility, personal competence and society's responsibility to intervene in individual choices and behaviors.

My work as a psychiatric nurse placed me in a position to make snap decisions to protect those who were incompetent and to protect others in their environment from violence. I have worked with patients who were incompetent and had delivered several equally incompetent human beings into the world as a consequence of psychotic sexual behaviors or rape. Some of these people you may pass on the streets. They are crouched in doorways begging or sleeping. 

It is easy to say, "Everyone should make their own decisions about everything. Government should be dismantled. All personal choice trumps the law." Is this a socially responsible viewpoint? Will this foster peace, health and joy for all human beings ultimately? I doubt it.

As a humanist, I think an ethical person with education and wealth will realize that his/her responsibility to society is greater than those with less. However, those with wealth and education rarely sacrifice fun for responsibility. Some would say this is human nature. I would say this is the nature of humans who were raised to be selfish, greedy and aggressive. Capitalism rewards these attributes.

How will the human species ever deal with overpopulation and disparity? I think it will most likely bumble along as it has for thousands of years. The human mind goes to imaginings of cataclysm whenever this issue is pondered, because human beings act most responsibly to one another in a shared disaster. Perhaps pushing ourselves to the brink of nuclear and environmental catastrophe is the subconscious push to become a socially responsible species.