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Whatever Happened to Personal Responsibility
There is an old adage which states that you do not know how big a tree is until you try and cut it down. Today, as cultural forces slowly destroy it, we are beginning to understand that the same thing can be said about personal responsibility.
Society no longer believes that people ought to bear their suffering with dignity and grace. Rather, it now believes that the problems of the individual ought to be made the problems of the community. Individual problems are no longer the consequence of individual decisions, but come as the result of race, gender, class, and so forth.
The result of this move towards collective responsibility has been the invention of victim culture. According to this culture, non-whites are the victims of racism and white privilege, women are the victims of the patriarchy, homosexuals are the victims of a heteronormative society.
The 20th century is a perfect example of what happens when responsibility is taken from the hands of the individual and placed in the hands of the mob. The twin evils of communism and Nazism – which blamed the problems of the individual on economic and racial factors, respectively – led to the deaths of tens of millions of people.
Furthermore, such ideologies led otherwise decent individuals to commit acts of unspeakable violence. Whilst observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a former SS soldier who had been one of the architects of the Holocaust, the writer, Hannah Arendt was struck by the “banality of evil” that had characterised German war atrocities. Arendt noted that the men who conspired to commit genocide were not raving lunatics foaming at the mouth, but rather dull individuals inspired to commit evil due to a sense of duty to a toxic and corrupt ideology.
The Bolsheviks taught the Russian people that their misfortune had been caused by the wealthy. And that the wealth was gained through theft and exploitation. Likewise, the Nazis convinced the German people that their problems could be blamed on the Jews. It is not difficult to see how this philosophy led, step by step, to the gulags and the concentration camps.
The same thing is happening today. The only difference is that those who play it have become more sophisticated. Today people are encouraged to identify with identity groups ranked by so-called social privilege. Then they are taught to despise those with more social privilege than them.
Under this philosophy, crime is not caused by the actions of the individual, but by social forces like poverty, racism, and upbringing. Advocates claim that women should not be forced to take responsibility for their sexual behaviour by allowing them to essentially murder their unborn children. Sexually transmitted diseases like HIV is caused by homophobia rather than immoral and socially irresponsible behaviour. And alcoholism and drug addiction are treated as a disease rather than a behaviour the addict is supposed to take responsibility for. The list is endless.
Personal responsibility helps us take control of our lives. It means that the individual can take a certain amount of control over his own life even when the obstacles he is facing seem insurmountable.
No one, least of all me, is going to argue that individuals don’t face hardships that are not their fault. What I am going to argue, however, is that other people will respect you more if you take responsibility for your problems, especially if those problems are not your fault. Charity for aids sufferers, the impoverished, or reformed criminals is all perfectly acceptable. But we only make their plight worse by taking their personal responsibility from them.
Responsibility justifies a person’s life and helps them find meaning in their suffering. Central to the Christian faith is the idea that individuals are duty bound to bear their suffering with dignity and grace and to struggle towards being a good person. To force a man to take responsibility for himself is to treat him as one of God’s creations.
You cannot be free if other people have to take responsibility for your decisions. When you take responsibility from the hands of the individual you tarnish his soul and steal his freedom.
Freedom from responsibility is slavery, not freedom. Freedom is the ability to make decisions according to the dictates of own’s own conscience and live with the consequences of that decision. Freedom means having the choice to engage in the kind immoral behaviour that leads to an unwanted pregnancy or AIDS. What it does not do is absolve you from responsibility for those actions. Slavery disguised as kindness and compassion is still slavery.
LOWER THE VOTING AGE TO SIXTEEN? LET’S NOT
According to an article in the Sunday Mail entitled, “Vote #1 16 and Give Our Youth Their Say”, the South Australian Youth Affairs Council has responded to Business SA’s campaign to halt the disastrous mass exodus of youth from the state by pushing the State government to lower the voting age to sixteen.
The proposition has had a mixed response from the state’s major political parties. It has garnered support from the Australian Greens, and has had received an ambiguous nod of approval from the Labour Party, although Jay Weatherill has admitted that “Labour has no plans to take such a policy to this election.”
By contrast, the SA Liberal Party has reaffirmed its decision to leave the voting age where it is. Meanwhile, Nick Xenophon concurred but added that eighteen-year-olds need better education to be better voters.
Young people have often been used as pawns by the far left. They are perfectly prepared to “let children speak for adults” when the views they espouse align with their position. They are decidedly less willing when it doesn’t. Indeed, part of the motivation for giving sixteen-year-olds the vote is that they are far more likely to be fooled into voting for the kind of lunatic, far-left policies that most reasonable adults won’t.
Teenagers lack the cognitive development, life experience, and emotional maturity to make wise and informed decisions. For all their merits, young people can be reckless, impulsive, and self-centred. As a consequence, they often act without considering the long-term consequences their actions have on themselves or others.
In Britain, those who wish to lower the voting age typically talk about “seeding respect for the political process” and “increasing civic engagement.” However, lowering the voting age is not the way to do this. The true answer to “seeding respect for the political process” and “increasing civic engagement” is to educate youth on the political process, and foster a culture of responsibility and community engagement. As the conservative Youtube star, Roaming Millennial reminded her audiences, voting is a responsibility, not just a right.
THE SHADOW
Embedded throughout world religion and mythology is the psychological motif of the shadow. In the story of the fall of man, the shadow is symbolised in the snake that tempts Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In modern times, the motif of the shadow can be seen in various superhero and fantasy films. Batman can be seen as the shadow of Bruce Wayne, Harry Potter’s ability to speak to snakes is a sign of his magical connection to the evil Lord Voldemort, and so forth.
Perhaps the most notable example of the shadow, however, comes in the distinction between the light and dark sides of the force in the Star Wars saga. Indeed it is the inability to recognise and come to terms with his own shadow that causes Anakin Skywalker to succumb to the dark side and become Darth Vader. Years later, Vader’s son, Luke would also battle his shadow, but, unlike his father, he would be able to recognise and ultimately overcome his own dark nature.
The shadow is an aspect of the Jungian concept of the psyche. The psychologist Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) conceived of the human psyche as a self-regulating system comprised of many complex and archetypal parts. The ‘self’, therefore, is the totality of all the aspects of the psyche. It is the part of us that expresses a desire for fulfilment, that aims at goals, and drives us forward.
The Jungian concept of the psyche consists of the persona, the ego, the self, the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious, the shadow, and the anima and animus. The ego represents the aspects of our psyches that we are consciously aware of. It is the part of our psyches that regulates and organises our memories, our thoughts, our feelings, our sensory experiences, our intuitions, and so forth. From the psyche, our concept of ourselves and our place in existence springs forth.
Standing in contrast to the ego is the Jungian concept of the unconscious, which can be split into the collective unconscious and personal unconscious. The collective unconscious refers to the deep-seated and archetypal memories and instincts shared by the entirety of the human race. The personal unconscious is developed through the interaction between the collective unconscious and personal development. Jung himself defined it as:
“Everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things which are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness; all this is the content of the unconscious… Besides these we must include all more or less intentional repressions of painful thought and feelings. I call the sum of these contents the ‘personal unconscious’.”
It is from the collective unconscious that the shadow is grounded. This is because people are the product of both nature through the evolution of the human mind over millions of years (yes, this author is a believer in evolution), and their cultural heritage.
The simplest way of considering the shadow is to think of it as the part of your personality that you do not like. It is the part of yourself you have rejected because you consider it to be weak, flawed, inferior, or even disgusting. The Jungian psychologist, Aniela Jaffe (1903 – 1991), defined the shadow as the “sum of all personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility with the conscious attitude, are denied expression in life.”
The shadow emerges out of the essential need for choice and opposition in life. The shadow represents all those ‘unchosen’ choices. When we choose to be one way, we choose not to be the other way. As the British philosopher, Alan Watts (1915 – 1973) said:
“It’s always the devil, the unacknowledged one, the outcast, the scapegoat, the bastard, the bad guy, you see, the black sheep of the family. It’s always from that point, that which we could call the fly in the ointment, you see, that generation comes. In other words, in the same way as in the drama to have the play it is necessary to introduce a villain, it’s necessary to introduce a certain level of trouble. So, in the whole scheme of life, there has to be the shadow because without the shadow there can’t be the substance.”
Jung saw the shadow as presenting a “moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality.” Because it represents a side of ourselves that we do not like our instinct is to try and hide and repress our shadow. Often those who have totally rejected their own dark side will unconsciously project the dark or negative aspects of their own personalities onto people or entities that they do not like. The more we condemn the evil in others, Jung observed, the blinder we are to it in ourselves.
Understanding and reconciling oneself to their shadow is an integral part of self-enlightenment. One must make himself consciously aware of the darker elements of their own psyche without being an enemy to it, and then accept it as absolutely present and real. In doing so, it is possible for the individual to integrate the evil within themselves and place their devils in their proper function.
SELF MASTERY
This week for our theological article, King Alfred Press will be exploring the quest for self-mastery and its importance in living a pious life.
For years, “living in the moment” has been popular advice among self-help gurus. No need to learn from history, no need to think about the consequences of your behaviour, the only thing that matters is satisfying present desires.
However, there is a fundamental problem with living in the moment: it causes you to act impulsively. You become a slave to circumstance. You end up becoming the sort of person who engages in unhealthy, short-term relationships, you become the sort of person who spends without thought and rack up massive credit card debts. Compulsive eaters have been known to literally eat themselves to death, and there is little need to discuss the relationship between crime and the intoxicating effects of alcohol.
The rational antidote, then, to living in the moment is to orientate yourself towards self-mastery. By doing so, we can live pro-active, Godly lives. God expects us to be diligent with what we have and where we are before we move forward with our lives. As it is written in the Gospel according to Luke (chapter sixteen, verse ten):
“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are
dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities”
Self-mastery helps you achieve mastery of your own emotions, affections, likes, and desires.
So, how do you go about achieving self-mastery? Well, I cannot pretend to have the answers. However, it is eminently obvious that changing your daily habits is a good place to start.
First, engage in daily prayer. It will help you quieten your mind and communicate with God. Read your Bible or Torah. Remind yourself every day of what God expects of you. Second, practice self-denial. Third, do things deliberately, with purpose – act as though everything you do matters. Fourth, don’t lie – especially to yourself. The only way to overcome your problems is by being honest about them. Fifth, take care of your mind, body, and your surroundings. As Professor Jordan B. Peterson famously advises: “clean your room!” Keep your workspace clean and tidy, put everything where it belongs, make yourself orderly.