Taking personal responsibility

As a sovereign^[1] activist for hope^[2] you need to take responsibility - responsibility for your own personal integrity and the integrity of your dependents; responsibility for what you believe in and hold dear^[3]; responsibility for your faith and your relationship with the Divine^[4]; responsibility for the maintenance of your language and culture in the face of globalisation^[5]; and responsibility for the integrity of Our global community.

The advance of civilisation^[6] arguably involves the transfer of both power and responsibility from the individual and the micro groups to which they belong to the less personal institutions of civilised society.  The State and other entities such as the Church relieve individuals of the burdens of protecting themselves, maintaining law and order, and maintaining a system of faith and values.  Individuals are thereby freed to dedicate their energies to other pursuits, to specialise, and to contribute more effectively to the further growth and advance of their civilisation.

Societies and civilisations, like all social organisms, have life-cycles^[7].  The initially beneficial process by which institutions relieve individuals of their responsibility and power for maintaining their personal integrity reaches a point where they take no responsibility whatsoever, and lose the ability to do so.  The individual becomes soft and apathetic, all the more so because the institutions will overreach and protect us from each other, from ourselves, and from adversity to a "politically correct" extreme.

Ironically, when individuals cease to take responsibility, the institutions to which they have abdicated their responsibility become increasingly less effective and less accountable.  For example, no Police force in the world can be effective without the active support of the citizenry, no matter how large its budget becomes and no matter how many Police are recruited.  To the contrary, without that grass-roots support the Police force is likely to grow into a despotic organisation serving privileged groups^[8] within society, becoming an obstacle to law and order and the Rule of Law^[9] rather than a promoter thereof.  Similarly no education system in the world will be effective without informal parental education and socialisation of children; and social security systems will create ever deepening cultures of dependence unless beneficiaries actively "earn" their support^[10] - unless they take tangible responsibility for their support.

At a moral level, the Church in all its various guises has for centuries allowed and encouraged individuals to abdicate their responsibility for their moral integrity.

Not that long ago most of the world's population lived in small stable rural communities with well worn routines, fixed hereditary roles, immutable world views, and rigid moral codes the adherence to which was strictly enforced by monolithic patriarchal religions.  The great majority of the population would regularly attend religious services of some kind in which a suitably anointed man would sternly remind those gathered of their moral, social, and religious obligations.  Local dialects developed in communities only a few miles apart, and one of the greatest challenges faced by these insular and inert communities was to avoid procreation between people too closely related.  This was the norm world-wide even in the first half of the twentieth century, and continues to be the norm for many millions in traditional rural areas.  But nothing could be further from the reality now faced by the billions that live in large urban areas or in contemporary societies.

How well do you know your neighbours?  Do you even want to know them?  After all, chances are that you or they will have moved on within a couple of years.  Our homes, our workplaces, our communities, are all becoming increasingly transient.

The information revolution^[11] is constantly challenging and undermining any traditional beliefs or values we may have had.  The weekly sermon from the pulpit has at best been replaced by the moral voyeurism of television talk-shows.  If there still is such a thing as sin there no longer is a priest in your life to confess it to, or a Church that you can purchase indulgences from.  Your best alternative is a therapist who will deliver politically correct ambiguities in soft soothing tones, while charging by the half hour.  Truth?  Is there still a right and a wrong?

In the old world morality and faith were defined externally, and enforced externally.  You could abdicate responsibility to external entities that would decide right and wrong, and define truth and God for you.  In the new world order each of us needs to take direct responsibility for our own and our dependants' moral and spiritual integrity^[12]: for developing, maintaining, internalising, and constantly applying a personal faith and morality that allows us to distinguish between right and wrong; to uncover truth in a chaotic, transient, and uncertain world; and to act in harmony with Life^[13].

Each of us also needs to take responsibility for our own and our dependants' physical and social integrity^[14].  At times that may mean taking the law into your own hands^[15].

We also need to take responsibility for self-censorship^[16] - for the information that we expose ourselves and our dependants to - and, as consumers, responsibility for our impact on the biosphere^[17].

Don’t blame your politician, your policeman, your boss, your priest, your partner, your circumstances, or your luck.

Our future is in your hands^[18].