Personal responsibility

[Nakidana]

Hey guys, I'm a bit confused about this issue, hoping you can help organize my thoughts on it. What is personal responsibility? Obviously it's the mantra of the right wing whenever they blame poor people for their situation, but does such a thing as personal responsibility even exist? I mean if we don't have free will, can we even have personal responsibility?

Also how do you refute the right wing notion that since a portion of poor people have "made it out" of the ghetto and are now middle class, the rest have only themselves to blame. Ie the ones who made it out took "personal responsibility" whereas the others just didn't "make the right choices". More specifically you hear anecdotes about poor people on the dole watching tv all day, not taking care of their kids and trying to get a job, while others in the same conditions, still work and take care of their kids.

I'm thinking the obvious answer is that the reason some poor people "make it" is because of government programs that help them out, and the reason not all poor people make it is because we don't have enough government programs and jobs (which of course is because of capitalism) Is it as black and white as this or am I missing something?

Last but not least, if you guys can suggest some resources on the concept of "personal responsibility" and related issues I would be grateful. ;)

[argeiphontes]

Also how do you refute the right wing notion that since a portion of poor people have "made it out" of the ghetto and are now middle class, the rest have only themselves to blame. Ie the ones who made it out took "personal responsibility" whereas the others just didn't "make the right choices". More specifically you hear anecdotes about poor people on the dole watching tv all day, not taking care of their kids and trying to get a job, while others in the same conditions, still work and take care of their kids.

And during WWII, some people managed to escape from concentration camps, but that doesn't mean the other prisoners were lazy, or justify the camp in any way. (I skirt the horizon of Godwin's Law ;) )

It's a structural problem of class reproduction: sociological evidence shows that socioeconomic class is largely inherited. That some people do make it speaks to a combination of luck an determination, but the average results are far worse than those few exceptional cases would indicate.

A good place to start to understand the problem is to read Bourdieu and Passeron's Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (http://www.amazon.com/Reproduction-Education-Society-Culture-Theory/dp/0803983204/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381542080&sr=8-1&keywords=pierre+bourdieu+and+passeron+reproduction ).

[argeiphontes]

So, in summary, "Personal Responsibility" is blaming the victim. A classic strategy of people who want to justify negative things they are partly responsible for.

[Loony Le Fist]

Hey guys, I'm a bit confused about this issue, hoping you can help organize my thoughts on it. What is personal responsibility? Obviously it's the mantra of the right wing whenever they blame poor people for their situation, but does such a thing as personal responsibility even exist? I mean if we don't have free will, can we even have personal responsibility?

Also how do you refute the right wing notion that since a portion of poor people have "made it out" of the ghetto and are now middle class, the rest have only themselves to blame. Ie the ones who made it out took "personal responsibility" whereas the others just didn't "make the right choices". More specifically you hear anecdotes about poor people on the dole watching tv all day, not taking care of their kids and trying to get a job, while others in the same conditions, still work and take care of their kids.

I'm thinking the obvious answer is that the reason some poor people "make it" is because of government programs that help them out, and the reason not all poor people make it is because we don't have enough government programs and jobs (which of course is because of capitalism) Is it as black and white as this or am I missing something?

Last but not least, if you guys can suggest some resources on the concept of "personal responsibility" and related issues I would be grateful. ;)

The free will problem is difficult and interesting philosophically. Despite being subject to physical laws, humans are also capable of learning and accepting new material. So despite living in a deterministic universe, you can simultaneously believe that humans have a certain ability to learn from previous mistakes. From this, it's possible to derive that humans also have a bounded free will (you cannot just decide to levitate) and can accept some degree of personal responsibility. Mental illness can be considered another boundary on free will as well. You may want to look up the philosopher Daniel Dennett in a Google search or on Wikipedia for some more details on how free will can be compatible with a deterministic universe.

As far as the heart of your question, personal responsibility in right-wing propaganda really means personal responsibility for poor and working people and no responsibility for the wealthy and especially corporations. Socioeconomic status, as stated before, is the biggest predictor of future success in existing capitalist societies. It has been that way for centuries. Capitalism is merely a slightly more gentle form of feudalism. By promoting this meme, the right-wing can handwave away inequality as part of human nature, without addressing the structural problems of living in a society plagued with it. All while continuing to provide protectionism to the rich and powerful, who needn't worry about personal responsibility under such a system, and can hide behind the corporate veil.

If you don't provide the poor with a hand up out of their situation, most will fall through the cracks and live out their lives in poverty. Just because a few make it out, doesn't mean the rest are lazy. After all, the working poor often have multiple jobs in order to survive and feed their families. The previously mentioned concentration camp example comes to mind.

Coming back to the issue of personal responsibility, if you succeed in a capitalist society, it is generally due to a combination of factors. But your success is built on the shoulders of giants. It is made possible through an infrastructure in place in an advanced society. So people that succeed can also be said to have a personal responsibility to compensate society for their use of infrastructure and the benefits they have been granted. It goes both ways. Take a large retailer that uses a massive logistic and transport infrastructure of trucks and trains to move goods. Trucks use public roads which causes wear and tear to them, produces pollution, and adds additional traffic congestion. The trains cause additional congestion and pollution. It can be said that retailer has a personal responsibility to compensate society for that externality. This is the other side to personal responsibility that rarely touched upon when you hear this meme come out of the mouths of right-wing pundits and politicians that promote it.

It is telling to observe the intense and rapid the attack from the right when US President Obama claimed that "we built it." It truly lifts the veil on their true feelings about so-called personal responsibility.