Our responsibility to society...

[Jennifer5]

I was catching up with Zerbie and she mentioned that she was thinking a lot about our responsibility to society.

I am observing how much power each one of us has to make a really big impact. So let's make it the most positive, loving contribution to the world that we can make.

Zerbie, if there is anything here that you did not want to share, I will gladly edit it out. I just that it was better to use the original words.

My question to all of you is, do you agree that you have a responsibility to society?

If your answer is 'yes', then what does that look like and how can you act on it.

If your answer is 'no', I'd be curious to know why.

[christa08]

Yes and No for me.

I think I'm conflicted when it comes to issues like this (maybe I'm just conflicted all the time. )

I think if you want to make an impact, then yes, make it positive and loving like Zerbie said.

I think it's different for every person. For me, I want to make an impact and I plan to do that through getting a degree in Psychology and helping people and families.

When I really think about it, I don't feel a "responsibility" to anybody. I just see the hardships people experience and I want to be there for them just because I have compassion toward them.

[Jennifer5]

Originally Posted by christa08

Yes and No for me.

I think I'm conflicted when it comes to issues like this (maybe I'm just conflicted all the time. )

I think if you want to make an impact, then yes, make it positive and loving like Zerbie said.

I think it's different for every person. For me, I want to make an impact and I plan to do that through getting a degree in Psychology and helping people and families.

When I really think about it, I don't feel a "responsibility" to anybody. I just see the hardships people experience and I want to be there for them just because I have compassion toward them.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that might be the same thing. If you feel compassion for a stranger and want to help them, perhaps responsibility feels like the wrong word.... but at the same time I think it kinda fits.

[Zerbie]

Originally Posted by Jennifer5

I was catching up with Zerbie and she mentioned that she was thinking a lot about our responsibility to society.


Zerbie, if there is anything here that you did not want to share, I will gladly edit it out. I just that it was better to use the original words.

My question to all of you is, do you agree that you have a responsibility to society?

If your answer is 'yes', then what does that look like and how can you act on it.

If your answer is 'no', I'd be curious to know why.

But since my name was mentioned, and my words quoted, here goes.

What I wrote to Jen was a conversation between the two of us, and in that context, when I wrote "our responsibility" I meant myself and Jen. It has to do with our personality type (or types, plural, but we are close in type). We each respond, in various ways, to the problems around us with a move towards reconciliation and positive growth.

If you think about the word responsibility, you probably tend to hear echos of parents and other elders talking drearily about duty and obligation. But if you listen to the word, you hear in it 'response' and 'ability.' When I referred to responsibility in addressing Jen yesterday, I spoke of that kindling in ourselves that makes us sensitive and willing to respond to society's need. In that sense, I was referring to a personality trait (inherited or learned) that involves a willingness to take action by 'responding. . . ' = response + able.

Originally Posted by christa08

Yes and No for me.

I think I'm conflicted when it comes to issues like this (maybe I'm just conflicted all the time. )

You just sound balanced.


I think if you want to make an impact, then yes, make it positive and loving like Zerbie said.

Only one problem: there is no way to avoid having an impact. If you withdraw into a shell, that will have an impact. If you verbally abuse children, that will have an impact. If you are the only one in the room to speak up and speak out for someone who is downtrodden and feels cut off and unloved, that will have an impact.


I think it's different for every person. For me, I want to make an impact and I plan to do that through getting a degree in Psychology and helping people and families.

When I really think about it, I don't feel a "responsibility" to anybody. I just see the hardships people experience and I want to be there for them just because I have compassion toward them.

By what I meant with the word, yes you do feel responsibility! Whether or not it's an obligation or a duty, hmmm, funny how I have literally never thought of that. I always thought of it in terms of an inner prompting -- that you are driven to respond.

Christa, if you see hardships and respond by wanting to be there, to offer help, support, presence, and if you act on that response, then that is social responsibility in action. It's all the more pure and profound for you being unaware of it.

Originally Posted by Jennifer5

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that might be the same thing. If you feel compassion for a stranger and want to help them, perhaps responsibility feels like the wrong word.... but at the same time I think it kinda fits.

That's exactly what I meant -- you feel it, you respond to it. You take action and you thus become responsible. Responsibility is not a burden; it is a strength.

[Jennifer5]

Originally Posted by Zerbie

But since my name was mentioned, and my words quoted, here goes.

What I wrote to Jen was a conversation between the two of us, and in that context, when I wrote "our responsibility" I meant myself and Jen. It has to do with our personality type (or types, plural, but we are close in type). We each respond, in various ways, to the problems around us with a move towards reconciliation and positive growth.

If you think about the word responsibility, you probably tend to hear echos of parents and other elders talking drearily about duty and obligation. But if you listen to the word, you hear in it 'response' and 'ability.' When I referred to responsibility in addressing Jen yesterday, I spoke of that kindling in ourselves that makes us sensitive and willing to respond to society's need. In that sense, I was referring to a personality trait (inherited or learned) that involves a willingness to take action by 'responding. . . ' = response + able.





By what I meant with the word, yes you do feel responsibility! Whether or not it's an obligation or a duty, hmmm, funny how I have literally never thought of that. I always thought of it in terms of an inner prompting -- that you are driven to respond.

Christa, if you see hardships and respond by wanting to be there, to offer help, support, presence, and if you act on that response, then that is social responsibility in action. It's all the more pure and profound for you being unaware of it.




That's exactly what I meant -- you feel it, you respond to it. You take action and you thus become responsible. Responsibility is not a burden; it is a strength.

In this situation I never thought responsibility was a burden, it really is a strength. Responsibility to society is going to have a different meaning for each individual.

Zerbie, sorry that I didn't realize that you were referring to the two of us specifically. I feel that this is something good for everyone to think about. It just have different meaning for the two of us because of our nature.

As you mentioned (or at least the point you were trying to make??), it's about being aware of our impact on society. Whether our actions are honorable or not, they influence those around us. Therefore, we have a responsibility to society to tell the bank teller "Don't worry about it.", rather then yelling at them for their mistake. I think it's mostly about how we choose to handle ourselves, just being better people as a whole.

Any thoughts...?

[Zerbie]

I was contemplating a bit on two separate (though related) matters:

1. responsibility: ie. responding to society as we are able

and

2. power: that every individual has an impact. even those not considered 'powerful' impact those around them in all kinds of large and small ways, hence we all have far more power than we may have imagined.

The two can overlap, and you've already gotten into the overlapping in your post above. I think that recognizing our power makes us more responsive, more able, thus more responsible.

[christa08]

Originally Posted by Zerbie

By what I meant with the word, yes you do feel responsibility! Whether or not it's an obligation or a duty, hmmm, funny how I have literally never thought of that. I always thought of it in terms of an inner prompting -- that you are driven to respond.

Christa, if you see hardships and respond by wanting to be there, to offer help, support, presence, and if you act on that response, then that is social responsibility in action. It's all the more pure and profound for you being unaware of it.

I never thought of it like this. I always thought of responsibility as an obligation but I like to see it from this view much better.

I love how you put it, that you can't 'unsee' the bars of the cage. That's true. That seeing results in responsibility (responsibility of the duty sort, this time, Jen and everyone) is very meaningful.

I definitely agree with this. I love the way this is put.

[Alecto]

I wish the whole school was like that, but this particular teacher was more an exception than a rule. The only teacher I still talk to / hang out with (5 years out of graduation), that was the one room where no gay jokes would be ignored.

I think "the cage" was left deliberately vague, because it's like...we're the ones that can see that we're in a hurting world. What those hurts are, and how we see them, and how we think we might go about healing them are going to vary from individual to individual, and I think she saw that and was ok with that and wanted to be supportive of multiple emphases. Queer rights is obviously the direction I settled on, but other folks went into environmentalism for example. So I guess the cage is primarily societal, but there's definite tie-ins to the other things you bring up. I've heard her make reference to the metaphor in a spiritual sense too, so I think it's just an image that she likes that's fairly adaptive. As for leadership roles, I think that's exactly what she meant (though I could expound a bit on wider definitions of "leadership").

I threw the "unsee" part in because I went through a phase where I very literally tried to pretend things weren't all kinds of terrible. Because then I could be happy like everyone else. It doesn't work.