Whose Responsibility is It? January 24, 2014
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: achievement, determinist, Dr. Robert Owens, morality, opportunity, responsibility, you didn’t build that
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God makes all of us to be round pegs in round holes. In a free society if we end up a round peg in a square hole…..that’s on us.
There is no feeling worse than believing we have squandered our talents, wasted our life, and made no difference in our short time upon the world stage. If we live in a society that chooses what, where, and how we do things it is easy to feel as if the opportunity to become who we were created to be was stolen. However in a free society where we can choose for ourselves the responsibility for those choices as well as the freedom belongs to us.
Freedom does not merely mean that each individual bears the responsibility and the burden of choosing their path. In a free society it also means that each individual will also receive either the praise or the blame that results from those choices. Freedom and responsibility cannot be separated if either is to have a realistic bearing upon the individual. If you cannot choose you are not responsible. If you can you are. A society cannot call itself free unless individuals ultimately occupy the positions and bear the consequences resulting from their own actions. For that society to remain stable the individuals need to recognize that their positions and the concurrent consequences are the result of their own choices and actions.
A free society can only offer the opportunity to choose, and in a society of free agents this can only provide the chance for success. The outcome always depends on the accidental interactions between circumstances and others. Someone who has taken their destiny into their own hands while cognoscente of what they cannot control will concentrate their attention on what they can as if these are the only aspects of the endeavor which matter. Circumstances and chance will either be advantageous or limiting. Only the individual will know whether they have made the most advantageous use of either their talents or their circumstances therefore the responsibility for their actions resides with them.
In America today the knowledge of and the belief in this link between freedom and responsibility has become as rare as the honest man Diogenes spent a life time looking for. Today victimhood has been raised to an art form. It is inspired and rewarded by a complex system of laws and social conventions that offers praise for the helpless pawn and reviles the individual who succeeds. Driven by the apathy and antagonism it elicits from those who accept the arguments that “You can’t fight city hall” and “It wasn’t my fault” even the word responsibility disappears from the vocabulary of motivation from the pulpit to the hustings.
The I’m OK you’re OK culture that accepts infanticide, suicide, and much else of what was once known as vice as not only morally acceptable but as civil rights flees from moralizing. This throw-away culture elects people of the lowest morals and of the most glaring narcissism: media rock stars who rule instead of lead and who trample upon the freedoms our forefathers fought and died for. This is not only accepted it is voted for since if our leaders are morally bankrupt it is all right for us to do whatever feels good. If our leaders are attempting to weld the shackles of a totalitarian gulag in every sphere of life we truly are deprived of choice and are mere victims.
If you attempt to tell people that they are responsible for their choices and their conditions it will often provoke outright hostility. These people have been taught that society has made them what they are. It has determined their position in life and it is nothing but external circumstances that decide whether they succeed or fail. They have rejected all responsibility because they fear it and in consequence they have rejected freedom.
In a large part this is a development that is not purely either religious or political in nature. The rise of science and of the attempt to apply it to our understanding of humanity leads to several conclusions which are incompatible with freedom.
The first of these misapplied axioms is that everything is governed by iron-clad laws. While this may apply to thermodynamics it does not relate in the same fashion to free agents in a free society. Thoughts are infinite and new thoughts can always inspire new choices. The second axiom erroneously used to understand human action is the idea of universal determinism. The idea that all things are the inevitable consequence of prior action directed by inherently immutable outside forces precludes spontaneity and freedom of choice. In such a system human will becomes an illusion and reality a maze with always only one way out.
Of course based on reality as experienced by everyone it has to be admitted that except on rare occasions the outcomes of human action could not be predicted and the results of particular circumstances interacting with particular individuals could not be foreseen. However from genetics to economics from sociology to politics the belief that everything is determined by laws eliminates the space for a belief in freedom of the will and the responsibility which its operation engenders.
Those who accept the determinist position assert that it is genetics shaped by education tempered by society that constructs and controls all of us. We are all the product of both nature and nurture and we exist within a grid designed, created, and controlled by society. Whatever we are and whatever we become it isn’t our fault and it isn’t our choice or our effort. This position was summed up brilliantly in the statement, “You didn’t build that.” If you accomplished something you didn’t do it on your own just as if you fail it isn’t because of you, you’re merely a victim and as such society owes you support.
Divorced from morality and excluded from personal experience by education and an ever more regimented society responsibility has become a legal concept. There are intricate webs of laws used to determine liability in the case of negatives while the “You didn’t build that” mentality erodes the concept of responsibility for success. Once the link between choice and responsibility has been severed one of the major motivators for excellence has been silenced. For the greatest significance of this fundamental concept is that a feeling of responsibility for one’s own choices is its role in guiding the decisions and actions for free people.
If nothing is ever your fault, if nothing is ever your achievement what does it matter what you choose or what you do? If we are to be free we must bear the responsibility of that freedom or else we will search our whole life to learn whose responsibility is it.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
What’s the Reason? January 10, 2014
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: America first, American tradition, conservative agenda, Conservatives, Dr. Robert Owens, Progressive agenda, Progressives, rationalistic, reason, traditionalists, traditions
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Just as the pursuit of perfection can often end in the sacrifice of what is good so too the worship of reason often results in the exaltation of mediocrity and the circumscription of reasonable thought and action.
Daily the Progressives aggressively push forward against positions which have long been the traditional battle lines of the conservative movement. The front lines in the culture war move ever closer to the transformed America they envision. First prayer was expelled from School. Then the sexual revolution wave peaked with the nullification of state abortion laws by the Supreme Court and then crashed into the mainstream with condoms and birth-control distributed to school children. Divorce became common-place, and out-of-wedlock births account for the majority in several demographics. Pornography is a constitutional right and as close as a mouse click away in most homes.
Those who want to hold on to the America we were raised in are ridiculed in the press, movies, and by our elected officials as a wild-eyed fringe of traditionalist America-firsters clinging to our guns and Bibles. This is why it is important to examine the place of reason as opposed to tradition in the operation of society.
To paraphrase the infamous phrase of George Bush the Younger, “I have sacrificed free market principles to save the free market system,” I would say, “At times we must suspend the rule of reason for reason to flourish.” Or follow in the footsteps of David Hume who was said to have turned against the Enlightenment its own weapons to whittle down the claims of reason by the use of rational analysis.
It is the ability to think in symbols and imagine abstract things that sets man apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Therefore at the outset let me say this is not an appeal for irrationality or any type of transcendental mysticism. It is instead meant to be a rational examination of the anti-rationalistic position which is necessary for the preservation of individual freedom, personal liberty, and economic opportunity, and the only conditions under which reason can flourish and evolve. For the attempt to apply reason and reason alone to the organization of society’s intricately woven interface of conventions stifles creativity, leaves no place for innovation, and is ultimately unreasonable.
When we attempt to apply the laws of science or the mechanical practices of engineering to human activity we run the risk of building a maze so perfect the mouse can never find the cheese. Or in other words we can seek to make our processes so ideal that there is no room for free thinking, free action, or for the splashes of genius that are the real catalysts of societal evolution.
Those who stand by the idea that reason and reason alone should shape the future must of necessity seek to abandon tradition; for traditions are not built upon reason. They are built upon trial and error. That which doesn’t work is discarded, and that which works becomes accepted through use and time. However it is impossible to completely disregard tradition. Every day each of us moves through life acting upon hundreds of unconscious rules and procedures that we don’t think about because they were bred into us by those who raised us. It is the consensus of a common culture and heritage which makes a people one, E Pluribus Unum.
Those who worship reason believe that they can design a perfect society, a utopia, and that all of their dreams of perfection will stand the light of day. History proves over and over that those who seek to guide the evolution of man through the evolution of society do not create the heaven on earth they advertise.
Look to the French Revolution which cast down Christ and enshrined Reason as their God. It didn’t produce the liberty, equality, and fraternity it promised; instead it brought forth Terror, dictatorship, war and ruin. The Russian Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy of the Romanovs and installed an even more absolute dictatorship that promised a worker’s paradise and delivered the gulags, starvation, and collapse.
When those who think they are wise enough to make everyone’s decisions about everything try to manufacture a society that looks like their computer models they must use coercion to force those who do not accept their vision to act as if they did. Rules, regulations and red tape bind the human spirit and prevent the growth of the un-designed, the unforeseen, and smother the spark of genius. As counter intuitive as it may sound a free society will always be in large measure a tradition bound society. For traditions, though they may seem unbreakable at times, are always evolving while rules are cast in concrete.
Patrick Henry told us, “Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed . . . so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger.”
John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Our virtue is embodied and defended in our traditions. Once these walls have fallen how can our virtue stand unprotected assailed on all sides in what is becoming an alien culture?
The ethics of virtue tells us “virtue is determined by the right reason. Virtue requires the right desire and the right reason. To act from the wrong reason is to act viciously. On the other hand, the agent can try to act from the right reason, but fail because he or she has the wrong desire. The virtuous agent acts effortlessly, perceives the right reason, has the harmonious right desire, and has an inner state of virtue that flows smoothly into action. The virtuous agent can act as an exemplar of virtue to others.”
The virtuous person acts in the way they do because it is their nature. They have imbibed the virtue of their society and they act naturally as an embodiment of the good. They have absorbed the traditions and they act as they do without thought, without regard or reliance on reason. They do not question what is right or wrong. They know what is right or wrong and act accordingly. They follow tradition.
The worshipers of reason reject the traditions that have grown up organically in society and design their own. They reject the good and seek the perfect. The problem is that perfection is impossible in this life. Perfection does not belong to the realm of man. The air castles and utopias of the rationalistic social engineers may look good on paper; however they never materialize into anywhere we can live.
Why is it hell the Progressives will deliver instead of the heaven they promise? This is what has traditionally happened and that’s the reason.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
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