Personal Responsibility - What is it exactly?
What exactly is Personal Responsibility and why is it emphasized so much in modern political discourse?
America has long been exalted as the land of individualism, self-determination, and upward mobility. It is the hallmark of the American Dream. It is one of the major reasons that immigrants from all over the world struggle for the opportunity to get a visa or a green card and make that dream a reality for themselves and their families. However, one of the major secrets of this American Dream is the collective social infrastructure in place to allow for all of that individualism. And I’m not talking about the interstate highways, the social safety net of Medicaid and Social Security, or the Internet, even though these are critical and are often missing in other countries. What I’m talking about is our system of governing. At our founding principle, we are a system of laws with equal execution of justice, we are a self-governing people where anyone can become part of the system and achieve nearly any political office and help write future laws, and we are a system of integration where people from all over the world become part of the United States of America.
“Personal Responsibility implies that you are accountable for your actions and only your actions.”
So where does the championing of Personal Responsibility come into this argument? Personal Responsibility implies that you are accountable for your actions and only your actions. That your actions do not spill over to affect other people. Therefore, a single individual should have the maximal freedom to do whatever they want as long as they are held accountable for these actions. But that is false. Every action has an effect on the social circle you belong to, both beneficial or harmful. Additionally, accountability is distributed unequally in our society since we have far from a perfect justice system. In a society, each individual benefits from the efforts of others, the social safety net, the infrastructure of the country, and the unique governance system defined by the constitution. Therefore our actions affect others and their actions affect us.
Personal Responsibility also implies that everyone starts at the same place. Clearly we don’t. A child born to a wealthy family will have access to better early education, tutors and private sports leagues, access to better schools, surrounded by peers with the same advantages, and often connections that can facilitate their next steps in life. Whereas a child born to a minimum wage working family is often surrounding by family struggling to make ends meet. They are reliant on the resources available only at their public school, some of which are very underfunded. They are surrounded by peers who are navigating these challenging hurdles, some of whom make harmful choices. Access to extracurriculars that will expand their college applications are more scarce. Some fear from violence in their neighborhood by criminal elements and police forces alike. Coming out of this background, we frequently celebrate the people that make it out and herald them as an example of someone who actually took “Personal Responsibility.” However, these people are not just regular success stories, they are the extraordinary success stories. Should we always require extraordinary for some Americans to succeed? Is that the American Dream? In addition, all people fail at times. If you are lucky enough to start ahead in life, a failure is frequently something that you can overcome with “self-determination,” but if you start behind, a single failure can doom you to a lifetime of being left behind unless other external systems are sufficient to give you another chance.
“Personal Responsibility implies that everyone starts at the same place. Clearly we don’t.”
There is nothing wrong with one generation facilitating the success of the next. But to equate someone who becomes successful in the first example of a privileged upbringing to a person who must struggle from the beginning of their life in the second example as a difference of Personal Responsibility misunderstands the fundamentals of equality, equity, and justice. We should challenge people to continue valuing individualism, self-determination, and upward mobility, however, we should do that in the context of a social system that lifts people up who are disadvantaged so that everyone can rise. Instead, the mantra of Personal Responsibility frequently blames the individual alone for their poor outcome in life that is often far from purely their own making. Too often Personal Responsibility is used as a shield for one’s own desire for freedom from social accountability when you already have privilege and used as a weapon to hold others accountable for small failures when they start out without those privileges.
Let’s move away from the vitriol of Personal Responsibility and move back towards the founding principles of individualism, self-determination, and upward mobility where all people are held accountable for their actions while still recognizing that the shared social structures that support all of us needs reinforcement in some places more than others.