Good morning guys!
I took a Rhetoric course on edX this past 8 weeks and the final assignment was to write and submit an article about any topic we wanted. I ended up writing about accountability, and decided to post here as it really goes along the lines of the Bastter Philosophy and I talked about things i also learned in here (you can even see some Bastter reference in the title lol). Have a good week!
***Accountability is key to a better society. Nothing will change. Except yourself.***
The lack of responsibility can be identified as one of society's most pressing problems of our modern times. I am talking about a very important type of responsibility that most people seem to have forgotten or are either unaware of, the individual responsibility, commonly known as accountability. What if I state that, if people would just stop trying to fix all the problems of the world and focused on the simple tasks within their own reach, we would see a social welfare that we had never experienced before?
Accountability is being aware that we are fully responsible for everything that happens in our lives, and not transferring any of that responsibility to others (people, governments, events, etc). The world is made of people's individual efforts, and those daily efforts are the basic building blocks of society, so if people have no personal responsibility there is no way for the society to have true collective responsibility.
People can do massive amount of good for themselves and to anyone around them, but to help those around us, we need to focus on ourselves first. In the book Outwitting the Devil, Napoleon hill states: "The first duty of every human being is to himself... Only, and if only one has time and energy after fulfilling himself he should then tend to his duties to others". Tackling our own problems dissipates a lot of energy, requires consistent efforts and often creates discomfort. There is no easy shortcut. If we truly want to be of help to others we must first become the role models we believe we can be, and let our results speak for themselves.
Back to the society issue, where do we even start? The clinical personality psychologist Jordan B. Peterson for years has been conducting studies on the topic of individual vs. collective responsibility, and explains that people need to focus on their lack of certain skills and their individual flaws, to expand their personalities, strengths and competences which would naturally result on them expanding their careers and the way they portray themselves in society.
If people manage to improve their careers by improving themselves, they can rise to leadership positions, and with more competence, have the moral to take appropriate decisions that would then affect the collective decisions. A person that has risen to leadership by blaming others without being accountable for his own actions, would not have the skills, would not have the experience, would not have the empathy needed to make collective decisions. No detailed examples needed here, we all have seen the destruction that can be caused by dictators, bad leaders, and so on.
Let's be clear about one thing though. Being accountable is not about judging yourself, it's about taking action. Judgement leads to guilt, and the feeling of guilt does not necessarily leads to action. If you fail a test, you can be accountable by recognizing you did not put the necessary efforts and take action by studying more next time. If you were involved in an accident, you can be accountable by recognizing that it was not under your control, but take action on what to do to recover and how to avoid it from happening again.
Life is difficult and no one can question that. If good things comes your way be happy for it, and if you find fulfillment be even happier. Some people do have it harder than others and all of us will have it very hard at sometimes. When the hard time comes, what are the alternatives? You either take charge by being accountable or you blame it onto others which will definitely make things worse in the long run. Transferring the responsibility might feel comforting at start, but that feeling will not last.
To establish a functional relationship with yourself, you must hold yourself responsible for your decisions and actions. Work on your accountability daily. Take responsibility. Take action. It takes time. Being accountable is not a once in a life transformation. It is a slow walk up the ladder as a result of daily consistent efforts to take charge of you own life. So focus on the journey and make sure to enjoy the good that will come out of it.
Holder_robot.
