Who's Responsible For This Mess?
"I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast."
-- Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Now there's a thought! A statue of Responsibility - perhaps our new President should consider this for one of the public works projects we will be funding. Alcatraz might be an interesting choice - kind of a "take a look at what you are creating" message. Heck, maybe we could even place a few of the more deserving financial felons in residence there.
OK - perhaps incarcerating those in the spotlight misses the main point here: who is responsible for this mess anyway?
After all, this is America and there must be someone to blame, someone to sue. Couldn't be me, that's for sure.
Unless, of course, it could.
That's the point of this post and a several more to follow: How am I, how are you responsible for the current situation in which we find ourselves?
It seems that over the past couple of decades, we have allowed ourselves, and therefore our country and its institutions, to drift away from some fundamental qualities of responsibility and accountability.
If this isn't immediately clear, I can understand. After all, we have become such a blame-focused society that a person can injure themselves and still take some kind of righteous stance that someone else is to blame and someone else should pay.
How about the person who ordered a cup of coffee, presumably wanting the coffee to be hot, managed to spill it on themselves, and then wound up suing the vendor because the coffee was, well, hot? And they won!
I mean if you can get what you want, misuse it, hurt yourself in the process, blame someone else for your own choices and actions, and still wind up being compensated for your own irresponsible behavior, how can we be surprised at the mess we currently find ourselves in?
Don't get me wrong - we all know there are bad guys out there doing bad things. The point of this article is not to defend the wrong doers.
However, the point is to underscore that each of us has our own responsibility for our own circumstances. Common usage has the word responsibility meaning something akin to blame, fault, or cause. I like to think of the word as being made up of two words - "response" and "ability" or "having the ability to respond."
We can use the notion of "having the ability to respond" as a way to look back at circumstances to determine how we got here in the first place. What role did I play? What choices did I make? Did I create this situation out of my own direct actions? Did I promote this situation out of a less direct but still involved set of actions? Or did I allow this situation out of my own inactions - I saw it coming and didn't do anything about it?
These are pretty empowering concepts if you take them to heart and look deeply at your role in creating your current circumstances.
How many of us have ever overextended ourselves financially? We knew we couldn't afford it and yet we bought it anyway? That could range from the smallish item we put on our credit cards to the house we couldn't afford but wanted to pretend would work out somehow.
Sure, there are all manner of folks out there who are willing to help us live out our self deceptions. You can call these folks credit card companies, bankers, loan brokers, real estate agents, etc. Some of these people are fine human beings - moral, ethical, and willing to help. Others are less scrupulous, all too willing to escort us into financial difficulty through any number of inappropriate financial devices.
However, none of these people or institutions can escort us where we don't wish to go.
A great opportunity is upon us individually and as a nation - the opportunity to take a more active, response-able, and involved role in creating and owning our future. However, we won't get too far into an improved future if we don't take stock of how we got here in the first place.
I know it is fashionable to blame the Bush fables for our current circumstances. However, who chose to believe these fables in the first place?
So, I suggest taking a look at your current situation and simply ask yourself: how did I Create, Promote or Allow this in my life? You may find it useful to read a previous post on how you can move from being a victim to being accountable for your life circumstances.
Today's article asks you to become accountable for your current life circumstances by examining your own role in creating them. Hopefully, this will help you create an even better set of circumstances going forward.
Next week, we will look at responsibility and accountability from a future focused point of view: How are you responsible to the current situation?
We are all aware of circumstances surrounding us right now, circumstances that impact friends, families and strangers. Even if you are not responsible for these circumstances, they are here nonetheless.
So, unless you want to become or remain a victim of these circumstances, the question will become how are we responsible to these circumstances? How can we become part of the solution we might all prefer?
Blessings to you!
You can find out more about Russell Bishop at http://www.lessonsinthekeyoflife.com. Contact Russell at: russell@lessonsinthekeyoflife.com
The author of Lessons in the Key of Life, Russell is an Educational Psychologist, professional life coach and management consultant, based in Santa Barbara California.
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Ronald Reagan. He made it popular to hate the poor, disdain public assistance in any form (except corporate welfare) and not question anything the rich asked for. The evangelical movement adapted his very unchristianly message and morphed it into the 'gospel of prosperity' and it snowballed from there.
I'm not blaming him solely, the idiots who thought he was great are just as guilty.
Russell: I agree with much of what you said but I too take issue w/your use of the 'hot coffee' case. Trial testimony established that: 1)McDs policy was to hold coffee at 185° - a temp which causes 3° burns in 2 seconds, rendering it unfit for human consumption (coffee served at home is around 135°); 2) 700+ people had suffered serious 3° burns from McDs coffee in the previous 10 years -- i.e. McDs knew its coffee was too hot; 3) this 79 (!) year old woman suffered 3° burns which required skin grafting; she originally asked for $20K to settle her claim; 4) the $2.7M jury award represented 2 days of coffee sales for McDonalds. The judge, found McD's conduct to be reckless and willful, but reduced the award to $420K and it was eventually settled in a secret agreement. I think that rather than continuing to use this woman as an example of ridicule, maybe we should view her as someone who acted courageously and responsibly in working to force a corporation to take notice of its own Responsibility to not cause unnecessary harm to its customers.
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Thanks, Anne. I'm sorry for having picked an example that distracts from the main point. Having worked with literally thousands of people on the notion of accountability, I have found that just about everyone can identify areas in their lives where they have felt victimized and discovered much greater accountability and response-ability than previously recognized. It doesn't matter how small the incident - when someone discovers greater accountability and responsibility in virtually any area of life, they almost invariably begin to build on that awareness and discover even more accountability in more areas. If this idea is of interest, pick up a copy of "Gestalt Therapy Verbatim" by Fritz Perls and read the sections on responsibility and victim/accountable. Or you could read an earlier post of mine http://www
Please note that I'm not condoning any aspect of a legal system that insists puts anyone through the kinds of insanity as this coffee represents. I'm just advocating that our world would be a whole better off if we could take just a bit more personal response-ability for our actions and weave in large doses of compassion, understanding, acceptance, caring and loving.
For an even more eyeopening experience, try Viktor Frankl.
Thanks again for offering your thoughtful commentary. I truly do appreciate it.
Blessings to you.
As I posted once before....
Do not throw shoes.
We have a long road to walk.
You will need them.
If we walk together, we ALL might end up with new shoes.
Good article, Russell. Honest about the situation-- yet offering us something we can each do at our level to change it, future-forward.
Let's start with the personal responsibility of the banks and their CEOs. No? They get bailed out to the tune of a trillion dollars and counting. Then, after all of that is gone, we have moralistic diatribes like this one, telling the American people to get responsible.
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HI Benne: I can certainly understand how you may have misread what I have been writing about these many months. Allow me to try being more clear: the more time I spend decrying the unfairness of the situation, the less time I spend on improving my own situation or that of others. I can't fix the whole mess all by myself; however, I can do something about a range of things that touch me. That includes everything from managing my own greed and financial problems, over to lending a hand to those in even greater need.
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn wrote: "If you were to put the world to rights, with whom would you begin? Yourself of others?"
My suggestion is that we each address what we can and then begin to extend our circle of involvement and our circle of influence.
Blessings to you.
Bishop’s right, we can't fix the mess by ourselves. However, we can learn about how our fractional reserve, fiat money system works in relation to the Federal Reserve. When we see there isn’t a need for the Fed to create our money, sell it to the Treasury at face value and charge us interest on it, we will be closer to a solution.
Bishop has us picking up the pieces of this cyclical mess. We have to get at the root of the problem. We must take the power to create our money back from the Fed and return it to our government. The Fed is 9 board members appointed by the U.S. President. The rest is a cartel comprised of private member banks. As we are experiencing now, private banks only look out for themselves by stealing 8.5 trillion of our dollars to bail out its member banks. They get to buy up the failing banks for pennies on the dollar—your dollars.
We need to get off of the fractional reserve system. This system created the massive debt bubble that is bursting right now. Without the massive tax burden of paying interest to the Federal Reserve, Americans would be able to stimulate the economy with all that money the Fed takes through Federal Income Taxes. Yep, that money goes to pay the interest on the money loaned to us by the Fed.
Google movies that will explain this corrupt system: The Money Masters and Money As Debt
I hate to be the one to break up the party.... but once again I must, I can't resist the truth....
it's just so liberating
those who are responsible for this mess are those who take responsibility for it....
not the ones necessarily who created the mess, but those who are willing to stop believing in pretty dreams for a moment and are willing to let the truth in...
Lies are always much easier to believe in than the truth, because they require no risk, and they are so very comforting
But now is not the time for that....it
to take responsbility for this, takes guts and courage, and that is our only hope...
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Russell this is a profound blog. It really is for me and possibly others. I find myself at times realizing what I did after the fact.
I am not perfect. I try my best. But I do look and see where I have not acted my best and acknowledge it.
I have an Indian yogini who said to me, "do your best and leave the rest" It is helpful especially when pondering too long about anything you can't change that has already happened.
I sure am lucky I don't drink coffee.
Thanks, Joyful,
Ed
Interesting question, who is to blame?
In the short term, the failed leadership of Bush and the Republicans is obviously to blame.
However, Dubya did get elected, at least in 2004, so we the people have to share the blame for what has happened. There are those who opposed the incompetence and the corruption, but we all bear some of the responsibility for letting the GOP be elected to power.
After the collapse of 1929, no Republicans were elected to the presidency for twenty years, almost another generation, in 1952. I sincerely hope it will be longer than 20 years before we let them screw things up again. As the saying goes, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it - so, no more Republican presidents.
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Hey Mamacat: I like the acknowledgement about some of us had to play a role in electing our :"leaders.
Hey Mr. Bishop,
I can tell you my thoughts about why I think it is important to be careful who we vote into office.
If we had a pure democracy, we wouldn't have to worry about voting for representatives, since we would each be playing a role directly in government.
Since we have a democratic republic, wherein we elect representatives to act on our behalf, it becomes important who we chose to elect to the government. If someone thinks it makes no difference who we vote for, then that someone has no reason to become involved in the voting process, and is likely to stay home on election day.
Continuing from last comment...
I can see from some of the comments here, some people still want to find fault and/or assign blame or find a way to undermine a different way of seeing things.
Specifically Otay Panky.....
The people who blog here do not get paid in money for their contributions. We all do it out of a sense of service and a desire to make a difference. What is this axe you continuously grind with everyone about how much they get paid for doing what they do? What does that have to do with what any of us offers freely here?
What are you contributing to the world in this time of possibility besides trying to shoot down others? Frankly, I find it boring and extremely unproductive. If you really stand for contribution given freely, then let's hear something back from you that expands the conversation and opens new possibilities. So far, we've only heard your one channel agenda. Got any others?
If you're sincere about looking for wisdom, try tuning in to what's being offered here rather than being right about what you already think you know.
Russell, Anne and others, keep on keeping on,
Judith
I help a lot of people who are looking for some answers to life's biggest questions, and I don't charge them a dime for my help...and I never will.
I make my living writing copy for a percentage of royalties and investing. For 30 years I was in IT, both on the corporate and consulting sides of the business.
I'm smart enough to know marketing when I see it - and you, and Russell and others aren't here to give selfless service but to MARKET. You're all looking to find clients for your life coaching and therapy businesses.
When a materialistic society tries to monetize the essentially spiritual act of supporting others, it's just not good. Those aren't just my opinions. You get the same opinions from Lao-Tzu, the Buddha and Jesus.
Instead of friends, people have therapists and life coaches. And those who are not wealthy simply can't afford to pay the freight. And - worst of all - people get used to the meme that somehow they can't figure out their own business more or less by themselves. They need experts to tell them how to do everything.
Right now we're going through the most massive de-leveraging of society since the Great Depression. People are getting back to basics, and trimming the fat out of their personal budgets. It's the natural cure for the excesses we've been living with post WW II. And one of those excesses is the excessive therapization of our culture.
Back to you...
Dear Otay,
It's nice to hear something about you, personally. Thanks for sharing.
I can't speak for anyone else's motives for why they blog. I do it because I love writing and sharing ideas and for the pure joy of the exchange with people, even people like you, Otay. It's not about agreeing or disagreeing, but making room for all points of view without making others wrong for theirs.
My observation of you is that you seem to get a lot of satisfaction out of taking "pot shots" from the sidelines. I just wonder how you think that serves? If your point is to undermine the credibility of what is offered here, we hear your point of view. You've made it very clear. You have every right to share that point of view.
Is there anything else you'd like to contribute?
If you're up to playing a big game with your life, and I get that you are, please do share with us what you're doing, how it's going, how you see the world and what's possible. This is a forum, which costs nothing to visit, for people, in the spirit of community, coming together to help make life better for all of us.
I feel sorry that your cynicism blinds your ability to trust that anyone could both be a professional and a selfless servant at the same time. There really is another possibility beyond the way you have it wired.
All the best to you, Otay!
Judith
Hi Russell,
Thanks for bringing us back to this fundamental principle. I guess it can't be repeated too many times. What seems to fall through the cracks however, is there is the "conventional" interpretation of responsibility, in which someone or something is always to blame. In this paradigm, to accept responsibility then shifts the blame to one's self.
What you're talking about is the "no fault- no blame" version of responsibility, which is neither a truth or a fact. It's simply a place to stand (as in, a choice we make) from which we have access to freedom, power and creativity. There is no cheese down the tunnel of victim/blame. No place to go with that model except self-pity and excuses for not having life work.
More in the next comment,
Judith
OK, I personally opposed all of the idiocy of the last 30 years including voting against Reagan after the first term of his Presidency proved to me that supply side economics was bogus, that he had no real interest in the common people of the country who were being hosed royally (remember his response when asked about all of the people losing their jobs in the 'rust belt' - which now encompasses the whole of the country) and that the Republican party was, is and will always be the party of the wealthy (hint, they only adopted the morality issues in order to win elections). I warned everyone I could talk to, write to or in some cases yell at. As someone not born in this 'Disneyland' nation where we think that if we believe it we can have it, I've never bought into the deranged thinking that goes on here, but then I've always been called a pessimistic Brit as a result. Time to come out of fairy land folks - you CANNOT have a strong economy when you import 6% of your GDP for year after year after year. You cannot tax cut your way to permanent prosperity.
We can blame our government, the wars, the greedmongers on Wall Street, the egomaniac CEOs, the easy credit and the big spending for our problems - they all got us where we are. I am just hoping our crises will spur us toward creative solutions. I am hoping for new laws that will protect us, our jobs, and our money better in the future but we need to take more responsibility for ourselves, clearly. We need to learn from what has happened and make better personal choices to keep ourselves secure, clearly. We need to change and I don't think another Republican president would have challenged us in that direction. I am excited about our future.
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Hey Lewes: great to see you here again. Indeed, your thoughtful, mindful way of approaching these big issues is refreshing. The sooner we can all let go of blame and begin moving toward response-ability, the sooner each of will find some improvement in our lives. That's not to say that the actions of others aren't part of the game. To be sure, others do have an impact; however, if each of us improves the part we can, we may find that a much larger set of issues will improve. Human greed, jealousy and other less than noble behaviors will remain with us no matter who is elected. If I'm not willing to fix my part, how can I expect anyone else to fix their part? I'm reminded of my early days as an intern in a counseling program: I watched a licensed therapist working with a child while the child was throwing a huge tantrum. About a minute into the tantrum, the therapist starting throwing an even bigger one. The child stopped, stared, and then asked the therapist what he was doing. The therapist replied: "I thought if tantrums worked for you, I'd see what one would do for me." Tantrums pretty much disappeared for the child. Hopefully, we are all done with our trantrums.
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Your words, Russell, are so timely. Last week, while attending the Inauguration, I had an opportunity to learn from a lot of folks. I was so impressed with the attitude of 'if it's to be it's up to me,', as well as 'it's up to we.' Many of the people who shared their stories with me 'owned up' to being less than responsible in use of money, energy, and capacity to voice concerns in the past few years.
I, too, can raise my hand. I know that I can do better. Acknowledging that 'there is more to do,' and that we can do better, for me, is a first step towards resolution. The next, gets down to specifics. What are the specific steps and actions I can take in order to create a better relationship between myself and my world today? Today, I ask myself: in this present interaction, what can I do to make a difference? What can I do to honor the amount of resources available, and not overextend?
Thanks, Russell, for another chance to review the well-dones, and not so well-dones on my own ledger and move toward better!
Blessings and appreciation,
Cara
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Great article.
I agree with you and think many people now feel that, since we did all the hard work to put Obama in office, we can now sit back on the couch, watch the sound bytes of how "HE" is doing to fix our country, and not bother to change our habits much. Then of course, everyone stands ready to point a finger if change does not come about.
I agree it is time to look at how we are all responsible, and how we are also so quick to judge or pounce on our leaders for their efforts.
I look forward to hearing your follow up.
Thanks
Kari
The challenges of our current economy has many Americans thinking of themselves as victims.
That mindset is both disempowering and bad for your health. Fernando Gonzolez, Ph.D., a nationally recognized neuropsychcologist ,states "The number one cause of stress is feeling out of control." Recent studies at the University of Kentucky show that stress may make the brain more quickly. Numerous other research shows that stress weakens the immune system, increases blood pressure and creates sleep disorder.
As soon as you take responsibility you reclaim your control over the situation.
Thank you for reminding us that we create, promote and allow everything in our lives!
Russell, I agree that people need to take more responsibility for the way things are. So many of us blame Bush but we as a country voted for him, twice. It takes a strong person to own up to their mistakes. I remember shopping for a house a few years back and a bank pre-approved me for a loan amount that was 5 times my income. When someone dangles that kind of money in front of you, it's hard to say no. But I did cause I realized I'd be in over my head when the interest rate reset. Maybe if more of us exercised more self-restraint, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now.
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Amen, DennyCrane. Now if you can just get yourself back on TV maybe you can help us all get the message of personal choice. No one made me make the choices I have made and you wisely point out that all it takes is a bit of honest introspection and some bad choices may wind up turning into wiser ones. Thanks for your insights.
I wish that show were back on too. For as outrageous as it was, the show also said the things that needed to be said, about Gitmo, the war, personal responsibility, all the things that the MSM has failed to discuss. In order to encourage people taking more responsibility, maybe they need to incur more of the risk. Take health care for example. We as Americans take it for granted, but imagine how much better care we would take care of ourselves if we had to pay for more of the cost out of our own pocket. Then maybe the person who takes up smoking or decides to eat a Big Mac and skip exercising might think twice.
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