Sure, I’m not assigning any blame in my original comment. I agree with your comment, but I also still think we have a personal responsibility to look into these things and be critical. Conspiracy theories can be a failure of the state and of the individuals.
The thing with assigning responsibility is that it does not ever solve anything.
Assigning it to individuals actually does prevent solving issues, since if you assign individual responsibility to a systemic problem, you get to - instead of looking for a root cause - say “people should just be better”. By attributing it to some individual moral quality, you get to avoid the hard questions - like “why is everyone stupid?” or “why is everyone immoral?”, and not realize the environment in which these people live foster the stupidity or immorality, and the only way to solve it would be education or higher standards for leaders.
I agree with everything you said, genuinely. Ignoring societal factors would be foolish and expecting personal responsibility to be the deciding factor is naive. All that said, to ignore it entirely leaves you with an incomplete view as well. People have the potential to be more than our nature and circumstances dictate us to be.
To address your point directly, I don’t expect anyone to do anything. I do though believe that personal responsibility is a core element of any non-autocratic political system. I will ask for it, because my fellow citizens belong to the same government I do and I have a vested interest in it working. I’ll also be doing what I can to improve those contextual circumstances we mentioned earlier. Expect, though? No, I really don’t.
Sure, I’m not assigning any blame in my original comment. I agree with your comment, but I also still think we have a personal responsibility to look into these things and be critical. Conspiracy theories can be a failure of the state and of the individuals.
The thing with assigning responsibility is that it does not ever solve anything.
Assigning it to individuals actually does prevent solving issues, since if you assign individual responsibility to a systemic problem, you get to - instead of looking for a root cause - say “people should just be better”. By attributing it to some individual moral quality, you get to avoid the hard questions - like “why is everyone stupid?” or “why is everyone immoral?”, and not realize the environment in which these people live foster the stupidity or immorality, and the only way to solve it would be education or higher standards for leaders.
I agree with everything you said, genuinely. Ignoring societal factors would be foolish and expecting personal responsibility to be the deciding factor is naive. All that said, to ignore it entirely leaves you with an incomplete view as well. People have the potential to be more than our nature and circumstances dictate us to be.
To address your point directly, I don’t expect anyone to do anything. I do though believe that personal responsibility is a core element of any non-autocratic political system. I will ask for it, because my fellow citizens belong to the same government I do and I have a vested interest in it working. I’ll also be doing what I can to improve those contextual circumstances we mentioned earlier. Expect, though? No, I really don’t.