View Full Version : Social Responsibility


sisyphus__
05-03-08, 07:12 PM
I am fully aware of what some concepts of existentialism states, that man is condemend to be free, that existence precedes essence; alienation. I am more concerned with the actual facets of responsibility. Such as

1:
Human potential.

It is clear when looking at an individual that he/she must have some form of responsibility. Yes, yes, this is true. But what about that responsibility?

What happens when it is loosend or lost (tempo).?
What IS responsibility???

My guess is that it's a category mistake I am making here. That responsibility is mostly innate and this would make this whole topic 'innane.' But it is no such thing. The reason is because responsibility is not simply innate nor is the human individual creature/creation. Rather, the individual person in question is 'undecided.' They are what makes them up to be.

My concern is how responsibility is faced and how we should deal with it when it comes time to examine such a possibility as responsibility and the actual social responsibility.

Does anybody have any ideas??

:(

cosmictraveler
05-03-08, 08:53 PM
What IS responsibility???

It varies from person to person. There's responsibility to oneself, ones family, ones parents, ones business, ones government and on and on. Which one would you want to discuss?

Clown
05-03-08, 09:40 PM
The primary responsibility is that of self toward self.
All others are derivatives of said responsibility.

When someone tries to impose another responsibility as above this primary then what is occurring is dominion.

S.A.M.
05-03-08, 09:58 PM
Social responsibility can only be addressed if one is willing to look beyond oneself. The tragedy of modern society is too many people caring only about themselves and hence becoming the only persons who do care about them.

Fraggle Rocker
05-03-08, 10:09 PM
Homo sapiens is a pack-social species and therefore each of us has an instinctive sense of responsibility to the pack, our pack-mates, and the pack leader. However, we also have a uniquely massive forebrain so powerful that we have the ability to override our instincts with reasoned and learned behavior. That clash between doing what we feel is right and doing what we know is right is the cause of many if not most of humanity's problems.

This clash began when we invented the technology of agriculture, which both allowed and required us to give up the nomadic life of the hunter-gatherer and start living in permanent settlements. The small extended family group, in which everyone instinctively cared about and depended on people they had known intimately since birth, gave way to the village, which required living in harmony and cooperation with people who were not family. The pack-social instinct had to be expanded to include a larger and less intimate "pack." Civilization ("city-building") expanded it further to include complete strangers, and nations expanded it to include anonymous people so far away that they were nothing to us but abstractions. The global village that the post-industrial era demands that we build requires us to finally regard every human being as a pack-mate, in essence transforming us from a pack-social species to herd-social.

The intimate, detailed, trust-them-with-your-life responsibility we once felt for a couple of dozen fellow hunter-gatherers must be replaced by a constructed responsibility to give only minimal respect to several billion strangers, many of whom we don't really like. Ironically, that minimum is still: trust them with your life. We're not actually obliged to look out for each other's welfare any more, protecting each other from bears, sharing food during a famine, keeping an eye on children when their father is sick or out hunting.

But what we are obliged to do--our one remaining responsibility--is not to ever kill anyone. That is the minimum responsibility of every civilized person. Because if we cannot be counted on to observe that rule, then we will all have to spend so much of our effort and other resources on defending ourselves from each other, that there won't be enough left to keep civilization running.

This is a complete reversal from the Stone Age. It's been recently discovered from analysis of Mesolithic human remains, that 60% of adult deaths were due to violence. The responsibility that everyone had to his pack mates required him to kill members of other packs if they came too close, infringing on the scarce resource of hunting territory or actually attempting to steal the pitiful store of surplus food during a famine.

Today we may not regard strangers with hostility, and in fact must promise them that we will not harm them.

If we have only one responsibility to consider in this discussion, this is it. But is it ever a doozy! It pits our inner caveman against the civilized person we present to the world. As we see in the reports from Iraq, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and scores of other places, we're having a lot of trouble completing this transition.

greenberg
05-04-08, 01:05 AM
The primary responsibility is that of self toward self.
All others are derivatives of said responsibility.

When someone tries to impose another responsibility as above this primary then what is occurring is dominion.

Social responsibility can only be addressed if one is willing to look beyond oneself. The tragedy of modern society is too many people caring only about themselves and hence becoming the only persons who do care about them.

What is this "self" you are talking about?
How can one"self" be defined and recognized and distinguished from another "self"?
What does it mean to "take responsibility for oneself"?
What does it mean to "look beyond oneself"?
What does it mean to "care only about oneself"?

sisyphus__
05-04-08, 06:30 PM
What is this "self" you are talking about?
How can one"self" be defined and recognized and distinguished from another "self"?
What does it mean to "take responsibility for oneself"?
What does it mean to "look beyond oneself"?
What does it mean to "care only about oneself"?

Pretty good questions.

I think that's pretty much the criteria for what I was addressing, although maybe subconsciously when I had said:

My concern is how responsibility is faced and how we should deal with it when it comes time to examine such a possibility as responsibility and the actual social responsibility.

Does anybody have any ideas??

:(

Actually, my question, personally was probably more about .... hmmm looking at it now it does seem sort of confusing if judged on a basis of regulated behavior.
By this criteria your post basically sums up what response I was looking forward to (I think).

What is looking beyond oneself?
What is "seeing the truth from a lie"?

In my opinion there's a lot of debate to be found here.