who are you to tell an individual what responsibilities they have, and to try and make outcasts of people who don't want them?
I don't have to move anywhere to absolve myself of the responsibility to strangers.
I don't have to move anywhere to absolve myself of the responsibility to strangers.
By taking part in every day life, using civil infrastructure, having contact with other people you're a part of society with all that goes with that.
It logically follows that the only way to extricate yourself from the situation is to leave society and all the benefits it brings. There are people who have done that!
However I don't see how you can possibly do so and have the convenience of a doctor available when you're sick, coffee sold by the cup and roads on which for you to drive. These are physical and organisational manifestations of 'society'.
By remaining in proximity and contact of other humans you're their responsibility and they are yours.
It's fine to want out but that does need to come with a realisation of what benefits you draw from societal organisation and what you'll need to lose to withdraw from the uninvited, unwritten, yet tangible 'bargain' that society represents.
I'm trying to picture what remaining with other people yet rejecting 'society' theoretically looks like and I can only see it as a kind of parasitic relationship. When aware of parasites humans have a tendency to try and kill or remove them. After all, you would be rejecting all the protections legal and otherwise that society offers its members.
I reject this completely. That's your reality, not mine.
But he may not be compelled. Indeed, it is the societies where people have talked about us all being responsible for everybody else that have murdered the most people (e.g. Soviet Union).
The foregoing interaction with lacampbell might be an analogy of how society fails creative types. They are often awkward, abrasive people who insist on doing things their own way. As a result they are denied jobs, ostracised socially (in the name of friendliness) and generally swept under the rug.
Society would far rather give academic posts, for example, to those who fit in enthusiastically:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-head-g...
The desire to be accepted and to fit in, despite appearances, is not really about friendliness, is my guess. It is actually rooted in the fear of others and the fear of being cast out of the tribe. Like all emotions this fear enacts behaviours which tend to install it in other people. As a result of early socialisation most of our creativity goes into being/appearing normal instead of into making original stuff.
I'd like to think I'm not particularly awkward or abrasive. I'm not some cold hearted monster that has no empathy, or never helps or shows kindness to strangers. But you rightly point out that I reject being compelled to help all and sundry. A charitable act should be mine to perform freely.
> All of your post hinges on the premise that you feel responsibility for individual problems should be collectivised, by force presumably, and that I am required to morally feel obliged to help any and all strangers by virtue of being born or living in roughly the same area.
I categorically reject that this is my position and am sorry I wasn't able to explain it better. Let me try further:
I'm not suggesting that you be required to do anything. At all. It is your choice to choose to do nothing.
However as a member of society, of which the only way of really escaping is to escape the proximity and influence of those who comprise 'society' you do have a collectivized stake in the outcome of society. If you for example choose to do nothing about drug addicts, and the rest of society does the same... society is then responsible for what happens as a result of untreated drug addiction. You, as a member of society, have some small part ownership over what happens.
Does that make sense? I'm talking in a very abstract sense, not a direct "here is a kid -> take care of it" sense.
But problems are solved by individuals. So part of the gauge of the strength of a society is how receptive it is to knowledge originating in the minds of rare individuals. Does it protect them? Or does it shut them down with censorship, disemployment and so on?
It's vital that people realise that they are not responsible for the fall of every sparrow, lest they be burdened with undue guilt. Their minds are then at least capable of remaining free and creative.
I'm an individual and I'm free to help or not help strangers as I see fit. Neither you nor anyone else has the right to tell me what problems of which people I'm responsible for.