For a long time, I’ve taken the conventional left-wing perspective on personal responsibility: that it was wrong.
I was afforded plenty of privileges and lucky breaks in society that allow me to have a middle-class income and lifestyle. Both my parents were at home growing up. I always had food on the plate and a roof above my head. As an Asian, I always believed I was less disenfranchised than my Black and brown peers.
All these things are true. But recently, I’ve been challenged, as a special educator in one of the most disenfranchised and under-resourced parts of the country: Baltimore City. The vast majority of my students live in poverty and are predominantly Black, and by most metrics in American society, they are the least privileged on the social ladder.
You see it when a student talks about being raised by a grandparent and parents not being present in their lives. You see it in the students who live in group homes or who mention the times they spent in homeless shelters.
A wave of systemic injustices and barriers have inflicted their lives, including the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, police brutality, white supremacy, and many, many more.
My students have as much incentive as many to be cynical about personal responsibility, but by and large, they are not. They believe themselves in control of their own lives and their own fates. Many dream of moving out of Baltimore and getting out of the hood. They may often talk about how homeless people are at fault for their situations because many keep doing drugs and not getting jobs.
They have a strong sense of personal responsibility, but this does not deny systemic barriers. My predominantly Black students are extremely well-aware of the privileges white people have over them, even if they currently don’t have the academic language for it. They are also aware there’s possibly a better life outside the one they’re living in, even if they haven’t always experienced it.
I realize their experiences are multifaceted, nuanced, and can’t be put in a box, as much as any person’s. But over my three years as a teacher, the people I have encountered with the strongest work ethic, and strongest sense of self-determination and personal responsibility are the least privileged and disenfranchised.
I saw it in my immigrant parents, who just told me they came to America with only $400 and worked several jobs to keep a roof above our head. I see it in my students, who believe they’re fully in control of their lives and want to improve themselves, just like any other human being. They take responsibility for their own lives as much as, if not more than, most other people.
And so this does not deny systemic barriers or injustices. But did I misunderstand personal responsibility? Is it wrong to believe in it? Is it compatible with my liberal political beliefs in a strong welfare state and strong social safety net?
Well, there’s a lot of reason to believe in personal responsibility especially if you’re disenfranchised and underprivileged if you think about it. The government and the state haven’t done a good job of taking care of you.
People in power have shown they’re only concerned about their own reputations and success rather than your well-being, so it’s easy to feel like you’re the only one who can change and improve your own life.
When the state fails, you become less trustful of the ability of others to help.
On a personal level, my family has means now it didn’t have when I was younger. I don’t like accepting help from my family. It’s for personal reasons as much as it is my values, but I like to be independent and free of obligation to my family. My father wanted to pay my law school tuition next year — while it was an incredibly generous offer, I denied it.
It felt like a handout. And I’m not saying handouts are bad or saying the term in a derogatory manner — all I’m saying is it’s personally important for me to pay for and be responsible for certain obligations myself instead of relying on the assistance of others.
Is this me taking personal responsibility? Or is it me being prideful? Sure, not liking handouts from my family doesn’t make me a Trump-supporting conservative, but the mindset is compatible with my politics. I don’t need financial assistance or a safety net in this situation. Other people do.
Regardless, I still grapple with personal responsibility. I think you can simultaneously want to take control of your life, as anyone does, and also want a strong social safety net for society’s most vulnerable citizens.
Still, the right’s narrative around personal responsibility and an outright rejection of the welfare state is even more dangerous. Completely getting rid of government assistance and the welfare system is neglecting the fact that America is the richest and most unequal country in the world.
I often find there’s a disconnect between what most of us preach and believe in our ideals, especially in politics, and in our daily lived experiences. You can only give a loved one so many second chances if they keep hurting you. I know someone who says they’re a socialist, and yet owns five different rental properties, which seems to be an inherent contradiction.
On a personal level, I do believe the world and the system can be completely stacked against someone like it is for many of my students. Some people are objectively much luckier than others.
However, I also believe people always have a choice, and completely denying anyone agency over their choices is a slippery slope. We all have an obligation to help our most vulnerable decisions, but at a certain point, everyone is still in control of their own life.
Believing in personal responsibility isn’t bad, but what’s the solution?
Author and political scientist Yascha Mounk argues both the right and the left have narrow views of personal responsibility.
Mounk says the concept of responsibility has changed over time. In the 1950s and 1960s, it referred to the responsibility we had towards each other, in line with JFK’s “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your family.” It referred to a more communal sense of responsibility.
That definition has narrowed since. It refers to, as Mounk says, an obligation to not “ask things of the state or of others because you’ve made some bad choices, because you failed at something.” It has become a punitive idea of hyper-independence.
This punitive idea of personal responsibility punishes actual victims and neglects factors like disability, in a rejection of the welfare state. If we see a person as making poor decisions, as a state, we’ve become less likely to help them.
Society benefits from people becoming more equal in our political system. We want a better economy that reduces needless suffering, where we don’t have a significant underclass. The “greater moral good,” according to Mounk, advocates for more equality in our health care system and economy.
For the right, it’s often the fault of the needy that they’re in need. And the state should not intervene when someone’s life is going poorly.
For the left, “everybody is a victim of structure, a victim of these forces beyond themselves.” This leads to no one being responsible for their choices because they have no agency over their lives. It’s not their fault.
Mounk sympathizes more with this latter argument as a leftist individual, but sees it as “politically ineffective” because it’s not persuasive. The moment we stop seeing people as responsible for their own lives, we disempower them. People can be needy and also have agency at the same time.
Think about if you told someone “your father was an alcoholic. That means you will probably be destined to be an alcoholic too.” Judging from personal experience, no child of an alcoholic wants to hear that, ever, even if they have a genetic disposition towards alcoholism.
They want to believe they can be the change. They want to believe they can be different. No one in my immediate family is an alcoholic, but I vowed never to be a smoker after seeing my father smoke three packs a day at points growing up.
Reducing suffering is the right thing to do, no matter what, from both a moral and utilitarian perspective. The punitive perspective of personal responsibility is cruel because it just lets people suffer.
As human beings, we all suffer tragedies and make bad choices. At some point in our lives, we all need help getting on our feet when bad things happen.
Mounk argues we should empower people to be “capable of real agency” instead of seeing them as victims whenever they fall under financial hardship. And there should still be a safety net.
This is both the pragmatic and moral argument, one that should be beneficial to both the left and the right. Mounk uses the example of someone who has lost their jobs due to their own fault: they missed work too many times and were late too many times.
From a utilitarian perspective, even though most people would agree it’s the person’s fault for losing their job, you want them to get back on their feet, and soon, and it’s less costly for a government to help the person get a job than it is to allow them to be unemployed.
. . .
Most people want to be responsible for their own lives. Most people want to feel responsible for their own lives.
There was a time I attributed everything in my life to luck and good outcomes to chance. And I had a good point, but everything just felt very unsteady, for lack of a better term. If I attributed every single accomplishment I had to luck, if I never gave myself any credit, then what would prevent everything from crashing down when something didn’t go well?
Most people also don’t want a world where they have no obligation to others. The world is lonely enough alone, and when we have no responsibility to make sure others are cared for, that makes for an even more cruel and heartless world than we already have.
I don’t know the answers, but I know it’s not bad to still believe in personal responsibility while acknowledging systemic injustices and barriers. As human beings, we all want to be in control of our lives, but we also need to acknowledge the reality that it’s not a level playing field for everyone. And since the playing field is not level, we have an obligation to do whatever we can to protect the most vulnerable among us.
These concepts are not mutually exclusive — they’re necessary towards a more loving and understanding society.
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This post was previously published on Publishous.
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