The Invention of Individual Responsibility

Humans love to fix things, to find the cause of a problem, to probe, tinker, and mend. We ask, in many different ways, Why does this happen? What’s the root cause? What’s the origin? What or who is at fault? What or who is responsible? But there are three subjects that have intertwined with the topic of responsibly more than others.

The idea of responsibility has many forms both historically and culturally. Philosophers have debated whether we can be truly responsible for our actions in the context of discussions about free-will; theologians have wrestled with the idea of taking responsibility for our sins; scientists have joined the discussion by searching for causation and exploring the psychology and neurology of our brains.

But today, the idea of individual responsibility is often invoked in discussions about welfare, poverty, and enterprise. Increasingly, throughout the liberal and neoliberal periods, we’ve – in politics and the media, at least - emphasised ‘responsibility for ourselves’ at the expense of other types of responsibilities, moral obligations, or duties.

Is poverty a personal inadequacy? A problem of persons? A problem of character? A problem of culture? Or is it a problem of place? Of systems? Of society?

The particular form ‘individual responsibility’ has taken today – atomised, asocietal, ideally self-dependent, culturally ‘backward’, genetically limited – is a relatively new historical and political concept which is used to justify the dismantling of welfare, the rejection of altruism, and the unravelling of community.

Any cultural interpretation of responsibility is bound-up with politics, language, culture and society, and, has a history that’s not simply progressive and linear. Instead of being responsible for ourselves, the concept of 'mutual obligations' or duties includes the responsibility to work hard and improve ourselves, but can also better accommodate contributing to the world, aiding others, remembering no man is an island and turning our gaze not inwards but outwards.

I look at how this idea of individual responsibility developed in parallel with the history of poverty, looking at Edward Banfield's The Moral Basis of a Backward Soceity, Oscar Lewis' Culture of Poverty, Daniel Moynihan's The Negro Family, Charles Murray's Losing Ground and the Bell Curve, and George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty. We look at poverty and responsibility from the Middle Ages, through to the Poor Laws, to Kennedy, LBJ, The Great Society, The War on Poverty, to the Reagan and Thatcher era and to Obama and Fox News today. Of course, Jordan Peterson also makes an appearance.

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Some sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2690243/

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/welfare-childhood/555119/

Michael Katz, The Underserving Poor

Yascha Mounnk, The Age of Responsibility: Luck, Choice, and the Welfare State

Nash, Gary B. "Poverty and Poor Relief in Pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia." The William and Mary Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1976): 3-30. Accessed July 6, 2021. doi:10.2307/1921691.

B. Harris & P. Bridgen, Charity & Mutual Aid in Europe & North America Since 1800

Clive Emsley, Crime & Society in England: 1750-1900

https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/englands-early-big-society-parish-welfare-under-old-poor-law

https://www.gotquestions.org/personal-responsibility.html

https://www.openbible.info/topics/personal_responsibility

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-moynihan-report-an-annotated-edition/404632/

Morris, Michael. "From the Culture of Poverty to the Underclass: An Analysis of a Shift in Public Language." The American Sociologist 20, no. 2

Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life

Credits:

Dennis Prager Image: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Видео The Invention of Individual Responsibility канала Then & Now