Issue 636 Evil Is Anti-responsibility? July 17, 2015

People decide their own outcomes.  As such every action they take is their responsibility.  So is it evil when you are anti-responsibility?  

Responsibility:  Do you remember the Disney Cartoon with the dog Pluto.  In it Pluto is put in a quandary on whether or not to do something and his devil self and angel self appeared on his shoulders.  However, both urged him to do the wrong thing.  But Pluto decides whether or not to act.  This is the same with all of us.  We decide whether or not to act.  And when we act we become responsible for our action that we take.  At no time are we manipulated like a puppet.  Sure, our options can become limited in situations that are extreme, but it is still our responsibility.  But is us not taking responsibility evil?  The answer is that unto itself, this is not evil.  If no responsibility is taken, then is it evil in practice?  Think about it.  You're in a situation where people will not become a victim, nor you yourself, and a person takes an action, or you take one.  No one is harmed and thus despite the action, whatever it is, the lack of responsibility being taken is not evil.  You are never without some form of responsibility to begin with, but not taking it is not evil or necessarily irresponsible.  But when does taking responsibility, or avoiding it become evil?

In this case taking responsibility or not becomes evil when morality is in question.  Volunteering to do harm to someone is taking responsibility for doing another harm.  Not acting to preserve another's life is avoiding responsibility in the face of someone getting hurt.  Get it?  Evil is doing an action or inaction regardless of the responsibility involved when a person gets harmed in some serious way.  Introducing a kid to drugs and then abandoning them to their now addiction is anti-responsibility, and thus is evil.  Being a soldier in Nazi Germany and killing the Jews and others without question despite knowing it is morally wrong is taking responsibility and thus because of the moral (let alone ethical consequences) is evil.  Evil is anti-morality, not anti-responsibility.

Conclusion:  We generally take responsibility for our actions when it benefits us, and avoid it when it is inconvenient.  You could even say this is a survival mechanism.  But learning when and where we can make decisions is crucial to actually making this choice.  Additionally, understanding the moral consequences beyond what affects us is also a necessity to making sure we do not even accidentally commit an evil deed by simple inaction or avoiding responsibility.  As such, people have to be able to think beyond themselves and place themselves into others shoes.  But our society has a very short attention span.  We lack focus because we are no longer deep thinkers.  As such, I wrote this little issue based on another conversation Between Glenn Beck and Penn Gilet on the Blaze (they make interesting points) because we need to become deep thinkers again.  I feel that our attention spans have grown so short and that our incessant need for immediate gratification so large that we forget there are people even around us.  So just remember morality at the least, that if it will cause harm to another person then it may be evil.