1. It has become part of a blame culture; when anything bad happens it is assumed that someone (more likely someone than something) is responsible.
2. It has become part of a victim culture; when anything bad happens it is assumed that someone else is responsible. Therefore I can remain innocent; a victim.
3. As a result it has been associated with guilt.
4. Even where an action is not necessarily bad, responsibility has come to feel like a burden. Where some action is required responsibility to accomplish it has become something we would rather place upon someone else.

And yet, perhaps there is another way of using this word; a way that is not weighed down with blame, victimhood, guilt, or burden.

Response-Ability

If you break the word up into its two constituent parts, it becomes Response-Ability … the ability to respond.

Looked at like this it speaks of a different reality, and it becomes; freedom, rather than burden; empowerment, rather than, victimhood; and future orientated possibility, rather than backward looking blame & guilt.

It looks at reality – which is often full of difficult events and circumstances – and rather than asking the question ‘why?’, it asks ‘What?’; what should I do? It reveals the reality that, whatever the circumstances, every one of us has the ability to respond. Every one of us does respond – that’s one of the definitions of Life, that we respond to the changing stimuli of the world. But as human beings we have a gift that is not so evident on other forms of life; we have far more control over the way we respond – we can chose.

However constrained our life we have the ability to respond in a way we can chose. Even if we are physically constrained, we have control over our emotional and  thinking response. That does not mean that our response-ability can always make the situation better, but the wrong response can always make it worse. So, responsibility is a precious freedom.

What would our life be like if we reclaimed responsibility in this way?

There has been a growth in the last half century of Human Rights as the fundamental rule-book for governing the way we organise and relate socially, especially regarding minorities or those who are more vulnerable. But this has not been without questioning; It has produced some odd outcomes and often seems only to emphasise the competition and opposition of different human rights or the rights of different groups.

The first push back against this way of thinking has probably been to look to the other end of the spectrum and think about human Responsibilities. It does seem to answer some objections; it suggests a less self-centred and more communal and other orientated ethic; and it seems more empowering of people, making them active agents rather than passive recipients or potential victims.

However, Responsibility also has problems; not least in defining what such responsibilities are. And, it has the danger of putting the weight of decision and action on one side. This could, itself, disempower others – if you take up the mantle of responsibility where does that leave those you may feel responsible for?

There is perhaps a third way of looking at this; a recognition that each person is a human being in their own right – so that their principal right is to be treated as such, and their principal responsibilities are to act as such and treat others similarly. It is what is recognised (at least in part in the caring professions as Dignity.

Another way of expressing this would be in the second great commandment ‘love one another as yourself‘

It does not give easy answers that can be codified in legal detail, as the idea of Human Rights does. It does not privatise the answers in the way that Human Responsibility does. It require dialogue, conversation and negotiation. It require really listening to one another and recognising the competing viewpoints of different people and the need to seek for something that can be construed as the common good – a tempered ‘common good’ that listens to individuals.

Perhaps, in the end, all three are required:

• Dignity – to recognise the common and equal humanity of each person
• Rights – to be treated with Dignity
• Responsibility – to treat others with Dignity and to live that Dignity in yourself.

It’s only a starting point, but the alternatives are shortcuts and lose much of what they purport to be seeking.