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Who's Responsible for Our Lives?

John Mangun - 7/6/2008

Our individual and collective hearts and prayers go to the victims and their families of the on-going maritime disaster. No words of condolence can do much to relieve the grief. Financial assistance and donations in kind can lessen the suffering and we all have an obligation to do what we can to help.

In hindsight, the shipping line should have cancelled the trip and I am sure that wish they had. Philippine maritime authorities should have not allowed the vessel to sail and they surely regret that regardless of the words of the formal guidelines. The vessel’s captain should not have put to sea and at some point, he knew that he committed a grave error.


Yet there is another participant in the decision to sail; the passengers themselves.

There was a raging typhoon blowing in the central Philippines . Yet they depended on the ‘wisdom’ of the Coast Guard, the shipping line, and the ship’s crew for their safety.

At what point does or should personal responsibility take command in our lives?

Governments, all governments around the world, have become massive institutions in the last 60 years. With promises of being able to manage individual lives better than the individuals can, governments have taken over as much personal responsibility as they could for the care and well-being of the individual.

We have been told over and over that government can provide for us and we have accepted those words as truth even after seeing a long and sad history of failure by those governments.

Tens of thousands of children are killed during the recent earthquake in China , a result of faulty design and construction of school buildings. Local residents that were interviewed in the aftermath said that they had felt concern about the construction and expressed that concern to officials, but in the end, accepted the government assurances.

As Hurricane Katrina moved closer to New Orleans , tens of thousands waited for government assistance and waited and waited in vain as city, state, and federal officials did little, and what they did do was completely inadequate.

Every year or two, a group of children are stricken with food poisoning at some school function because the fast-food spaghetti was left for hours un-refrigerated, growing the harmful bacteria. No mother objected. No organizer questioned it. Personal safety was left in the hands of an ‘authority’.

The United States Congress passes a biofuel law that from the outset, guaranteed that corn and wheat would reach historically high price levels. But the American people relied on their elected officials and the wisdom of their government.

It is not only to the government that people have given up personal responsibility. We just as easily accept the ‘truth’ when laid down by corporations and ‘experts’.

In the last ten years, there have been countless recalls of tainted food in the US , the latest being the salmonella infected tomatoes that have sickened a few hundred. Ground beef, chicken, the full range of what we put on our table is now the responsibility of companies and government agencies.

Former Vice-President Gore has made, by some estimates, $100 million dollars promoting his unproven hysteria of ‘global warming’. Now that real science proved that world temperatures have been dropping since 1998, ‘global warming’ is now ‘climate change’. And what is the definition of ‘climate’? “Climate is the variations of weather in a region over long periods of time”. In other words, ‘climate’ means change. Yet we may worry and even alter our behavior because of what ‘experts’ on so many topics tell us.

Too many follow the ‘experts’ only because, well, they are experts.

We have put aside, even given up personal responsibility in favor of the ease and convenience of letting others do our job for us. Then we complain we that the results are terrible.

We expect the government to provide jobs as if was the government’s responsibility. Yet at the same time, we applaud and hold up as an example self-made individuals.

ABS-CBN news online tells the story from the OFW Journalism Consortium, of an OFW who came back to the Philippines and starts a fish-drying business in Zamboanga. The business failed, wiping out the family savings. They then started making cassava cake and were successful until the mass food poisoning in Bohol after residents ate cassava in 2004. His business nearly failed when they stopped making cassava cake.

So then, he whined and complained about the government not providing jobs and opportunities. Sorry, no. He then started making banana cake. His business is thriving now.

Not so long ago, people did not expect very much from government and government provided very little. They knew that their success or failure depended on their individual effort and responsibility.

Now we expect almost everything from government and still, government provides very little. And too many people succeed or fail based on what government does or does not give and by believing that government has the ultimate responsibility for their lives.

We speak of ‘empowerment’. However, the greatest power on earth is the power of the individual and that power can never be unleashed until there is a strong sense of personal responsibility.

“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will, his power, his personal responsibility”; Albert Einstein.