Restoring Balance: The Imperative of Responsibility in the Age of Understanding
One the great faults of our age is the societal expectation of happiness. We believe we are entitled to feel good, as if it were our right, bestowed upon us by a divine force. We have command over the seas and space, over the hot and cold diseases of our body. We have dominated nature. What more is it to ask, to have command over suffering?
Achieving any sort of contentment with life is incredibly difficult. And never is this contentment a warm blanket to be felt day and night, every day of the year. It only shows itself in those rare moments, when we’re lying in bed with our spouse staring up at the ceiling, walking down a dense wooded path with birds singing above, and being in the company of friends we’d die for.
We need to keep in mind we are not entitled to contentment, that those feelings of sober bliss and peace are rare, and only accents upon the dark slog of reality. But they do exist, and are - I do believe - the moments where we transcend our ‘little self’ and realise our connection with the beauty of the world.
It is true, some of the factors that influence the experience of contentment with life are biological, or environmental to the degree it is somewhat outside one’s control. One could be born profoundly neurotic, and be destined to experiencing more negative emotion than the average person. One might have had a neglectful mother or an abusive father, both of which harm an individual’s ability to navigate the complexities of emotional health as an adult.
And understanding what causes one to think or act a certain way, to potentially misrepresent to themselves a situation because of their genetic make-up or the conditions they were raised, is an essential first step in developing the tools to experience some contentment with life.
Yet, it sometimes seems to me, this understanding, instead of being a life raft for emotional and therefore psychological and spiritual growth, is its diametric opposite - an anchor tied to the feet, keeping one submerged under the murky ocean of self-pity and eternal indulgence.
It’s because understanding is not sold with its necessary partner - responsibility. Without recognising the link between conduct and reward, the necessity of discipline in the sculpture of one’s own wellbeing, one inevitably leans upon the external reasons for their malaise, blaming their biology, parents, society, or the system. They stay consumed by their ‘little self’, their day-to-day, hour-to-hour concerns, with an expectation that others need to ‘fix’ them.
Increasingly, these ‘others’ have grown in their abstraction. No longer are they limited to the immediate family, but entire professions of people, from teachers and professors at educational institutions, psychologists and physicians of the medical establishment, managers and administrators of corporations, to political leaders of entire nations.
And because of this dependent relationship, the ‘scope of practice’ of the professional classes, the elite, is broadening. Their self-importance has bloated, drunk on its own propaganda: “We are saviours of the people. Everyday they tell us they need our expertise.”
I am not going sit here and deny differences in ability, in intelligence. Some individuals, through skill or privilege, justly or unjustly, will rise to the top of hierarchies. That is as natural in humans as it is in any other social animal. Elites - or whatever word that placates your temperament - will always exist.
Yet, it seems likely to me, that a healthy relationship between the elites and everybody else is foundational to a socially harmonious and therefore flourishing society and culture. But what we have today is dysfunction. What we have today is dependence.
Not all dependent relationships are pathological. Yet I believe that many cases of malaise, dissatisfaction, of ‘depression’, could be at the very least improved, with the reintroduction and celebration of responsibility alongside understanding. That your psychological health is fundamentally your concern - not anyone else’s.
I am not saying that people don’t need help or wouldn’t benefit greatly from the wise council of one of these elites. For certain people a skilled therapist is precisely what they need: It can be the catalyst for psychological flourishing. I am also not saying that all elites behave like self-important busy-bodies, out to accrue as much power, status, and money as possible. Only that they should more often recognise the limits of their own jurisdiction, that their ‘scope of practice’ be minimised, with much of it returned to the individual citizen.
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The Delinquent Academic
Very tempered take. At first it sounded like you were advocating almost radical individualism, but the end grounded your point better.
Well put, and phenomenally well timed for certain satellite events in my life. I've got a close friend who's recently been enduring a malaise of the sort you describe here, one caused in large part by forces beyond his control but which he can't help but blame himself for. I've been trying to help him through it in what ways I can, given we live quite a ways apart from each other. (Neighboring countries, but separated by many miles as I'm in the Southwestern U.S. and he lives in central Mexico.)
Part of the way I've done this is to try and keep him goal oriented, to help him see the value in maintaining his responsibilities even when he feels it's pointless to do so. To find worth in what he accomplishes, teaching him how to take moments to step back and take a genuine look at what he has and continues to achieve despite the current challenges looming over him. It doesn't always work, especially in cases like this most recent one where the feelings begin to feel like the globe carried on Atlas' shoulders. Sometimes it does, though, particularly when I can get him working on the sorts of projects he's genuinely passionate for again. Those are the times where he's usually able to break through that fog, if not fully, then at least enough to see the sky again, proverbially speaking.
I'm thinking I may send him this article. I feel as though it might just resonate with him.