Things are f*****.
While one side argues “Personal responsibility…! …bootstraps…!” the other side cannot get beyond the echoes from the horrors of the past.
There are important signals from both sides, but I can’t help but accept that it’s mostly noise. But what can be learned from it?
The ‘Personal Responsibility’ argument fails when we dismiss the disproportionate amount of bad luck that’s allocated as a result of history’s horrors.
The ‘Systemic Injustice’ argument falls apart when a problem’s scope is lowered to the personal and the local (rather than the impersonal and global). My messy desk is not the result of anti-Irish discrimination in the past.
So I see two categories: forces I can influence, and forces I can’t.
How, then, do I toe that line? What are the right things to focus on?
At what point is ‘Personal Responsibility’ the answer?
And at what point does the concept fail?
I like to look at it this way: I’m playing various games within my life.
To me, there has to be a delicate dance between the macro-forces that influence the arena I play in, what game I play, etc. — and how I actually play.
At some point, I have to stop reflecting on what got me here and just accept that “I’m here” …and win.
So for me, the point of “personal responsibility” starts at the point where I accept the game I’m playing and try to play it as well as I can.
But what if I’m in the wrong arena playing the wrong game?
Then the issue of ‘responsibility’ is now a matter of time-scale. In the immediate-term, I may not have any meaningful influence, but if I take a 10-year time-scale, I do. The problem — being in the wrong arena playing the wrong game — can be broken down to a small-enough degree that I can take 1 step toward a better game.
It is, to some extent, always a dance between these two forces — accepting the game I’m in and trying to win… and continually trying to improve the games I play.