1.5.10.4 Assigning Responsibility

Version 1.0 October 2022                             (Previous Version)

Our aim socially then is to minimize inappropriate behaviour so that society is safe and secure in the most effective way without causing unnecessary harm or assigning blame when the scientific evidence (whether it be for causality or chaos, deterministic or indeterministic) says that would is inappropriate.  Our aim for ourselves is to act in accordance with core values such as Truth, Diversity, Reality, Life, Love, Equality and Hope (this last is discussed later): we know we often fail to live up to these goals.

●   We assign Responsibility (to ourselves and others) when an action did, or potentially would, cause harm or suffering, or fail to promote happiness or well-being, when a potential, proximate, relevant intervention, could reasonably be expected to change that behaviour.

●   This definition of Responsibility minimizes any notion of blame or punishment.  Many will find that exclusion unacceptable.  Most of us have felt the desire for revenge when we have been hurt or wronged.  Many people feel that making the offender suffer is essential to any form of justice. 

●   But the more we learn the more we understand that: if our goal is motivated by Love (to maximize happiness and well-being and minimize suffering and harm) and a key strategy to achieve this goal it to promote a stable, safe and secure social environment (minimizing violence, theft, deception and so forth), then we must all restrain ourselves and contain the desire for vengeance, because the scientific and historical evidence (which we accept ultimately because we value Truth and Reality) clearly shows that it is not only ineffective but counterproductive – causing more harm than good.

●   Note also that we use the word offender here even though for some this word itself may be offensive.  Offender suggests guilt, with moralistic overtones, whereas we are minimizing the notions of blame and moral failings.  But for want of a better word we continue to use offender, essentially meaning the person who the proposed intervention is intended to target.  Similarly we sometimes use the word victim, to mean the person adversely affected by the offender.  Some people now prefer the term survivor, as one who has actively lived through an offence, rather than a victim, defined by the harm that has come to them, with a loss of agency, implying powerless.

●   The mooted interventions can be categorized according to a number of aspects: the goal of the intervention, who does the intervening, and who the intervention targets. 

*    People focused on crime or sin historically have looked at interventions to punish offenders and prevent reoffending, but we should also look for interventions to prevent offending in the first place.  We also wish to address behavior that isn't actually criminal but is still hurtful, and is still common in all societies, such as lying, cheating, bullying and harassment.  But valuing Responsibility involves more than crime prevention and harm reduction.

*    Responsibility includes interventions to promote well-being and happiness, as well as to minimize harm or suffering.  We say that we ourselves, and other people, have obligations to help others, especially those in need (with whom we get the biggest payback for a given effort).  This expression means that it is appropriate to have interventions, targeting ourselves as well as others, when we fail to take reasonable steps, which cost us little, but can significantly improve the lives of others, or indeed actually keep them alive!

*    The mooted interventions include those we apply to ourselves and those that we expect society as a whole to apply to the population as a whole – including ourselves if we value Equality.  Likewise, the target of the intervention could be ourselves, or people in general.

*    The mooted interventions must be relevant to the potential offending.  Laws about theft, and punishments for stealing are not relevant to offences of rape or murder.

*    The mooted interventions must be proximate to the offending, at the time of the committing offence.  General social interventions to lift children out of poverty, such as welfare support and better focused education are generally too remote from an act of theft in adulthood.  We can say You still stole even though you had these opportunities but that is only as mall component of the responsibility we assign.  The existence of laws against stealing, that applied at the time of the offence, and were known and understood by the offender, are proximate, in that they apply at the time, and the offender, however vaguely, knows about these laws.

This section, 1.5.10.5 outlines the core value choice of Responsibility that we make as a result of our philosophical analysis.  In the following subsections we look at what drives offending, what causes the behaviour we wish to curb, who we should target, what interventions can be applied at a societal level and how we should address our own behaviour.  We need to take into account our basic human emotions: anger, contempt, disgust, enjoyment, fear, sadness, and surprise.  These generate automatic responses to the stimuli that provoke them, but our automatic processing has limited usefulness.  We must take into account our conscious control of our behaviour, to the extent that it is realistic.

Again we emphasize that in this Chapter we provide these details only to clarify the consequences of our definition of Responsibility.  This definition includes potentially effective, proximate and relevant interventions, and determining what these might be is a factual matter rather a philosophical issue.  Science and History do not drive our philosophy but they do inform it.  We are constrained in how we implement, or put into practice, choosing to value Responsibility as we have defined it.

The following subsection provides a high level, idiosyncratic, sketch of an analysis of potential real world interventions, based on our current understandings in science and long term global history.