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Ethics and Responsibility
I have been pondering the words "responsibility" and "ethics" for a week now and trying to define in my mind how they apply in my life. I have always been referred to as the "irresponsible one" by family members because I did not follow the cookie cutter mold that my sisters planned in their lives. I always sought jobs that were a challenge, always was willing to plow new ground etc but I also was the one to be ever conscious of my obligations to others. So in my frame of reference having my sister’s call me irresponsible used to hurt me terribly when I was young. I simply did not agree with them. From their perception however I really must have looked like a Flake!
They were taught their chief job was to find a man who would support them and who would be a good provider and help them raise kids. In the beginning I was like that too but...with one difference. I always wanted to be in charge of my own life and not turn the decisions over to someone else.
So responsibility to me meant an entirely different thing from my own perceptions. I really have been examining how the words "responsibility and ethics" apply to me now in this phase of my life. I have had many clients lately trying to find balance in their lives also and I wanted to open this topic to see what your views might be about ethics and responsibility.
It is my perceptions that we humans have two problems concerning responsibility:
1. We don't know who we are.
2. We don't know what we want.
We like to perceive ourselves (and the world) as separate individuals. We nonchalantly dismiss the opposite of this view, namely that we are unified individuals.
We divide the world into little pieces and instead of going with the flow and considering ourselves to be part of this grand flow we instead lean towards ownership instead. My responsibility...your responsibility...not mine etc.
We always cling to the idea of individuality instead of the community of souls.
Is this right brain thinking...Is this left brain logic and so forth? We look to the outside for answers and ignore the messages within. We heal the body and ignore the spirit.
Responsibility becomes a myth for many. We believe in right and wrong but we expect others with a greater responsibility to clean up our messes. Well that does not happen. It comes back full circle to ourselves.
The common dictionary definition for the word responsibility tells us that the word is defines as:
The moral and forward-looking sense of responsibility is the sense in which one is responsible for achieving (or maintaining) a good result in some matter. The idea is that one is entrusted with achieving or maintaining this outcome, and expected to both have relevant knowledge and skills, and to make a conscientious effort.
However, despite one's best efforts, the result may not be achieved. For example, patients of responsible physicians may die, and the work of a responsible engineer may result in an accident because the accident was not foreseeable, it was not possible to compensate for the factors causing the accident, or because others were unwilling to heed the engineer's warnings.
The moral and backward-looking sense of responsibility is that in which a person or group deserves ethical evaluation for some act or outcome, that it deserves moral praise for a good outcome or blame for a bad one.
The moral sense of responsibility should not be confused with the causal sense of responsibility for some existing or past state of affairs.
For example, when we say that "the storm was responsible for three deaths and heavy property damage," meaning that it caused these outcomes, we do not mean to attribute moral responsibility to the storm. Storms do not have moral responsibilities, and are neither responsible nor irresponsible in the moral sense.
However, when a moral agent is causally responsible for some outcome that is some reason to think that the agent is morally responsible for it.
Causal responsibility is not conclusive evidence of moral responsibility. If one's actions case a terrible outcome only because of bad moral luck, in the form of a freak accident, then one is not morally responsible for the outcome.
Forward-looking responsibilities are often specified in terms of the outcome to be achieved rather than the acts to be performed. It takes judgment to figure out what acts will achieve a given outcome. For this reason you will hear the phrase "the age of responsibility" or "the age of discretion" used to mean an age at which a person is sufficiently mature to exercise such judgment.
I have been listening to the dialogue of politicians lately and it seems that they are completely in the dark about how complex the issues of responsibility for actions you perform as an individual really are.
When the results of their actions are positive then they crow and strut and tell everyone "how responsible they have been for acting" however when the outcome is not favorable they rattle their sabers’ and point to other who obviously did not live up to their responsibility.
It is all a word game for the politicians but for us as a nation it is important to remember that we all are individual pieces of the whole. That we are holographic images of the divine. We have to be responsible in a greater sense. We are our "brother's keeper" no matter how much we want to deny it.
With responsibility we must consider the word Ethics also. For ethics is the study of morals. It is also the name for a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of morals and moral evaluation, e.g., what is right and wrong, virtuous or vicious, and beneficial or harmful to you or others.
Secondly the term ethics or morality is used to mean the standards for ethical or moral behavior of a particular group.
Having a good 'ethical background" usually means that one has been raised to think logically and is willing to abide by the laws of the land as well as nature.
However ethics is a word like responsibility and it has many different meanings to people. It has to do with how we perceive and accept morality. What is morally correct for one religion for example is totally not acceptable in another. That is the type of thinking that really bothers me. For what is truth? Who's the ultimate one who decides what is ethical, what is truth and who is responsible? It must lie within each of us because we live by our own code usually and by how advanced we are spiritually. I am much more tolerant of others rights now in this phase of my life but when I was young I was all about self righteousness! I thought I had all the answer but in fact I had not even thought of the correct questions to ask at the time.
I hope you will give me your input about the words "responsibility and ethics" for I am really wondering if they need to be redefined as we prepare for a major shift in our consciousness.
Blessings of joy and enlightenment to you this day.
Rosie
Tags: Metaphysical Counseling Psychic
