If You're a Collectivist, You Reject Personal Responsibility
Bear with me again, as I delve into the third question and explore my thoughts on the subject.
1. What is the source and nature of human rights,
2. Which takes priority when dealing with rights, the individual or the group?
3. Who bears the responsibility of the individual?
4. What is meant by equality?
5. What is the proper role of government?
It has often puzzled me that collectivists on both the right and the left are untroubled by the reduction in personal rights and freedoms that necessarily accompanies the legislation that they advocate. That is, until it finally struck me that they do not interpret the world or their actions in terms of rights and freedoms.
Instead they view the world in terms of who holds or bears the responsibility. The collectivist shuns a world in which the individual bears personal responsibility for themselves and instead embrace word where ultimately nothing is the responsibility of the individual. The premise of practically all modern legislation is some variation of the mindset which states "we can't afford to entrust the individual with that responsibility."
Theirs' is the view of the adult individual as being a child who never grew up - nothing is ever their fault, it is not their burden, they didn't have any other choices, someone coerced them through "power" or position. It is always someone else who is to blame or someone else who should act on their behalf. They can't do it for themselves, they lack "x" or they have been disenfranchised and so someone else must act for them. It is the infantilizing of adults in order to rob them of both power and freedom to act on their own.
Let's begin from where responsibility originates. If I am an individual with agency (ability to act on my own) and I have intrinsic rights that preserve to me independence of thought, action and speech, I must consequently bear the responsibility for what I think as well as what I do and say when I interact with others in a social context.
To take responsibility from me is to rob me of the consequences and rewards of my thoughts, actions and speech.
Break it down further.
Freedom of Thought Equals Responsibility of Thought
Does anyone have the right to force me to think a certain way? Flip it around as well - do I have the right to force anyone to think a certain way? Of course not. No one would accept that one human being should be able to force another human being to think a certain way. Barring actual mental incapacitation due to disease or injury, an adult individual can and should be free to think in any manner which suits or pleases them. On that we can all agree.
Leaving aside the concept of influencing people's thoughts as well as the entire nurture/nature debate for now, an adult individual is free to think the thoughts they choose to think, and therefore, they must bear the consequences of the thoughts they think. If I allow my mind to bend to a negative view and entertain detrimental thoughts or vice versa if I choose a positive frame of mind and focus on the good things in life - I alone bear the emotional and intellectual results of that chosen thought-life. No one can actually think for me, although I can accept or adopt someone else's thoughts as my own, the inner mental activity is entirely my own.
Take the most tortured and depressed minds and any psychologist will affirm that the vast majority of treatment methods focus on helping the individual choose to think in a different way or to see their situation from a new perspective. However, the psychologist can't think for the individual, they can only help lead the individual to the path of thoughts that the individual must choose for themselves.
Therefore every individual must think for themselves and therefore they alone must bear the responsibility for the thought-life they have adopted. If one does not like their thought-life, they can research and study other ways of thinking (see the vast array of self-help books available now), but they are responsible for their thoughts.
Freedom of Action/Speech Equals Responsibility of Action/Speech
Thoughts lead directly to actions. Since I bear the individual responsibility for my thoughts, the actions that derive from those thoughts are equally my responsibility. Our legal system is predicated on this concept. If an individual without duress or coercion from another individual chooses (thought) to commit (action) a crime (a behavior society has determined is not acceptable under their social contract), that individual alone must be held accountable for that crime.
It is important to remind ourselves that laws do not prevent crime. They are not intended to do so, not could they possibly have such an effect. The very definition of a criminal - an outside of the law - individual means that they have rejected the social contract which calls that action a crime and instead have chosen to commit the act despite this. Laws are written for two purposes - 1.) to catalogue the behaviors a society has agreed are unacceptable and 2.) delineate the punishments for those of that society who still choose to commit the unacceptable behavior.
If I choose to plant azaleas in my yard, that's my choice and my responsibility. If I want to cut down a tree on my property, that's my choice and my responsibility. If I want to write something on a blog or create a video, that's my choice and my responsibility. If I want to speed, that's my choice and my responsibility. If I want to draw a cartoon of an ancient religious figure, that's my choice and my responsibility. Laws do not stop my freedom of choice - they merely inform what action society will take in response to my action and I must bear the responsibility of my action alone. Choosing to act always includes the choosing to accept the consequences or rewards of that action.
Why Collectivism Rejects Personal Responsibility
So why then is responsibility something that collectivists are always trying to separate from the individual? I think there are a couple of reasons for this.
The first is that direct attacks on individual rights and their related freedoms fails miserably at every turn. People immediately bristle at the concept of relinquishing their rights and freedoms, but everyone loves mitigating the negative consequences of their thoughts and actions. Who doesn't want to lessen the debt built up from reckless spending? Who wouldn't love to have their student loans forgiven? Who doesn't want to claim victim-hood and the requisite government subsidy to reimburse them simply for existing?
People will defend their right to speech, religion, association, private property etc. However, if the pain and suffering that comes from individual choices can somehow be lessened or done away with completely, then those same individuals might be tempted to relinquish some responsibility (and thus some freedom) to accomplish that. It’s the slippery slope that erodes individual rights without ever actually attacking the right itself.
Of course you have the right to freedom of speech. You just can't say you support Trump, protest abortion, listen to that "alt-right" pod-caster, write a tweet about that speech or create a video that criticizes this viewpoint. You have to be protected from "harm" and so to prevent someone else from inadvertently encountering something negative like an opposing idea or a different perspective, we'll "limit" your freedom every so slightly and you and they can go on living a "pain free" existence.
But the subtle undercurrent is steadily and skillfully eroding the very foundations underpinning the actual exercise of free speech and other rights possessed intrinsically by the individual.
This leads to the second reason for this approach and that is the aggregation and centralization of power within the political class. The collectivist are just like the religious zealots of older times. They want to dictate how everyone else should live and have everyone making only choices they have vetted and approved. Just listen to them. Hear how they describe the ideal state for humanity. There is no room for individuality within their worldview. They want homogeneity and conformity above all else. You must accept the social dogma. You must practice the approved lifestyle. You can be as individual as you like within the confines they prescribe for you.
But in order to achieve this state, they have to remove the power of action from the individual and to accomplish that they seek first to reduce your responsibility with sweet promises and succulent lies. "Give up this little bit of responsibility and let us take control of this decision for you, and in exchange we will guarantee you do not come to any harm from this." Except the promises are empty and the lies quickly turn bitter as the realization sinks in that they don't actually care about you on an individual level. Once the new regulations are in place, you have to deal with the bureaucrats who run the whole thing and not the politicians who so glibly and pleasantly led you down this path.
Strip away all of the platitudes and slogans, remove the emotional appeals and the "sob stories" and underneath it all you will find only power hungry elitists who think they know what is best for your life. They are nothing more than the petty tyrants and "nobility" of old trying to wrest back control from the individual.
In the long march of humanity towards ever greater freedom and personal happiness, it seems we must still contend with these evolutionary throwbacks who long for the old days when the peasants and serfs simply did what they were told and let their "betters" get on with running things. Their ways - despite all of the speechifying and rhetoric - are the old ways of the dark ages. We can and must do better.
The great American experiment - a government of the people, by the people and for the people - of individuals who govern themselves first and foremost must continually be fought for and defended. The price of freedom is indeed eternal vigilance as these petty tyrants continue to crawl out and put on new robes to try to take back control again and again.
So ask yourself, am I helping push us back into the dark ages as I support collectivist ideas and politicians, or am I fulfilling my actual destiny and working towards ushering in the future where people are free and able to govern themselves? Do I accept the responsibility that comes with my rights and freedoms or am I giving it all away for the empty promises of petty tyrants?
If you are a collectivist, you reject personal responsibility.
Where do you find yourself?