(from a talk given at the Dunedin Spiritualist Church in July 2001 by Victor MacGill)
Tonight I am talking about the principle of personal responsibility and the principle that we create our world by our thoughts, words and actions. I think that unless we see these two principles within a wider picture, we can get into trouble.
You may know that Pam and I recently travelled to Russia. One of the things we saw there that we do not see here was homeless beggars on the streets. We saw them everywhere, but there was one in particular who stood out for us. On a main street in Moscow, just off Red Square, in mid afternoon we saw a man sleeping on the footpath. He had some sort of a wooden platform he used as a pillow. He appeared to have no other possessions. He was partly obscured as we approached and it appeared as though his legs were dangerously out on the road. As we approached him, we realised he had no legs and his wooden pillow actually had wheels and the platform was his means of moving about. Welfare benefits exist in Russia but they are totally inadequate. Many of the homeless we saw had limbs missing, major disfigurements or were very elderly. We visited Russia in mid summer with balmy temperatures from 25 to 30 or hotter, but for up to nine months of the year, it is so cold even large rivers, bigger than any in New Zealand are permanently frozen over.
I find it a little hard to just say to that person, ‘take responsibility for your self, get up and make something of your life.’ There is a limit to which we can just expect people to sort out their own problems.
The idea of personal responsibility can become a spiritualised version of free market ideas if we are not careful. The free market philosophy tells us that we buy and sell goods or services to meet our needs and if we are not rich, it must be because we are lazy and it is our own fault. While it is true to a point, life is not the even playing field it is often made out to be.
Then again, we might say that the man on the street in Moscow is in his present circumstances because of actions in this or another life. Personally I find that a little to easy a way of dismissing his predicament and forgetting him. It makes the situation seem acceptable and OK.
The reality is that taking personal responsibility is one part of the picture, but we must realise that it is not equally easy for everyone to be personally responsible. Life expects an incredibly unfair effort on some people’s part. Sometimes it is not reasonable to expect people to just sort out their own problems.
Those of us that can be responsible for ourselves, have a responsibility for others; for the disabled people, the young, the aged. We have a responsibility to treat people with dignity. We have a responsibility to be aware of racism, sexism and other ways we treat our fellow humans unfairly and cannot just expect them to accept personal responsibility for their circumstances. There is a balance to be found.
This is also reflected in the principle that says that we create our world by our thoughts words and actions. It is absolutely true that how we choose to see the world has an enormous impact on how relate to it and how well we live in it. If we see the world as a dangerous place and people are not to be trusted, we will live a very different reality from the person who may standing next to us who has a more open trusting view of the world. Again, however, that is only one side of the coin. Just as we create the world around us, we are created by the world around us.
As children, we have not developed the skills to make sound judgements about our world, so we take on values and perceptions of the people around us particularly our parents and other authority figures like teachers. We made their values and perceptions our own values and perceptions even though they weren’t really. We carry these false value into adulthood far more than we would like to imagine and we continue to absorb values that are not our own from anyone we see as more important, powerful or knowledgeable than ourselves. In other words, other people are creating our reality for us. because we have not gained the skills to see the world through our own eyes.
But it is much more subtle than that. In order to live in the world, we need a consistent image of who we think we are. Unless I know that who I was a year ago, a week ago, a day ago, a second ago is still the same person, I won’t know how to act. Without this consistent image I will have no identity. How do we create this image? We do it by comparing ourselves to the people, events and environment in which we live. How do I know if I am tall? How do I know if I am kind? How do I know if I am clever? How do I know if I am honest? How do I know if my actions are good? I compare myself to others about me. I create my image of myself by what I see out there. If I see violence out there consistently, it is very hard to avoid making it a part of me. If I don’t see something out there in the world, how do create it in me? If I haven’t seen love in the world about me, how do I learn it?
The world is creating me day by day, minute by minute. I am even created by the words I use. In Japanese you use very different words to talk to a person of higher or lower authority than you. Every time you speak you reinforce the levels of authority in society as being real, when in fact those levels are something we have created. We do it in English too, but not to the same extent. Maori only has one word, ‘ia’ for he and she. That changes how we see people. In Russia the word ‘krasny’ means both beautiful and red. Whenever you see something red, it is automatically associated with beauty. In Hebrew all nouns are male or female as in many European languages. It means that God has to be either male or female. The idea of God being beyond gender clashes with the structure of the language and makes it harder for people to widen their concept of God.
It is very important to acknowledge the ways the people, events and situations and our environment create our world about us. Our world is created by the geographical, historical, social, technological, economic factors in our environment.
Had I been brought up in Russia, I would be a very different person with very different values and lifestyle. I am very much created by the world about me.
I am going to see the world differently if I live in a tropical climate with plenty of food and resources compared to living in a snow and ice where resources are few.
In our society, what costs a lot is seen as valuable, but again the value of something is just made up. On our trip we saw some paintings worth many millions of dollars, but only because that is the value people have chosen to put on those paintings.
Working as a lawyer or accountant or politician is seen as more important than a rubbish collector or housewife.
Having the technology to communicate easily all over the world opens me to influences that change who I might become. The world of advertising impacts on our value system.
So, while it is true that I create my own reality, my reality also creates me. Each perspective is linked to the other. You could say they are both true and you could say that neither are true. Look at this picture. Is it a picture of a black space with a hole or is it a white circle. It is both at once, it is none. There is no white hole without a black background and there is no black background without a white hole. They both need each other for us to make sense of it.
Here is a duck-rabbit, or is it a rabbit-duck created by Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is not a rabbit and a duck because that is two creatures, and yet it is a rabbit and a duck. It is a rabbit duck – duck rabbit. I think this same interweaving exists when we try to say we create our reality and we are created by our reality. Neither is true on their own. They both depend on each other for meaning.
We need to keep this wider perspective in mind when we look at our principles or we will miss some vital truths that will keep us from being fully effective in the world.
The important point that gives validity to the principles as they are written is that whether or not we create our lives or our lives are created for us, if we are to make any changes in our lives, it is by taking personal responsibility. There may be a few instances where our life circumstances are improved without any effort on our part.. However, in general we can say that no matter how justifiable our complaints about life, if we want to make a change, the best thing we can do is to take personal responsibility. That might be taking personal responsibility to change our own lives, or to change the social system in which we live as best we can and work towards becoming a better person and creating a better society.