Responsibility

Responsibility and making excuses

To continue our exploration on how to become the most impactful person we can be, we will now focus on the importance of the third required mindset trait - the ability to be responsible and do what is right.

While, nowadays, many parents have the tendency to be too controlling and overprotective towards their children, the act of taking responsibility is actually a very important and necessary step for our growth. It is only when we are on our own, being allowed to make our own decisions (and being held responsible for those decisions) that we learn through the consequences of our mistakes and grow into someone more independent and mature.

Furthermore, taking responsibility is also what brings a certain level of safety and stability to our life. When our mindset is one where we are constantly holding ourselves accountable for our actions and doing what is right based on our knowledge, we will naturally have a lot of trust and confidence on the fact that, no matter what happens in our life, we will be able to rise to the circumstances and do what needs to be done.

So being responsible is exactly what allows us to take care of ourselves but it is also, in a sense, what allows us to take care of others. The more knowledgeable, aware, confident and responsible we are, the more we can use our skills and talents to have a positive impact on the lives of other people.

This is one of the reasons why responsibility is so positively and highly valued in our society and also why so many wealthy and socially notable individuals (such as for example Bill Gates or Richard Branson) usually make the decision, at some point in their lives, to devote almost their entire time and effort to help those who need it the most. After years and years of focusing on their craft, they find themselves in a position where they have the knowledge and power to contribute to the world and naturally come to the conclusion that it is their duty and responsibility to do so.

Odd as it may sound, not everyone has this natural conviction to help other people though. In fact, for some reason, when confronted with how bad things are in certain places in the world, our usual emotional response is not to think of ways in which we could be of assistance but is rather to deflect the observations and come up with reasons on why it is probably not a good idea.

Now, in large part, this behavior can be attributed to our culture. We live nowadays in a society where fulfilling our egocentric goals and desires is constantly glorified and disregarding those in need is, in a very disturbing way, seen as acceptable. On top of that, for some strange reason, facts seem to be increasingly more open to debate and reprehensible acts, even those coming from highly prominent figures, are also given less and less importance. In such a setting, our inner voice of reason becomes somewhat divided. On one end, we know that it makes sense to help those who have it worse than us but on the other end, no one is holding us accountable for our irresponsible behavior and since we usually follow the intersubjectivity rather than our own critical thinking, we end up inventing excuses on why it doesn’t make sense after all.

What we fail to realize though is that opinions and beliefs never dictate reality. In a world with a continuous stream of tragic events that we can easily influence, wherein we no longer need to risk our lives in order to contribute, justifying our inaction is not a simple exercise of rhetoric. In many cases, it is the difference between life and death. So instead of losing ourselves on an intersubjective bubble of deception where we assume that it’s fine to keep mentally reciting the mantras we’ve been taught: "There's not much we can do. They are far away. Perhaps they deserved it.", we should simply accept that reality is what it is and, whether we like it or not, our inaction has consequences and it is our responsibility to act accordingly to that.

As a side note, it is important to keep in mind that taking responsibility doesn’t mean helping every person in need or changing the world. Taking responsibility is about seeing reality for what it is, accepting that actions have consequences and realizing that we can always do the most responsible thing at any given moment. This is of course still dependent on our knowledge. If we are not aware of the consequences of our actions (as for example children sometimes aren’t), we should not be held accountable to that. The moment we are aware though, we are automatically obligated to act in a responsible way.

Chasing good experiences

In our last topic, we have emphasized the importance of taking responsibility and how our current culture plays such a significant role in our tendency to excuse our irresponsible behavior. In this topic, we will build on that information and expound on the cultural factor that can perhaps better and more accurately explain why we often don’t see with good eyes helping others, which is our need to constantly chase good experiences.

Chasing good experiences is nowadays a hallmark of our society. Right from the moment we are born, we step into a world where everything and everyone is telling us that fulfilling our own desires is what matters most. Whether it is more money, more goods, more love or more likes, we are again and again persuaded to believe that happiness will come from the pursuit of pleasant sensations.

Most of us believe in that story. Even though studies show (and we can also attest ourselves) that with every new experience, we are rarely as happy as we thought we would be (and sometimes the disappointment even leaves us feeling worse than before), we still spend our days hopping from one source of amusement to another, always trying to find ways to experience newer and better sensations.

This incessant pursuit creates a big problem. It locks us into a mindset where we become, in a sense, slaves of our own reasoning. Instead of using our ability to critically think as a means to be responsible and do what we know is right, we use it in order to justify our need to keep chasing good experiences.

This is why we often feel entitled to deny our responsibility towards those who have it worse than us. When our entire life revolves around feeling as good as possible, every perceived uncomfortable action is seen as a threat. And since helping others usually requires some of our energy and time, anytime we are confronted with the reality of the world or someone probes us about the topic in conversation, our instinctive urge is not to agree on the fact that we probably should be more generous but to come up with all kinds of reasons on why, at the end of the day, we actually shouldn’t.

So it is important to be aware of how the conditioned idea that we need good experiences in our life in order to be happy might be affecting our decisions. Because when we realize that it actually makes us more prone to use our cognitive capacities to justify our comfortable lifestyle rather than being responsible and having an impact in the world, it should trigger alarm bells in our head as that completely goes against the reason of why we exist in the first place.

The sad part about our aversion to helping others is that doing so actually requires today (due to all the technological tools at our disposal) minimal effort. Moreover, even if we would look at it from a selfish perspective and base our actions on what would have the most chances of increasing the quality of our experience, when we consider all the scientific research on how volunteering combats depression, increases our self-confidence and ultimately boosts our happiness, health, and sense of well-being, it would actually make more sense to live a life in service of others than merely focusing on ourselves.

Additionally, what we also often do not realize is that this constant need to feel as good as possible combined with the expectation of achieving a hypothetical state of complete happiness only contributes to our own misery. It basically puts us on a constant state of disappointment as we assume that we should be feeling great all the time and everything that is not feeling great is a problem. If this sounds counterintuitive, it can be helpful to imagine the brain as an orchestra where each musician is an active neural network. When everyone is in sync, we experience harmony. But the moment we feel like happiness or comfort is missing in our life, a musician becomes anxious, starts playing louder and out of tune, and ends up disrupting the harmony of the orchestra.

Aligning with our purpose

In our last topic, we’ve seen that a state of happiness and fulfillment can only emerge from our brain chemistry if all the neural circuits are in complete resonance with each other and that focusing on feeling good is exactly what disrupts this balance. This begets the question: if the very act of obsessing with and chasing good experiences is what is causing all the sadness and misery in our life and most of us walk around being aware of this fact, then why on earth do we keep running after it?

In order to answer this question, it can be helpful to understand why people get addicted. Several studies have shown that individuals who fall victim to substance abuse are usually the ones who have a lack of purpose in their lives. With nothing to live for, they try to find meaning in substitutes which, even if only momentarily, allow them to numb the pain they experience.

In a lot of ways, the same is true for those who relentlessly pursue good experiences. Their quest is emerging from a lack of purpose. Without a bigger goal, a clear direction, or a cause important and inspiring enough to devote themselves to, they end up trying to find meaning in making themselves feel good all the time.

So finding a purpose in life - something for which to live for - is fundamental. And if you are now wondering how one can actually do that, the answer is a lot more straightforward than what self-help ‘gurus’ like to make of it. If we base ourselves on the definition of the word ‘purpose’, which reads as “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists”, it becomes obvious that true purpose won’t be found by identifying what are our passions. True purpose will be found by understanding the scientific and evolutionary reason why we exist. And as we’ve explained in detail on Chapter II, our experience is a tool. We have been designed by evolution to be in a state of flow, of taking action, of being responsible, of doing what is right for the progress of our species. This is our purpose.

So instead of turning our experience into a goal and trying to find meaning in life by chasing good experiences (which we never will), we need to start using our experience for the purposes that it was conceived. As humans, we weren't born just for the sake of experiencing a nice and comfortable life, we were born within a bigger picture, to do our best and help humanity move forward. In the end, it is only when we realize, embrace and behave in line with that that we will be able to experience true meaning and fulfillment.

The notion that our experience is a tool and moving forward is the goal is something that people whom we define today as pioneers, sometimes even heroes (like Einstein, for example), had already realized during the course of their lives. They used their ability to understand the world not as a way to provide for a better experience for themselves but as a way to make the most progress for humanity.