Responsiblity assumed is freedom

The other day, my son made dinner for me. He did this all on his own. He set the table, made sodas, cooked the food, served it, cleaned up and put things away.

He felt great. Really responsible.

This makes sense and if you've ready my books or viewed any of my videos - you I think personal responsibility is an important part of living ethically and fully.

But responsibility is a double edged sword.

Responsibility assumed makes you feel good. It’s about taking control – and that means freedom.

This is different from responsibility imposed.  That doesn't feel good at all and it feels like you are being controlled and that means lack of freedom.

The difference is that responsibility assumed is an internal decision you make.

Responsibility imposed is external decision. Something someone else does to you.

So the next time you are asked to be responsible for something (external imposition), reframe it - and make a conscious decision to accept the responsibility.

You may just find that your attitude and your feelings of well being improve as a result.

10 responsibilities for humanistic managers

The European Journal for Work and Organizational Psychology - recently published a manifesto outlining 10 responsibilities we have to create better work environments and a better world.

Here are the responsibilities:

And here is a link to the full article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1359432X.2019.1602041

This list of responsibilities reads like a humanist manifesto and I do think everyone could benefit from adopting and integrating this concept of responsibility into their daily life and decision making. Think how much nicer the world and work would be if we all kept our full responsibilities in mind. 

1) we have responsibilities towards individuals

2) we have responsibilities towards ourselves

3) we have responsibilities towards reducing inequalities

4) we have responsibilities towards our community

5) we have responsibilities as supervisors and managers

6) we have responsibilities towards how work is organized 

7) we have responsibilities toward how the publication system is organized (or promotion system)

8) we have responsibilities towards how our financing is organized

9) we have responsibilities towards society

10) we have to integrate our recommendations into our teaching

Freedom, Leadership, Responsibility & Humanism

Why is leading people so darned hard? Freedom.

There is a joke in Humanist communities. Leading Humanists is like herding cats.  They all have their own ideas.  The hallmark of a good leader is that they can herd cats.

One of the ways you do this is by feeding them. The same is true of humans. If we are hungry, we will pretty much do anything for the person who offers us food (or money so that we can buy food).

But what has this got to do with freedom?  

Everyone you meet has autonomy, meaning, they are free to choose their actions, for the most part. There are limitations on individual autonomy (freedom) having to do with brain chemistry and conditioning, but it’s pretty clear that free will is something most of us experience.

For leaders, this means recognizing that the individuals on your team, or those you want to recruit to your team have a choice.  They don’t have to do what you say. You can entice them with benefits (money, food and so on). But enticements will only get you so far, especially if other leaders are also enticing those same individuals with benefits. With competition, comes choice.

Why promote responsibility? 

Freedom is related to responsibility. Sure, you are free to act however you want, but your actions have consequences. Most of us understand this instinctively. Responsibility is more than just understanding and accepting consequences.  It’s a choice.

People who chose to be responsible do so because they understand that freedom is bought with responsibility. To gain control over your life, you have to choose your behaviors to maximize the good and minimize the harm.

People also choose to be responsible because it feels good. To be responsible is to respect other people and the impact you have on them. Being responsible helps us feel connected to other people precisely because it causes us to accept their existence as real.

Great Leaders and Freedom

Great leaders are the ones who don’t just simply entice their team, they engage them.  What purpose the engagement takes determines how engaged the team is.  It’s about motivation. And freedom is one heck of a motivator.

To be free, one must not only have autonomy, they must not be restrained.  If you don’t have food to eat, you aren’t free. If you don’t have transportation, you aren’t really free.  Freedom isn’t just about whether there are laws restricting you. It is also about whether the conditions of your existence restrict you.

Why Humanism? 

This is why Humanistic management and leadership is so important as we as a society try to move forward. Humanistic responsibility focuses our efforts on others and on ourselves. If we can create the conditions where the basic standard of living for everyone is good enough that no one is restrained by extreme privation, we are creating the conditions in which we ourselves can thrive.

When a leader engages people in a task this important, they can motivate their team to work together to do great things. Our why is freedom. Our how is responsibility.

Freedom

What does freedom mean to you?

I suspect different people have different definitions. For me, freedom is about choice.  If I don’t have a choice, I don’t have freedom. Because while I may not be actively oppressed, I also don’t have the ability to change things either.

Humanism, to me, is a life philosophy aimed at the reduction of unnecessary suffering. Accept the things you can’t change, change the things you can. It seems to me that in any given life, there are things we can change and things we can’t.

The freedom that is of most concern to me is where I am restricted in my choices arbitrarily for no good purpose.  So – for instance - women not having access to birth control. That restricts freedom unnecessarily, because it restricts choice, unnecessarily.

Money is another thing that restricts freedom. Sure, I am free to travel, but right now I don’t have the ability to – so I can’t exercise that freedom.  Which is why poverty is so devastating to freedom.  Poverty restricts choices because it restricts access to options. It restricts access to education in places where education is not paid for by the state. It restricts access to health care, where health care is not guaranteed by the state. Poverty even restricts access to clean water in most places in the world.

If you do not have the means to secure the basics of life, you aren’t free to do anything but subsist.  Freedom, at that point, is a meaningless concept.

I’m not saying we should set up a welfare state, or that we need equality of outcome to be fair. What I am saying is that ensuring that everyone has access to the basic necessities of life is an essential first step to ensuring freedom for individuals to pursue whatever it is they want to pursue in life.

• At a minimum, children should have access to a free secular education everywhere. Without an education, they’re life choices are severely restricted and their freedom diminished. 

• People should have access to free clean water, at no cost (aside from the taxes that pay for this service). This means privatizing the water supply is not acceptable. Allowing private industry to pollute our common water supply is also not acceptable.

• People must have access to a basic level of health care necessary to ensure their survival and minimum level of health so that they can pursue whatever goals in life they have. And this must be affordable to everyone.

• Living wages – people, who work, should receive a minimum wage that is sufficient to ensure they have enough money to survive.  Whether they can earn more to be able to thrive is another matter. 

• Open immigration and migration.  We must stop restricting the movement of people over national borders.  Yes, states have a right to keep out criminals, but people looking for work, should be allowed to move to where there is work.  Keeping people locked into an arbitrary geographic area to the benefit of the rulers of those geographic areas is not my idea of freedom. People should be free to seek a better life wherever and however, they choose. 

What do you think are the necessary minimal support people need to be free?

What does it mean to be responsible?

Is responsibility a good thing? Or a bad thing?

Well, that depends on what you think responsibility is.  For a lot of people seeking happiness, responsibility seems dull. Responsibility is something that keeps us from being able to pursue our dreams.  It’s our job, or school, or our family that requires our attention.  It’s the think that keeps us from being free.

People who think like this try to avoid responsibility. I know a woman who left her family because it was “too much responsibility” for her. She clearly wasn’t happen then, but she isn’t happy now either. Avoiding responsibility hasn’t helped her to find happiness.

For a Humanist, responsibility is the key to freedom and therefore the key to happiness. We know that it is through responsibility that we gain control over our lives and this control equates to freedom. For a Humanist, responsibility isn’t a burden.

Even our responsibility to others isn’t a burden. It is our responsibility to others that gives our live meaning. Without meaning and purpose, people struggle with existential angst. By embracing responsibility, you infuse your life with meaning.

Responsibility gives you greater control over your life. This control helps reduce your stress levels. It also gives you a certain amount of freedom. The combination of reduced stress and freedom of choice are conducive to happiness. When you add in the benefits of having a purpose and meaning in your life, the result is happiness. Despite it all.

Yes, responsibility can be hard. It requires us to make hard choices at times. But the people who are happiest, are those who embrace the responsibility of making those choices and who are responsible enough to make the effort to make good choices, even when good options are hard to come by.

Don’t cheat yourself out of happiness. Be responsible – for your choices, your actions and your responsibilities to others.

Freedom isn’t Free

Wisdom from Eleanor Roosevelt on the limits and benefits of individual liberty

I am currently reading You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life by Eleanor Roosevelt. And you honestly all should read it because it’s all the same stuff I write about in my blog and my book about Humanism, but it’s from Eleanor Roosevelt!  Which basically means, I’m not an out there crazy person preaching crazy thoughts. This is in fact deep wisdom.

 I have always thought of Eleanor as a role model for the sort of person I should aspire to be. Now that I have read her book, I feel even more strongly about how amazing she was as a woman.

Anyway, back to the idea of freedom.  One of the quotes in the book is about Freedom and self-discipline. She says,

“When you come to understand self-discipline you begin to understand the limits of freedom. You grasp the fact that freedom is never absolute, that it must always be contained within the framework of other people’s freedom.”

I like this quote because it talks about the connection between responsibility and freedom. We humans don’t exist in a vacuum. We are interdependent. The struggle we all have is in finding the balance between personal autonomy and social obligation.

This struggle can’t be solved by taking an extreme position. Absolute autonomy is a myth. Your actions do affect other people and you have a moral obligation to consider the impact your actions will have on others. Failure to do this is a failure in your morality.

The other extreme is just as bad. If social obligation is taken to an extreme, it becomes social subjugation and that’s a terrifying thought.

The Humanist approach is to accept that it is our responsibility to balance our need for autonomy and our social obligations in a way that benefits us and the society in which we live, or a socially embedded form of autonomy. This isn’t easy to do and we don’t always get the balance right, but I would suggest that actively being conscious of the need to do this yields better results than just winging it does.  The added bonus is that making an effort to ensure that your actions help others and yourself feels really good.  As Eleanor says, it is a sign of emotional maturity to approach life in such a balanced and responsible fashion.  In fact, it’s the definition of being responsible.

 What is your favorite quote about freedom and responsibility?