Tag: Responsibility

2022 Theme – Freedom

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Remember that to change course or accept correction leaves you just as free as you were. The action is your own, driven by your own impulse and judgement, indeed your own intelligence.

Marcus Aurelius

I don’t think that I know what freedom really means because I have never been held captive. Not in a physical sense anyway. As a white male, living in a western country, I am possibly the most free person on the planet. I don’t want to take that for granted.

But, the greatest trick that we pull on ourselves is to think that we are trapped by something when we are not. The government, our family, our job, our friends, the weather, the global pandemic. But none of those things can hold me captive unless I want them to.

  • The government may put a mask mandate or vaccination mandate in place. They are unable to force me to do either. It is my choice to say yes or no to them. I am free.
  • Just because I have a wife and young children doesn’t stop me from doing what I want to do, whenever I want to do it.
  • My employer cannot make me turn up to work every day. I can choose to do so or not.
  • My friends may not agree with choices that I make but their opinion cannot stop me from living my life.
  • Hot weather is not able to stop me from going for a long run. Cold weather is also unable to.
  • A virus cannot stop me from going out and enjoying life.

What I am not free from are the consequences of my actions.

  • Sure, I can choose to ignore government mandates, but the consequences of that choice could cost me.
  • I could ignore my family and prioritise other things, but the consequences of that choice could cost me relationally.
  • I could ignore my job and go to the beach all day, but the consequences of that choice could cost me financially (also, sand).
  • I could ignore my friends and lose them.
  • I could ignore the weather and burn or freeze.
  • I could ignore the virus and get sick.

I am not free from consequences, but I am free to choose which consequences I want.

So, in my freedom…

  • I am choosing to protect my family and community by getting vaccination and wearing a mask when necessary.
  • I am prioritising time with my family to build quality, long term relationships.
  • I am committed to my job which I find fulfilling, which will serve me, my family and the organisation I work for in the long term.
  • I heed the advice of my close friends, whom I’ve chosen wisely, which will help me make wise choices.
  • I will run whenever I want, regardless of the weather, but sometimes I will do it indoors on the treadmill, so that I can keep running for a long time to come.
  • I am choosing to restrict my movement in the short term to stay as healthy as I can for as long as I can.

2022 is the year of freedom to choose the consequences that I want, which is an unbelievable gift that carries a weight of responsibility.

Responsibility

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I was born in a little town called Naracoorte, in the South-East of South Australia. Nothing I did had any bearing on where I was born, that is literally where I popped out.

Through no effort of my own, I was born within the borders of this country we call Australia. As a result of that I have managed to live the life that I have so far. I got an education, went to university, had a family, travelled, lived interstate, and created a life for myself and a future.

If I am honest, very little of this has come as a result of my intelligence. Sure, I have a debt to pay to my ancestral line, but if I was born in Indonesia, for example, where nearly half the population live in poverty, there is no doubt my life would have taken a very different trajectory.

Geography is destiny. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

For a while I felt guilty about this fact – but that didn’t help anyone, so I chose to feel pride about my country of birth and take with it a sense of responsibility. To use what I have been given to help others who haven’t had the same advantages as me, purely because of where they were born.

Geography is destiny, unless we act. Unless we use what we have been given to do what we can to create a better world.

Guilty

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We all have motivations that drive our behaviour, whether they be to feel good, or because of love, or a sense of responsibility and sometimes it comes from guilt.

Guilt can be a strong motivator and I have come across a number of people who will give generously to churches or charities to appease a sense of guilt they feel about one thing or another. Sometimes that guilt comes purely from within them, and other times the organisations they give to have sought to create a sense of guilt for them, so that they will give.

Whilst guilt can motivate us to do good things, it is not a quality long term motivating factor. After a while, people will generally tire of feeling guilty, like they are trapped in to doing something, and cease to engage in their generous acts.

A stronger motivation, and a somewhat healthier one, is a sense of responsibility. This is a more positive, proactive response that doesn’t require someone to feel bad about there current situation. Instead it provides a way for a person to use their current situation for the benefit of others. To act out of freedom.

As Australians, we are one of the wealthiest countries on earth, we could feel guilty about that and offer our generosity as some sort of payment to overcome the guilt, or we can see our place in the world as a gift, which carries with it a responsibility to help others who are not as financially blessed as we are.

I Know My Rights

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Written by Kelsie De Haan, Opportunity International Australia Political Intern

Everyone should have access to the most basic of rights. That much we can all agree upon and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights backs me up on that on. It outlines what people are entitled to simply by being born human. It also outlines the responsibility the state has to uphold the rights of their citizens and provides a guideline to moral and ethical behaviour.

In 2005, a report was released outlining the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) which demonstrates how rights and responsibility play out at a global level. One of the key components of this is the state’s right to sovereignty which is forfeited if they do not uphold their responsibilities to their citizens. For example, to protect them from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. It doesn’t stop there. Those who uphold the first responsibility are then given the added responsibility to help other states uphold it. Again, if they fail to prevent these atrocities or even perpetuate them, the international community assumes the responsibility to protect through intervention.

The right to sovereignty carries enormous responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of the citizens and we rightly expect this from our leaders. We readily criticise leaders who perpetrate human rights abuses and citizens pressure their own governments to take up the responsibility to intervene. For states to have the right to self-determination and self-government, first they must demonstrate their fulfilment of responsibility to promoting peace, protecting citizens and caring for the environment.

Somehow, things seem a little different at an individual level. The concept of responsibility tied to rights is often overlooked. We tend to be so quick to declare our rights and then dismiss our responsibilities. We expect the right to welfare as a citizen but we don’t like the responsibility of paying taxes – some even avoid paying tax and therefore impede on another’s right to receive adequate welfare. We love that we have the right to free speech, but are quick to shoot down other opinions that are different from ours – even attempting to silence through intimidation and violence. We revel in the right we have to live in freedom and safety but bemoan a speeding fine we receive when we put the safety of others at risk.

When we claim our individual rights without considering our responsibilities to those around us, it becomes very dangerous. It can lead to a place where the responsibility to respect another’s rights and protect their freedoms is overshadowed by the idea of ‘my rights over your rights’. Or in other words, ‘me first, you are not as important’. When this rhetoric is used, conflicting rights become the norm and solutions become less clear. It’s complicated. We see this daily in Australia where an individual’s right to seek asylum is in direct conflict with a state’s right to sovereign borders, or the right to free speech versus the right to live free of fear and hate speech, and even the pro-choice versus pro-life debate as it reflects the conflicting rights of a mother and her unborn child.

How do we justify privileging one person’s rights over another? It sounds awful when it gets stated like that, but we do it every day. I’m sure we would like to think that the ‘good guy’ always wins, but unfortunately it is more often the person with the most power who has their rights recognised and prioritised. When the responsibility to consider the needs of others is removed from the equation, conflicting rights are resolved through oppression of the disadvantaged by those in power. History shows us that oppression of a minority and the suppression of their rights appears to be the default setting, changing only when someone in a position of power draws attention to the injustice and allows an oppressed voice to be heard.

If being powerful is the prerequisite to exercising rights, this leaves women and children in a very vulnerable position. Fortunately, there are organisations like Opportunity International Australia and others whose sole purpose is to uphold their rights and empower them to a life free from injustice and poverty.  Yet for many other minorities, oppression and silencing of rights is a reality they face every day as a result of our reluctance to accept responsibility – responsibility to care for others, to make sacrifices for those in need, to listen to others and to simply be a responsible global citizen.

So, know your rights. Ensure that you have access to them. Make a stand for them. But don’t stop there. Know the responsibilities that you have because of your rights. Ensure others have access to their rights (no matter who they are or if you agree with all of their opinions), and make a stand for them. Use your rights to uphold those of others, not to oppress them.