Personal Responsibility in 2020
We are living through a backwards period of history, both in the external political climate and in personal life. Society seems to be inching ever-closer to authoritarianism and collectivism, while individuals are told that they are personally responsible to act against their own best interests. Wokeness and corporatized socialism seems to be replacing capitalism and individualism before our very eyes. Basic human needs and instincts like hanging out with friends, doing what’s best for yourself and your company, speaking to people face-to-face, going outside to see the sunshine, comedy, personal privacy, personal mobility in the form of travel etc. are all under attack under the guise of “for the greater good”. All things that give people enjoyment and reason to live are thrown away with nary a second-guess. People who disobey the new collectivist societal norms are seen as selfish evil people, and conformity is the new morality, both regarding COVID and regarding wokeness.
Woke politics and COVID conformity are two seemingly different things, yet the overlap is arguably very significant. Both deny the individual in favor of the collective. If you know yourself that you don’t have COVID, too bad! You still have to lockdown, hide your face, avoid your friends, and don’t have any fun, all because you might spread something with a 99% survival rate to others. Similarly, if you are a white person who never had anything to do with racism or oppressing anybody (maybe you even only emigrated to America recently) too bad! You are a racist by dint of your skin color, and you must go out of your way to promote black people over white people, trans people over straight people, etc., by complying with diversity quotas and affirmative action in your companies, movies, etc. etc. ad infinitum.
The underlying attitude of all of this is a fundamental denial of personal responsibility and individualism. The State is more important than the individual, therefore all individuals need to shut up and get censored so that the people in charge can dictate what everyone should do. This applies both to COVID and woke politics. Making “social change” is lauded as the highest achievement one can accomplish, while making personal changes and taking responsibility for your own life is completely off the table. Members of the left encourage each other to spend their lives fighting off the demons of “systemic racism”/sexism/transphobia/Islamophobia etc. etc. rather than taking the time to improve their own lives, form their own opinions, and to question as to whether or not this is truly the best thing for them to be doing.
The woke left prioritizes identity politics and conformity over individuals. This is exemplified by diversity quotas, which discriminate against talented individuals in favor of catering towards large groups. This is also exemplified by how the woke left cannot tolerate internal dissent, and takes a “either you’re with us or against us” approach, and if you disagree with anything they say then, well, “you ain’t black.” Nuanced, individual opinions are not welcome or necessary, and free debate is shunned because if you disagree then you must be bigoted and your opinion doesn’t count. This anti-individual approach is also seen in socialized healthcare and the cancel rent, cancel student loans, and cancel mortgages ideas. Why would you want to be an individual responsible for your own needs, after all, if you can just be lazy and have the government take care of all your finances for you? All of the left’s ideas lead to authoritarian socialism, it would seem. In this way, the “morality” of COVID and the fundamental motivation of wokeness are one and the same: both deny the individual in favor of the collective.
I have a message to all SJW types who may be reading. Trigger warning. Black people (or trans people, or Muslims, you get my point) do not need your help. Nor is having too much “help” good for anybody. These people need to learn how to help themselves, and how to improve their own communities. After all, they know what’s best for them, right? So why don’t we all leave it to them, and get out of the way? The iron rule at play here is “help yourself before helping others,” or really “if you do not know how to help yourself then you have no business trying to help others, and you may end up hurting them instead.” “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” means you first need to love yourself before you can love others.
The reason wokeness is so popular is because of the social media cred it gets you. You feel proud that you took a stand against systemic injustice! You are a hero, a fighter against overwhelming odds! Woohoo!! You got so many likes, you Twitter warrior you! This is what is called white savior complex. Every human being needs meaning in their life to give themselves purpose, in order to stave off depression, anxiety and entropy. Social justice crusades take minimal effort, usually just a single tweet, and they feel like they accomplish so much, judging by how many likes you get. In reality, your tweets probably accomplish very little. But you, as a person devoid of personal meaning with probable problems in your personal/family life, feel like a hero. All heros need a dragon to slay. When said dragon does not exist, there is no problem. The left creates a brand-new dragon, and it gets all the momentum it does because people have nothing better to do, or are too lazy/depressed to affect change in their own lives. I know, because I know many people like this. I have met them, spoken to them, and understand their point of view. Some of them are my friends, and it pains me to no end when I see them get caught up in the latest social justice craze and neglect to take care of themselves.
If you feel ineffective in life, the tendency is to blame the system, and to blame others. That’s the easy way out. It’s far harder to take responsibility for yourself. Far easier to try and rally against others and force them to change instead of changing and improving yourself and your relationship to yourself. Changing yourself takes work, a lot of time, friends, and energy. Yet the result is freedom. Freedom to be yourself, freedom to do what you want, freedom to be with others, as well as freedom from others and from being your own worst enemy. If everyone out there right now trying to change the system would take a step back and try to improve themselves the world would be a far better and happier place.
As a society we need a reaffirmation of traditional American values, such as personal responsibility, effort, free enterprise, individualism, mistrust of government, and free debate. We need to teach these things to our children, and we need to reaffirm them to ourselves.
Ask yourself, “today, what can I do that’s best for me?” Far from being selfish, that question alone will help you “set your own house in order” which is necessary before you can attempt to help others. Learn how to be kind to yourself, and to work towards your own best interests and goals. Be your own best friend, not your own worst enemy. The greatest thing you can do is to help yourself, because nobody else can truly do that for you. And if you really want to help others, you can do that too, as long as you understand how to help yourself first. If you don’t know how to help yourself, and this cannot be understated, then you are likely to hurt others you try to help instead of truly helping them. Forcing your help on others is no help at all.
I am not saying that there isn’t injustice in the world, nor am I saying that fighting injustice isn’t a noble goal, it is. However, it is also a frequently misguided goal, frequently self-destructive, and frequently aspired to for all the wrong reasons.
As always, feel free to sound off in the comments if you agree, disagree, think I’m a biased racist, think I’m evil because I’m white, think straight people should be cancelled, etc. :)
