poverty and social omissions

In typically Orwellian manner, the conditions in which responsibility can and should be exercised become inverted, and 'third way' politicians preach responsibility for those who have no power while utterly disregarding the duties to society of those who have. Entire communities (miners, steel workers) can be thrown on the social scrapheap in the interests of profit, and the only official talk of 'responsibility' is for those whose lives have been shattered to accept whatever scraps are thrown to them and sort themselves out as best they can without disturbing the peace.


More...

When it comes to trying to decide what people can be held accountable for and what not, the subjective sense of 'responsibility' is almost entirely unreliable. Everyone is familiar with liars and self-deceivers who claim that something was not their fault when it obviously was. What presents more of a challenge to psychological understanding is those people who claim and feel responsibility for things that are in fact obviously outside their control. Perhaps it is the greater authenticity of the over-conscientious person compared with the deceiver that gives us a clue as to why any 'internal' account of responsibility is invalid. The conscience, after all, does not lie: it reports (commentates) faithfully enough on how it feels to be the instrument of wrong-doing. But, as is clearly demonstrated by those in whom it is over-developed, the conscience can be mistaken. What it is mistaken about is not the feeling of responsibility, but the origins (or possibly the definition) of the 'wrong-doing'.

Read on...Good stuff here!

http://www.davidsmail.freeuk.com/pubfra.htm

What a great thinker..
He has got society pegged. Thanks for posting this great site
:applause:

Application of the concept of class warfare to psychology and psychiatry: specifically the fact (strongly hinted at by Laing, but long and vehemently denied by conventional "mental health" dogmas), that one's position on the master/slave hierarchy intrinsic to capitalism is the prime determinant of one's psychological fate. If I am correct -- I accessed the website and read the essay "Responsibility" -- we are witnesses to the birth of another proof of socialist necessity: first economics, now eco-socialism, and next maybe in the near future clinical acknowledgment that socialism provides the only structure in which humans can genuinely thrive -- ultimately, socialism as the only alternative for human survival.

I will read much more of this man as I have time. (Tonight I am doing a journalism-for-money project and have to get back to it as the deadline is bearing down.)

" ...What we need is a psychology that switches its attention from a metaphorical 'inner world' to try instead to elaborate the ways in which powerful influences in the external environment of social space-time serve to liberate or enslave us as well as to shape our consciousness of ourselves.... "

"...But the paradox of responsibility is escaped easily enough, I believe, if one extends the analysis beyond the walls of the consulting room. For responsibility is inextricably bound up with power, and power is accorded from without, not from within.

People cannot 'pull themselves together' not out of any wilful reluctance to do so but because the power to do so is not available to them. Exactly the same applies to 'responsibility. I can only be held responsible for what I have the power to do, and if I do indeed have the power to choose, only then can I reasonably be said to be responsible for my choices..."

My comments:

I have often tried myself to integrate outside influence with interior choice. For example, if I am enslaved and made to do things I may not have chosen to do, what can I do within those perimeters? I never could reconcile that except to say, within my own mind I would try to keep my integrity intact. But that is often almost impossible to do, as it becomes confusing as to where the 'other' left off with their expectations of me, which may involve me losing my life if I refuse, and where the "I" in me begins by "choosing" to do what is ordered. There is no power in choosing death over life, IMO. But that is often the supposedly 'noble' choice. But, what if you have kids who are left with these monsters top do what they are doing to you? Or what if you hope down the road you can make the situation better for everyone?

In American society, poverty is almost always the fault of the poor (and it appears it is the same with the English). This fault finding does not take into account our democratic society or its responsibility to its citizens as well. As David points out, a society-supported company can lay off a whole town from jobs they have held for generations, yet the impending poverty and misery that will surely follow is almost never attributed to the consecration of the government for that industry. It is just unthinkable to hold responsibility for such a massive layoff and destruction of an entire community to the company, or to hold the government responsible. Nope. The ensuing poverty and all the social ills that always accompany it, is all the fault of the poor. In our country institutionalized racism and class ism is ingrained so deeply many of us do not know it exists within even ourselves, and so we never connect the dots between poverty, class ism and racism.

My 2 cents

Cat In Seattle