Responsibility- Corey Maiden

Some friends and I got into a heated debate today about the concept of responsibility, and how some one’s understanding of this concept will be the basis of their moral and political views. Responsibilities are often explained to youths as things that you HAVE to do. . My attitude toward this oversimplified explanation is that it does not fully explain the concept of what a person is responsible for. I think that living in a roommate situation makes me respect the fact that everyone has to do their part more, because I know the feeling of having to pick up the slack, but almost as soon as I finished this thought I considered the responsibilities that I was referring to as “slack”. While I share my apartment with my roommates, the place is not devided into thirds. Each of us has to clean and take care of the entire place working as a whole. The kitchen is still my kitchen even when the dishes covering it are not mine, and vice versa. I think that this principle can be applied in a political sense to what people consider their responsibilities to their society. This realization may come with maturity, but I feel like I would have listened if someone had explained this to me at a younger age. If no one is willing to cover any more than his own share, the first time someone has to take a sick day, the entire business collapses. My point is that responsibilities are not imposed on us by anyone. They are the things that MUST be taken care of, and we cannot be reliant on anyone else to any slack created by ourselves. At the same time we must realize that if responsibilities are not taken care of they become problems. Problems take more time and effort to solve than responsibilities.