The Morality of Shared Responsibility - Essay Example

The Morality of Shared Responsibility Introduction The abuses of government ity have created an environment where even liberal democracies can extend their actions beyond civil expectations, and as a model for freedom they often take the liberty of violating traditional notions of sovereignty. Hegemonic powers can select the brand of human rights that they find most offensive, while ignoring the suffering where social and political forces make it less convenient. When these wrongs come into the public spotlight, the individual citizen must often step up to make the situation right. The individual may need to provide economic assistance in the form of foreign aid, reparations, or compensation for an aggressive or negligent action. The individual may additionally bear a moral responsibility for the transgressions of their government; a moral responsibility that can be passed down through the generations. As the global community emerges, nationality becomes less defining of global groups and their members, yet the influence of state and government looms ever larger. People may feel positively motivated to help the suffering groups that the state has neglected or left abandoned. Alternatively, they may be forced to compensate the victims of government abuse through a system of coerced taxation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the numerous aspects that influence the degree of responsibility held by the individual citizen for the actions of their government. It will evaluate the basis of this responsibility and whether it is externally or internally driven. In almost all cases the individual is responsible, either materially or morally, for the actions and inactions of their government, and this responsibility is closely linked to the responsibility that individuals have for the well being of all their fellow men. Relevance The issue is of critical and relevant importance in that it addresses the tension and conflicts that arise when responsibility is rightfully assumed for the plight of a group, individual responsibility is inappropriately diluted, and the public good goes down the slippery slope of a nanny society. It is often characterized by individuals that are held blameless, while their problems are attributed to the government or the society they live in. There is no motivation to change and people gradually lose the ability to initiate innovation and creativity. In reality, this is a misconception that there are social ills intrinsically associated with assuming responsibility for the well-being of the worlds less fortunate people, as well as an illustration of the shortcomings of an unresponsive government. Health care is an example where conservatives believe that universal health care will be one less personal responsibility that the individual will have to carry. There is an American myth that purports that adequate health care comes from hard work, self-sufficiency, and individual liberty (Davion 2006, p.335). However, this misses the mark by continuing to view health care as commodity or material good. These are some of the traditional mythical images that need to be re-examined and challenged. This also occurs when we view the distribution of fairness as a redistribution of goods and materials, rather than the realignment and fair application of justice. Individuals have an obligation to make their government responsive and functional, rather than a tool of the elite for which no one bears any responsibility to, or for. Collective Responsibility Theory A major consideration in regards to a citizens responsibility for the actions of its government is the degree of responsibility its individual members take for the well being of their fellow citizens. If an individual has a high level of obligation to provide for their compatriots in the areas of health care, nutrition, and education then they also incur a greater responsibility for the actions, or inactions, of their government. In essence, a collective society has a greater level of shared burden. This shared burden, while felt greatest within their own borders, also extends beyond them and into other sovereign states, though "a government may give greater weight in redistributing income to improving the welfare of its domestic poor than to improving that of the poor elsewhere – even if the domestic poor are already better off than the foreign poor" (Beitz 1983, p.592). According to (Miller 1998, p.210) "it is probably common coin that fellow-citizenship strengthens duties of public aid to some degree and that cultural or ethnic ties can justify some special aid". A citizen of the UK has a cultural, societal, political, and ethical responsibility to assure that no other citizens of the UK are starving. However, according to goal-based theory, "persons have needs and their citizenship or nationality is not pertinent to whether these needs should be met (Caney, 2001, p.979). This act of moral imperative extends beyond the borders and into other countries such as the Sudan, Somalia, and Angola, "because the distribution of natural resources is so clearly morally arbitrary and the imposition of barriers to access to natural resources is so obviously in need of justification" (Miller 1998, p.221). The borders are a man made construction and do not act as limiters for morality. "Territorial boundaries are merely useful devices for "matching" one person to one protector" (Goodin 1988, p.686). The mythical nature of national borders, nationality, and nationalism is exemplified by Millers (1988) definition when he states that "nationality is essentially a subjective phenomenon, constituted by the shared beliefs of a set of people" and "is to a greater or lesser degree a manufactured item" (pp.648, 654). Nationality has no less impact than gender, race, ethnicity, or age when it comes to determining equality. If compensation, human welfare, or reparations can be justified for our fellow citizens, then it is justifiable for the entire human race, without regards to their current geographical location. A primary role of a political system is to instil order and assure that all its members have fair and equal access to justice. While nationality may have a diminished role in the cosmopolitan equality of modern globalism, governments and states have the function of serving to distribute the material wealth in a fashion that confers on everyone the basic human rights of food, shelter, and a minimum amount of health care. Reducing the rigidness of nationality as criteria for membership into a group means that all the people on the planet are entitled to the same justice as everyone else. Rules, regulations, and bureaucracy have traditionally marginalized the emotional experience necessary to develop a commitment to a collective morality (Putnam & Mumby 2000, p.1689). The diverse inclusion of people into the global community has been responsible for a greater sense of belonging and a dedication to global participation. Individual citizens are more vigilant and responsible for protecting the administration of a fair and equal justice for all people when it has been denied through the action of the government, but it is not necessarily their "duty to make every sacrifice that would improve the world on balance" (Miller 1998, p.209). Modern definitions of justice go beyond the simplicity of merely assuring equal access, and must include opportunity and the right to not be treated unjustly. Justice may also require some degree of material redistribution to alleviate the "grievous injustice" of "global poverty" (Pogge 2001, p.70). Not only are citizens responsible for the actions of their own government, they are also responsible for the actions of other governments that deny justice, create pockets of extreme hardship by practicing the politics of exclusion, or fail to act to prevent these situations from occurring. Citizens have a moral duty to act on behalf of the wronged people in ways that may include economic contributions or stimulating their own government to action to correct egregious human rights violations. The Motivation for Responsibility There are two types of motivation for the compensation, welfare, or reparation given to an individual, whether through private charity or on the behalf of a government. There is the positive welfare that is offered as a means to more evenly distribute material wealth in extreme cases where an individual or group of people are not able to provide for themselves. As an example, public welfare to the poor or disabled is a long held tradition as a means of reallocating economic goods to assure that everyone has at least a minimal portion. This is a positive motivation, as it is done in a pro-active fashion without a previous obligation incurred from a specific action. Negative motivation results when an individual incurs an obligation for an action that they may not be responsible for and may have wished to prevent. In either case, it can be argued that the situation occurs as the result of previous government action or inaction. The poor who cannot afford to feed themselves the basic nutrition required for good health may be there due to there own choosing, laziness, or complacency. However, the impossibility of making such a determination mandates that we consider that they may be there because of events beyond their control. It may be due to a disability incurred at birth. It may be caused by the discrimination they have been subjected to based on their ethnicity. It may also be because the economic structure that the government has promoted and advocated has given them insufficient cultural capital to succeed at even a minimal level. They may have been denied education, a family tradition of higher education, or the required credentials to get a job. In any event, government action, or inaction, can be blamed for these shortcomings. These inequities can be mediated through the actions of positive motivation for corrective action. The citizenry is compelled to correct the inequities either through agreed upon government action, or private charity. As has been shown, the concept that this moral imperative should cease at the borders is based on a man made structure and the recent concept of the nation/state. However, morality, and the morality of sharing, extends to all people of the globe. There is contention in regards to the amount of welfare that is due. While it may be agreed all children have a right to a minimum level of food and shelter, there will be wide disagreement on the issue of education and what an adult may have a right to. There is also tension in regards to what opportunities the members of the global community are entitled to in regards to the individual states (Caney 2001; Miller 2005, p.55). There is little disagreement on the fact that positive motivation for distributing justice in an effort to reconcile the inequities perpetuated by the government is morally just. In addition, there are legal traditions that allow it and place the taxpayer at an economic liability to accomplish it. Caney (2002, p.114) argues that this extends into less tangible areas and contends that all people "should have the same opportunity to achieve a position, independently of what nation or state or class or religion or ethnic group they belong to". As a result, there exists a significant collective agreement that all citizens are responsible for the actions or inactions of the government that result in depravation, hardship, or lowered opportunities that require a positive motivation to reconcile. Negative motivation comes as the result of a citizenry being forced to bear responsibility for the actions of a government that require compensation or rectification. While many citizens may have supported a given action that resulted in harm, those that opposed the action are often also held responsible, and have a negative motivation to rectify the wrongs. Indeed, they are legally coerced into paying for damages that they did not inflict and they did not agree with. While some nations are positively motivated to protect and provide for all their citizens, some nations "do them a prima facie wrong when they inflict injuries on their citizens; it is the prima facie duty of a state, acting on behalf of injured citizens, to demand redress" (Goodin 1988, p.683). Reparations for a wrong committed against a specific ethnicity are a good example. During World War II the US quarantined Japanese-American citizens living in the US in internment camps. Years later, the victims were awarded reparations for the wrongs that they had suffered. All the citizens alive at the time were forced to bear a portion of the responsibility through taxation, whether or not they had supported the action. In fact, the morality of reparations is only enforceable when it is a collective agreement. According to Brown (2007, p.510), "moral authority is manifest in the active or passive acceptance of others that a claim is justified, which can also be codified in formal systems, such as the legal, judicial and policing apparatus of the State". The negative motivation for the responsibility to take remedial action is agreed upon, formalized, and enforceable. Negative motivation for responsibility may also cross borders when it comes as the result of compensation for accidental collateral damage during a war, foreign policy that encourages the violation of basic human rights, or the cost of rebuilding after a military action. Once again, taxation is the vehicle that facilitates the collective redress for the governments actions. It is forced upon each individual without regard to the support, or protest, that they had for the action. The negative motivation will be acceptable to the collective group even if they do not share a similar morality in regards to the action. Opposition to the action will be mediated through rationalization, minimising the harm, and distorting the conduct, which results in "redefining harmful conduct as honourable by moral justification, exonerating social comparison and sanitising language (Bandura, 2002, p.102). This self-detachment and disengagement allows for the peaceful coexistence of a morality that opposes an action that is viewed as unjust alongside a willing agreement to accept responsibility for it. The Extent of Liability While a citizen can be held financially responsible for the acts of the government, they generally have only a limited level of criminal liability. The criminal responsibility for war crimes has traditionally been reserved for the authorities within the government that precipitated, participated, or condoned the illegal acts. The individual citizens are not held responsible, even if the government was elected by a majority in a free election. However, the citizenry, and individuals, may suffer civil or pragmatic penalties that arise when a violating country is imposed with sanctions. The citizens of a country that has violated the war crimes standards may suffer from restricted trade, economic activity, travel, and opportunities. In this scenario, all of the citizens bear the responsibility for the war crimes committed by a few. However, this may be tempered by the degree of freedom and democracy that the violating country has or had at the time of the violations. A democratic country in which the government was fairly elected may garner less sympathy than a populous that has been subjected to an authoritarian rule that came as the result of a coup. The democracy would be seen as a more appropriate group for collective responsibility. In fact, "the more open and democratic a political community is, the more justified we are in holding its members responsible for the decisions they make and the policies they follow (Butt, 2006, p.8). Typical reasoning would say that since they elected the government, they are all to blame. The ones that did not support the government would be no less responsible, as they have agreed to abide by the principles and values of the nation and its constitutional law. For these reasons, freely elected democratic institutions may place their citizens at greater risk of stiffer sanctions than dictators. The peaceful agreement of the members of a state to conduct themselves according to an accepted set of principle and laws, bind them together in regards to shared responsibility. This may be a formal framework of laws, such as a state, or it may extend to a spontaneous agreed upon action such as a mob. In both cases, there is a collective responsibility. This model of a like-minded group can also be applied to a society, ethnicity, race, or culture. In the US post Civil War South the extreme violent acts carried out by the KKK against African Americans "were carried out in a context in which Southern whites generally passively sympathized with such acts, even if they were not actively involved in perpetrating them, as a result of a widely shared culture of racial inequality" (Miller 2004, p.252). Rioters may be held collectively responsible for the damage they inflict, even though there is no was to accurately proportion the amount of damage that each member of the mob inflicted. It is the like-minded agreement that incurs the economic responsibility and brings about the negative motivation to pay restitution and make repairs. With respect to negative motivation for responsibility outside ones borders, the degree of pragmatic responsibility lies in the seriousness of the transgressions as well as the level of democracy in the government. Following this reasoning, the citizens of a highly democratised government, such as the UK, may be placing its citizens at great risk by the way they conduct themselves during a war. Responsibility for the questionable tactics used to interrogate prisoners may be placed on the well-intentioned citizen that spoke out against the war and urged humane treatment for prisoners. The US citizens, whose bombs inflicted the damage, can rightfully incur the financial burden of rebuilding neighbourhoods that were callously bombed as to generalize the damage, rather than seeking a specific military target. Still, these responsibilities are assigned in a generalized way, and not with the specifics required of a criminal indictment. If the action becomes more highly specified and more sharply defined, then the responsibility shifts to a more localized segment of society. As an example, a soldier committing a murder in a war zone cannot shift his responsibility onto all his fellow men, and the citizenry of his country has no negative motivation to act. However, some responsibility may lie with the smaller social groupings of his unit or his squad. Harbour (2004, p.64) contends that, "In complex political institutions such as states, governments, or international organisations, subgroups also can have enough independent decision-making capacity and control over their own subordinates that they should be considered decision-making agents". As the responsibility is able to be assigned to ever-smaller groups, or even an individual, the citizenrys negative motivation to make amends begins to dissipate. There is also a moral aspect to responsibility, and an individuals personally assumed blame, for an illegal action taken by others that they may have opposed, either openly or silently. The question becomes; to what degree does a citizen feel a moral obligation for a decision made by others? Generally speaking, the private citizen has no power over the decision to go to war, yet must bear the economic and moral responsibility that comes with it. They may wish to mediate their moral obligation by assigning it to the parties that are more directly responsible. Blame may be laid on mid-level actors that are involved enough to appear guilty, yet do not have the power to escape culpability. For example, the enlisted personnel at Abu Ghraib prison received the brunt of the responsibility for the questionable interrogation sessions, both by the public and the military justice system, while the policy makers escaped public scrutiny and prosecution. In this case, responsibility is assigned out of convenience, and though "many different officials contribute in different ways to political decisions and outcomes it is difficult, even in principle, to decide who is morally responsible for policy outcomes" (Harbour 2004, p.63). In the absence of a well-defined transgressor, the person that opposes an illegal action, the private citizen, will assume responsibility as part of the agreed upon collective responsibility in a democratic society. Further Implications of Morality Thus far, the discussion of shared responsibility has focused on the pragmatic and economic responsibility that is borne by the individuals of a collective society for the actions of the larger group. If there is a population of starving children that can be easily remedied by the purchase of a modest amount of food, we have a positive motivation for feeding these children. The motivation is driven by the moral obligation we have to share our abundance with those less fortunate. There will be limits placed on the amount we are willing to share that is also influenced by the group that we are sharing with. Redistribution of justice is not a clean mathematical formula where everyone gets an even slice of the pie. If we see hungry children, we may feel morally driven to set up a program whereby the children are fed at regular intervals. However, if a hungry and homeless adult confronts us, we may buy them a meal based on our moral duty, but may feel less morally compelled to go beyond that simple act. Positive motivation is morality driven, but is tempered by the specific situation that presents itself. In fact, morality in the case of positive motivation is largely driven by forces that are external to our own ethics and objectivity. When the case presents itself where the harm has been caused by a states action, or inaction, we may feel positively motivated for the outcome of the situation. In regards to positive motivation for theses situations, the citizen cannot escape the moral imperative that is placed on them. For example, if an ethnic tribe has been wronged through the confiscation of their lands centuries ago, the state has a responsibility to make reparations and do justice to the ethnic tribe. The individual citizen will have a positive motivation to compensate the tribe for their lost land, though they may or may not feel a moral obligation. The individual will have a moral responsibility for the outcome of the situation, but not necessarily the cause. This is especially the case when several generations elapse before any positive action is taken. The original act of injustice is far removed from the current day citizen, and they may feel no personal connection to its cause. However, the injustice of inaction by the previous generations is inherited and is borne by the subsequent generations, and the current generation assumes a morality driven positive motivation for the outcome. Butt (2006, p.7) argues that "although restitutive and compensatory obligations can be acquired in the absence of moral responsibility for an act of injustice, these obligations are nonetheless moral obligations that compel their holders to act". Whether the citizen is addressing the outcome or the cause, the decision to bear the obligation is morality driven and the citizen is both economically and morally responsible for all the acts of the state that require positive motivation. Critique of a Collective Responsibility Critics of the concept of a collective morality point to the erosion of individual freedom and loss of self-expression that is encumbered by shared responsibility. They will contend that it is counter to the ideology of free market ideas and limits the individuals freedom of choice in regards to their personal ethics. Critics have also argued that, "The most dangerous and insidious effect of corporate collectivism is its replacement of personal responsibility with collective responsibility", in that it holds no individual responsible and all responsibility is thus avoided (Estes 1996, p.102). Alternatively, the US constitutions 14th amendment endorses the concept that each individual should be judged on their own merits, and holding an individual responsible for the actions of a group may cause innocent members to be charged (McGary 1986, p.157). However, neither of these extremes is sustainable. Shared responsibility forces the self-assessment of intentions when responsibility may be assigned to the group in total, and gives the person a special duty to prevent harm from occurring when possible (May 1987, p.81). Rather than limiting moral choices, it actually makes the ethical decision in regards to an action more personal and more pressing. The failure of the citizenry to take responsibility for a governments actions that they oppose would not result in an oppositional population that has opted out of taking action to curtail harmful behavior. A moral citizenry, socialised with moral values, will act in a moral fashion. By taking responsibility for the governments actions, change can begin and justice can be served to the less fortunate that had previously been excluded from economic and social progress. However, responsibility does not equate to guilt or blame. Guilt is the "intentional transgression of a prohibition" and is not the result of association or inaction (May & Hoffman 1991, p.176). Blame is given to those that have acted inappropriately, guilt is assumed by action, while responsibility is taken by those that wish to effect change. Conclusion In conclusion, all citizens of the world have a responsibility to assure that everyone on the planet has the bare necessities required to meet the standards of basic human rights. When these rights are neglected or denied, it is the responsibility of the citizenry to coerce the government into action that would alleviate the situation. If a government brings harm to a group of people the citizens bear the obligation to correct the action through compensation, reparations, or reconstruction. Even when the acts are isolated and egregious, the public must assume the responsibility if the perpetrator cannot, or will not be exposed. A citizenry is responsible for its government, and this is especially valid when the government is a freely elected liberal democracy. While critics contend that shared responsibility leads to the avoidance of individual responsibility, the fact is that shared responsibility requires a more vigilant public in an effort to stop harm from occurring. In this modern age of cosmopolitan ethics, the myth of national borders has given the state, governments, and international organizations more cohesiveness. Our shared responsibility extends across borders, and is driven by the need to proactively provide for those less fortunate, as well as reactively correct a governments harmful actions. References Bandura, A 2002, Selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency, Journal of Moral Education, vol.31, no.2, pp.101-119. Beitz, C R 1983, Cosmopolitan ideals and national sentiment, The Journal of Philosophy, vol.80, no.10, pp.591-600. 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