Personal Responsibility Is Not A Useful Fix

When it comes to systemic issues, just saying “personal responsibility” is never the answer

I love searching for nebulous topics on stock photo websites. Not sure why “many people patting a tree” is an example of personal responsibility, but I hope you enjoyed the photo as much as I did. Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

Every time there’s a public discussion about a systemic issue — whether it’s road safety, education of children, or even the economy at large — there’s always someone who says that the problem would disappear tomorrow if everyone just took personal responsibility. If we all just did the right thing. If the world changed overnight and people suddenly behaved in the way that we think they should, our problems would go away.

Often, these arguments have a moral tone. The idea is that people are doing something ethically problematic by behaving in a way that contradicts the common good, and if they were to just be responsible we’d all be better off.

As a scientist, I try not to get into moral and ethical arguments. I’m ill-equipped to argue the benefits of deontology vs utilitarianism, or whether vaguely-defined concepts like ‘freedom’ are more important than other, slightly less vaguely-defined concepts like ‘health’.

Stock photos for freedom mostly consist of people standing on mountains, or balloons, which is weird when you think about it because in both of those cases you can’t actually move around all that much. Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash