A few months ago while I was at my job, one of my high school coworkers started poorly attempting to sweep the floor. He held one hand loosely on the top of the broom and the other equally gripless on the dustpan—putting no pressure on either, sweeping straight air. Not only was he doing a rough job, but this was a Burger King floor riddled with bun seeds which needed extra pressure to get them out from between the tiles, so he was gonna be at this for a while.
What would you do if you were observing the situation? My coworkers chose to point and laugh, like I assume many of us would. They stood on the opposite side of the room and watched as the kid clumsily fumbled along with the broom, one of them jokingly saying, “What time do you think he’ll get done?” This was closing shift, meaning no one got to go home until he finished sweeping. Rather than help, everyone just stood and watched.
But when I saw him sweeping the floor, my response was to walk over and help him out. I showed him how to hold the broom in a way to get a better grip, and how to use his foot to hold the dustpan in place. After I’d done that, he immediately started doing things the right way, and we left at a reasonable time. Why did no one else step up and help? Why did everyone else just stay back and laugh? The reason they’d likely give you is that, “it’s not my responsibility to teach that kid to sweep the floor, he should know already!” That’s the underlying philosophy at play here— the thing which compels us to laugh at those who are struggling rather than giving them a helping hand— our societal philosophy of individual responsibility.
This philosophy tells us that if it is not our assigned responsibility to take care of someone, we are under no obligation to give them a helping hand. Further, it tells us that individuals themselves are primarily responsible for navigating the world—that if they’ve had the resources available to them to complete a given task, they should be responsible for doing it themselves. Teaching and helping others are increasingly replaced by just giving people a collection of directions or information they need to know, and then leaving them the difficult task of using that information in their everyday lives without further assistance. We are taught that when a person is struggling with something they should probably know how to do, if we aren’t specifically directed to help them, we should do nothing.
I imagine that most of us have experienced both sides of this reality—both shaming others and feeling shamed. We have all had moments where we’re first learning to do something that others already know how to do, and we get judged rather than encouraged. It can become scary to admit when we don’t know things, because if there’s a societal expectation to know, we could easily get laughed at. People therefore often become hesitant to ask for help.
What do we accomplish with this philosophy, where each individual is responsible for navigating their own environment, and if they fail, we blame them? What does anyone gain? All it really does is compel us to fault individuals for problems which are larger than themselves—to assign blame to a singular person rather than to think about how we can transform our collective environment to help one another. Think about what would’ve happened if rather than helping that kid sweep the floor, I would’ve just done nothing—we all would’ve gone home much later and had a worse night. Shaming individuals does nothing, but helping them or changing structures actually can. What if we improved our training program to help our workers learn proper sweeping rather than just assume it’s a thing they already know how to do? Then we wouldn’t even run into this problem in the first place!
Unfortunately, the philosophy of individual responsibility is deeply entrenched into our everyday lives. How often do we hear people say, “its not my responsibility” to educate you when arguing about politics, or that “its not my responsibility” to teach this coworker, or that “its not my responsibility” to help that friend who’s reaching out when they’re struggling with depression? What do we gain if we refuse to educate each other, help each other, support each other emotionally? All we do is isolate ourselves and force each other to deal with our problems independently—we create a world of individuals afraid to acknowledge that they need each other. It is a society in which everyone is first and foremost looking out for themselves, where no one is expected to help anyone and it is fundamentally each person’s responsibility to navigate the world alone.
We observe it here at EMU when our clubs blame the student body for not showing up for events rather than improving their marketing and event quality. We observe it when bad teachers blame students for not learning properly when their “teaching” amounts to little more than reading words off a slideshow. We observe it when managers blame employees for something they barely trained them on rather than improve their training process. Yes, it’s often true that individuals could be doing more to help their own situation. It’s true that my high school coworker should probably know how to sweep by now, that students should pay more attention in class, and that our campus can do a better job of showing up to events. That said, solely acknowledging this does absolutely nothing to improve conditions.
But this philosophy is not only present at the individual or local level, it is a broad societal tendency that underscores every part of this country’s culture. If a certain group is struggling socially or economically, we are taught that it’s their fault for not using the resources available to them as well as others. Homeless people? Their fault for not getting a job. Poor people? They should’ve worked harder. We become incapable of systemic analysis and instead can only focus on blaming individuals. This is especially problematic in a society which structurally favors certain groups over others, as it prevents us from being able to properly address the systemic issues that lead to our mass inequality. How will we properly address the conditions that create poverty if our conversation revolves entirely around how poor people could better help themselves, and not how our settler-colonial capitalist system creates conditions that inevitably lead to poverty?
As an alternative to the individual responsibility framework, we should instead all hold ourselves responsible to each other, and help each other as best we can. When someone’s struggling, our first thought should not be “well they’re pretty stupid for not knowing how to do this,” it should be “how can I help?” We shouldn’t approach a problem through the primary question of “who’s fault is this,” but “how can we make this better.” If you have the capacity to help another, why not use it? Why blame a person for their lack of knowledge or ability when you could help them develop their knowledge and ability? Whenever someone makes a mistake, the philosophy of individual responsibility tells us we should hold that person accountable for their mistake, and say “it is your fault.” Instead, what if we worked to help them not make that mistake in the future by changing the situation around them? Imagine what kind of community we could foster if we abandoned individual blame and focused on collective empowerment.
Rather than criticizing their students for being “bad learners” or not paying enough attention, teachers should instead focus on helping them as best they can and looking at themselves to see if there’s anything they can change about their pedagogical practices. Rather than criticizing our student body for not showing up to our events, clubs should focus on putting on better events and improving their marketing. Rather than blaming untrained coworkers for poor work, we should help them out, regardless if it’s our specific “responsibility” or not. Rather than blaming disadvantaged populations for their poverty, we should work at building systems which accommodate their needs. The philosophy of individual responsibility is a reactionary weapon which prevents us from addressing the status quo and making progressive changes, instead redirecting our attention to attacking each other. It cannot help us solve our problems, only divide us.
