brazenautomaton:

nostalgebraist:

I’m confused – do we actually disagree about this?  I am saying that the former of the two things you mentioned is not good and that I find the negative connotations of the word “entitlement” useful for pointing out that it’s bad.  So no, I wouldn’t say it’s a “right everyone has” (except in that everyone has a right to say things, even things that are stupid or wrong, but I don’t get the sense that that’s what you’re talking about here).

Because you said that creating responsibilities for other people to give you things that it is fair for you to have might not work because: “ This ignores that some people may not have the skills necessary to work productively on those problems, or that even if they do, it may be painful for them and that needs to be taken into account.”

You didn’t say anything about how you can’t just create responsibilities for other people because you want something and believe it is fair you be given it; you phrased it entirely as ‘people might not have the ability to give you the things you feel you deserve’. That is why I compared it to needing a note from my doctor to say “no, you don’t get to create responsibilities for me”.

For me, responsibility is something that is determined within myself, and whether someone else is trying to “create it” is ultimately irrelevant.  I do try to be aware of when people are trying to guilt me into doing things, and I’m more skeptical of my own feelings of responsibility in those cases than in others.  But at the end of the day, if I feel responsible, I feel responsible; there isn’t some special axiom that says “if someone else is trying to create this feeling, the feeling is therefore invalid.”

To go with the classic example: if I’m the only person around and I see someone drowning, I may or may not feel it’s my “responsibility” to save them.  This ultimately comes down to my own moral worldview and what it says about such situations, which is something determined within me; what the drowning person says can’t change any of that.  If they are screaming “you’re a terrible person if you don’t save me!” (postulate for now that they can say intelligible things despite the fact that they are drowning), that doesn’t mean that any feeling of responsibility I have is null and void because someone else is helping to create it.  The fundamental situation is not any different than it would have been if they had said nothing.  (I guess some people would say that if they say “you’re a terrible person if you don’t save me!”, it’s evidence about their character, but even then, it’s not the sort of evidence that should literally make the difference between life and death.)

Or, to put it another way: I try to decide what I am responsible for using my knowledge of a situation and the best arguments I am aware of, and if someone makes me aware of a good argument out of self-interest, it’s still a good argument.  “It is in my self-interest for you to believe 2+2=4” doesn’t imply “2+2 != 4.”  (Of course this all has the giant caveat that one has to reflect carefully on whether other people are distorting one’s view of the situation rather than simply making one more informed about it.)

(via brazenautomaton)