Responsibility – A Symphonic Suite

The judge asked the doctor, "How many injuries were there in the body of the dead?"

The doctor answered, "57, my Lord!"

"And which one was the fatal blow?"

"It is difficult to answer because by default each one was!!! My Lord, have you ever cooked rice?

"Yes, sometimes."

"Would you please tell me which instant of heat is to be held responsible for the softening of the rice?"

After a long pause, "All the instants …, but the last one is the crescendo which carries on its shoulders the responsibilities of the previous moments!"

"There you are! My Lord! The cause of the death was not the single or the last one but collectively taken all." So which one is to be held responsible?

The classic "lifeboat dilemma", where there are only 10 spaces in the lifeboat, but there are 11 passengers on the sinking ship. A decision must be made as to who will stay behind. The group has to make extremely difficult decisions. Do they take extreme action that will cost one member of the group her life? Who would be responsible for making such a decision? It is commonly accepted that killing a person is wrong, but what about when it's done to save the greatest number of people – a utilitarian approach that allows choosing to eliminate the person who is stuck? Would there be legal consequences for that? What about their guilt?

In recent decades much attention has been paid to the question of collective responsibility. For everybody knows that one person cannot be accountable for every action. As a result, we have a situation that someone is responsible to someone for something, which makes the concept of responsibility a relational concept, expressed by a relational system of expectation of an action or its result without reducing the personal or individual responsibility at all.

We often encounter in politics rhetorical maneuvering of someone saying "I take full responsibility" for some mishap, yet nothing at all happens after that––no resignation, no punishment. Why? Because entanglement, or more formally, relational intertwinement with a chain of persons, is a characteristic feature of responsibility that comes in between, consequently no one is punished. An awful situation!

The fact is, responsibility is a moral concept that cannot be enforced as the law can. They often overlap but their so-called realms are different. Indeed, one can put somebody in the pillory – expose him or her publicly in the moral sense, but one cannot convict him or her by enforcing sanctions in the legal sense. An example where law and morality overlap is murder: it is both a legal crime and an egregious moral wrong. However, the law does not punish attempted murder in the same way as an actual murder – that is, it does not prioritize intentions over outcomes in the same way that many believe that moral judgment should. Under such a "choosing system," the law is not there to punish in proportion to blameworthiness or wickedness or even insanity. Considers the case of the psychopath, someone who shows absolutely no moral concern for others, nor any sensitivity to moral reproach nor ever feel guilt, will never be responsive to blame. This might sound like writing the person a blank check to behave utterly immorally.

I have heard Hahn, who was a chemist by training rather than a physicist, cannot be held personally or morally responsible for the development of the atomic bomb. Even so, he felt great regrets and pangs, so much so that the other German physicists held in the same imprisonment camp near Cambridge after the war was over, afraid that he would commit suicide. Thus, Social responsibility plays an essential role within the ethical framework and suggests that an individual must work and cooperate with other individuals and organizations for the benefit of society at large. But do we know the prospective and retrospective consequences of such action? The Day before yesterday, I helped a friend of mine by lending my driver, but unfortunately, the driver on the way collided with another car and damaged a part of my friends' car. I was feeling guilty for the prospective complication. Was I responsible? Consider similar cases – when the faulty gasket was responsible for the car breaking down or when the epileptic fit of the driver was responsible for the accident? Or when another car was coming from the wrong direction, or when the driver wanted to save the cycle-rider coming in between?

It is a common practice that when one is entrusted with responsibility for something, one will be held responsible if any harm occurs, regardless of whether one might have averted it. This is true if one hires a car, for instance, even if an accident is no one's fault, the contract may stipulate that one will be responsible for part of the repair costs, however, accidental it may be. Thus, many perplexities about shared responsibility arise from the thought that individuals are responsible agents, in a way that groups cannot be. The trial of individuals, such as the 1961 Jerusalem trial of Nazi functionary Adolf Eichmann was a most puzzling aspect of collective responsibility. In The Question of German Guilt, Karl Jaspers distinguishes between moral guilt that is based on what one does and moral guilt that is based on who one is. He argues that the latter, which he calls "metaphysical guilt", can be distributed to all the members of a community who stand by while their fellows produce harm, e.g., murder Jews. "[t]here exists solidarity among human beings that makes each as responsible for every wrong and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge. If I fail to do whatever I can do to prevent them, I too am guilty." …However, anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual"

I passionately recollect the incident during the Olympic Games in Rio the unexpected interaction between two female 5K runners, Abbey D' Agostino from the USA and Nikki Hamblin from New Zealand, made headline news and went viral on social media. Immediately after their collision, Abbey stopped and helped her fellow runner to get up encouraging her to finish the race. A few moments later when Abbey collapsed from a resulting serious knee injury, it was now Nikki stopping and helping Abbey to get up and complete the race. They both finished their respective events with standing ovations and hugged each other. But perhaps what people responded to was the goodness that each runner demonstrated to others. The selfless act of kindness and graciousness melted the hearts of many across the globe. And it reminded me that witnessing goodness in action is not only touching and gratifying but can be enthralling as well. We thirst for goodness, though it is difficult to define unless it is shown in the performance, just as an untouched piano without any fingers playing on, a lonely clown without a circus has no purpose. A boat stuck at the shore has no destiny; a lion lost its roar if no one is there to listen. So goodness vis-à-vis a moral virtue has no distinction if it is not assessed in action.

Focusing through the lens of collective responsibility, morality has broadened its scope. I am horrified to see the litter out of the dustbin, an ocean full of micro-plastics, and picnic spots worth not visiting again. Look at the scenario of the ground when political rallies are over!  There remains tons of debris for many days surrounded by crows, dogs, cats, and pigs, etc. The collective Ministerial Responsibility is the crux of any Parliamentary form of government. This concept has evolved to ensure cabinet unity and party discipline and showing that the government stands firmly behind the policies it promotes and seeks to pass through the parliament.

Friends! I again remember my teacher used to explain why eyes are not the only element responsible for our 'perceptual awareness'. Along with eyes, there must be light, there must be attentive mind and there must be a contact between the object and sense-organ, otherwise, we will remain blind to the world ––with eyes as much as without eyes.

My friends! Just think of wars, gang violence, toxic waste spills, overcrowding and brutality in the prisons, corporate fraud, the manufacture of unsafe and defective products, failure of legislative bodies to respond to pressing public policy concerns, or financial waste by a governmental agency, are some examples of the serious and widespread harms associated with collective actions and a variety of groups.

Thus the collective responsibility is full of holes, whereas individual responsibility is full of fissures. By this, I do not mean that collective responsibility is tedious or non-existent. I do not mean that individual responsibility is mind-numbing and fictional. Responsibility gaps do exist sometimes. This is where culture intersects with ethics. Since interpretations of what is moral are influenced by cultural norms, the possibility exists that what is ethical to one group will not be considered so by someone living in a different culture. When everybody sings the same note, there won't be any harmony which can be achieved by posing critically challenging questions to spark debate among team members and open discourse. The polarization of society is evident. A secretary discovers her boss has been laundering money, and she must decide whether or not to turn him in….A doctor refuses to give a terminal patient morphine, but the nurse can see the patient is in agony. Throughout Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet struggles with his loyalty to his mother, his duty to avenge his father, and his sanity. A character battling against the norms of his or her society is a common form of conflict. While responding to a domestic violence call, a police officer finds out that the assailant is the brother of the police chief, and the police chief tells the officer to "make it go away". A train with broken brakes is speeding towards a fork in the tracks. On the left, a woman is crossing with her two children; on the right, a man is doing routine maintenance on the tracks. The driver must decide which side to aim the speeding train towards.

 If we are all determined to play the first violin, we should never have an ensemble. The conductor unifies the orchestra, sets the tempo, and shapes the sound of the band. The conductor listens critically to achieve the appropriate sound of the group, controls the interpretation of the music, and thus interprets the composer's objective. The conductor also prepares the orchestra by leading rehearsals before the public concert, in which the conductor provides instructions to the musicians on their interpretation of the music being performed––combined into a symphonic suite. Each musician brings a magical moment full of mystery and accord. There lies the balance in consonance and in accord as they come together. The music begins with gentle pulses and melodic contours before launching into a series of more overtly rhythmic episodes. Energetic musical climax and a brief addition, which re-introduces the gentle pulses of the opening, ends in a series of cloud-like puffs suggested by soft, high string harmonics. A symphony orchestra is a splendid example of tolerance, respect among dozens of players playing music together contributing together to create an artistic act and aesthetic appeal.

The biggest challenge, therefore, is the ethical drama/dilemma that does not offer an obvious solution that would comply with societal norms. However, in times of great calamities like war, floods, or famine, when the whole social fabric becomes disturbed, or during a period of severe crisis in the individual's life, it may not be strictly possible to follow the norms. During such periods of āpaddharma or calamity, the Dharma Śāstra-s allows people to take any course or avocation, as an emergency measure. Uncertainty and disagreement about prospective responsibilities are always passing over into disputes about retrospective responsibility, so our roles and responsibilities are ever-changing and challenging. Every day we evolve a different strategy to fight our battle.   

The whole story, if narrated through Alice's point of view, comes to this. The young girl is lost in a strange world doesn't know how to get home. She is always moving around inside Wonderland and thereby encountering strange new characters and strange new situations. The solution is …When Alice wakes up from her dream she no longer have to combat with the problem. Alice realizes it was just a dream. The solution is just to wake up.