issue93 The concept of ‘individual responsibility’

crystalboyUID: 17709

“The concept of ‘individual responsibility’ is a necessary fiction. Although societies must hold individuals accountable for their own actions, people’s behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making.”


Is people’s behavoir largely determined by forces or by their own making? Different people hold different views due to their respective experience. On the hand, some argue that forces are indispensable to guide people’s behavior. Others, on the other hand, believe their actions should be congruent with their own making. On balance, in my opinion, forces and people’s making are complementary to each other—an and integration—so as to direct people’s action.

In the first place, as is often described and well known to us, people’s making such as temper or character will determine their behavior in some cases. For example, if they meet some people are being browbeated by villain, if any, on street, some perhaps stand out and struggle with the bully. Others, however, may be only as standers. It is not the forces which force people to help others but their own makings that provoke them to face the villain bravely. So under this circumstance, we can clearly see that people’s makings play an important role to affect their action.

In the second place, to guide people’s behavior, forces are indispensable. Let us see an example: one of the common problem in daily life is the disposal of garbage. Due to the different habits of various kinds of people, they will take their own methods to deal with this problem. In order to spare time, some will just discard them any place where they can without wrapping the rubbish; and more important without consideration of others. Others, on the contrary, will separate different rubbish into respective bags; then put them in the dustbin. Without forces, the former will bring to people great inconvenience which will affect their normal life. For instance, the diseases introduced by the rubbish threat people’s health, especially the young and the old; or the bad smell, even stench, will made impossible their normal life to say the least. Even worse, the latter probably convert their good habit into the former’s bad one that can bring about convenience to themselves, that can be done without punishment, if no forces at all. Thus it is necessary for forces to punish the former and encourage the latter so as to maintain the normal life.

From what has been discussed above, we can safely draw the conclusion that neither forces nor people’s making can determine people’s behavior respectively. Under most instances, they will form an organic whole, therefore become more effective to regulate people’s actions.

sophie_xUID: 106001

It is true that people's personality at large determine their behavior in most cases, however, the development  and formation of one's character or personality is a result of the exterior environment in which one was brought up. This explains why there are more street roberies in certain districts than others, where people are generally more educated and encouraged to confront such bullies. There are but only few exceptions that one's personality does not reflect the environment or is influenced by the exterior forces. It should be admitted that the behavior of the majority are inevitably more influenced by the forces.

pehtyUID: 64865

这位大哥，你好厉害啊！太牛了，我什么时候作文水平能达到这个水平呢？算了，不说了，去报gre了