[66's]异题 Issue93

soilinkinUID: 2163892

issue 93
"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."


Although people's behaviour, no matter in the ancient times or in the modern world, is largely influence by other elements, I do not agree with the speaker that the individual responsibility is only a notion.


Indeed, individual behaviour is not merelydetermined by one's own willingness but, at a larger extent, by the trend ofthe whole society or the condition of the environment. In the first place,individual willingness is influenced by the surrounding environment. Survivalof the fittest is the common rule in the nature and the human society, it meanspeople must take measures to fit the world to survive. The global warmingproblem is making people take more actions to protect the atmosphere in orderto prevent the average temperature from rising too rapidly, and people have tomake some prevention because the global warming problem is threatening humanrace. Secondly, people's behaviour is sometimes determined by the overall trendof the society, in other words, individual behaviour is affected by thebehaviour of other people. For example, if most people in one city are takingpublic transportation rather than private cars to go to work for the purpose ofsaving energy, then the rest may be persuaded to follow the trend. If not,however, one will not take energy-saving as his/her own responsibility while noone else is taking that responsibility.

However, individual responsibility is notdispensable or unsubstantial because of the unreliability of individual willingness.Individual responsibility is significant to the society in influencing theenvironment and social behaviour.

Social behaviour is the sum of individualbehaviour. Also, the social problems and environmental changes are the direct consequenceof social behaviour. Therefore, society and environment are influenced byindividual behaviour in an accumulative way. Individual behaviour is changingenvironment and society gradually and at the same time the environmental andsocial problems are the feed back of the individual bahaviour. The energycrisis is according to the irresponsible usage of energy of every people, theglobal warming problem is the consequence of emissions of greenhouse gases ofevery country for a long time, the extinction of some animals is based on theindiscriminate hunting by too many hunters.

As all these problems origins fromindividual behaviour, to create social responsibility, individualresponsibility is also indispensable for the reason that it is individualresponsibility what makes up the social responsibility. If every countryreduces the greenhouse gases emission, the average temperature will not rise sofast; if every people saves 1 kilowatt hour electricity a day, there will be noenergy crisis; if every hunter hunts discriminately, more endangered specieswill be saved.

In sum, without the individual responsibility,it is meaningless to mention social responsibility which provides support to abetter world, let alone a civilized society. So in order to build a betterworld, everyone should be aware of what he/she does will make consequences tothe world.