one of our main goals for centuries, and even now globalisation and the capitalistic survival of the fittest seem to be doing the same old thing through economical strategies. Socio-political structures, from families to empires, seem to have worked along the same lines for ages: power rather than reason seems to have ruled history. One could conclude we can’t do anything about it, and even discussing it is rather futile. But how can anyone aspiring to a free and better world agree with such a responsibility-evading conclusion? Assuming responsibility is the basic ethical action, without which there is no action but only reaction, no vision but only daydreaming. Denying one’s right to his own responsibility and vision is the main agent of mental slavery and despair. Denying our right to responsibility and self reliability is denying human dignity and integrity. Responsibility seems to operate concentrically. Our first ring of responsibility encompasses just ourselves individually, securing our own physical survival and taking care of our health and well being. Obviously enough, in our second life ring, responsibility includes taking care of our children and families, and in an additional ring – our friends and colleagues. But does responsibility end with these inner rings? Can one ignore his responsibilities for the community or humankind and hope to achieve the maximal good for himself only? Individual good and the common good are not contradictory, and in fact they are inseparable. At the end of the day we ARE interdependent, and to achieve our survival objective we need to extend the range of our responsibilities further. The next rings of responsibility have to do with striving for the maximal good of our associates, city, and whole society. Still further, individual
responsibility would need to encompass humanity at large, and finally all life forms and physical existence as such. The maximal good we can hope for would simply mean an action that takes responsibility for more people or for more life rings, and harms none or the least possible. With this golden rule it seems we won’t go wrong if we say that the maximal good is at the same time that which is successful in terms of survival; not the survival of the fittest, but the interdependent survival of the maximum life possible. However, this simple rule of the maximal good isn’t really news. It has been propounded by all great philosophies and religious teachings, and yet we fail to apply it once and for all in our individual endeavours and our social structures. Starvation, war, overpopulation and pollution are not the effects of our lack of technology or resources, but of our lack of responsibility. How, then, can we gain more responsibility? – Well, it’s free for the taking: simply by choosing to take more and more of it, by enlarging more and more our concern for more and more life rings. This can be applied to every action we have to decide upon, and it’s always a present time choice: widening one’s responsibility could be thought of as a goal rather than a fulfilling a set of designated duties. At the end of the day it is the human desire to do good and our potential for responsibility that seem to be our quest: not slavery but freedom not law but ethics. This is the key with which we can open the treasure house of our common riches, the very human qualities that poetry and art strive to enhance: human love, wisdom, imagination, creativity and beauty, all of which are riches that are made abundant when shared. Amir Or
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