The Abdication of Responsibility

I'm performing what seems to be my now annual re-read of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I've recommended the book before, and continue to do so as a well thought out and well written novel (and as always, I recommend it with the caveat that I don't endorse or believe everything Miss Rand did).

One of the many themes of Atlas Shrugged deals with the abdication of responsibility, that some individuals make no decisions lest they be blamed for them, make no decision but attempt to make others make them for them, or simply make the decision but fail to accept responsibility for the consequences. The book identifies this as a major problem of the antagonists: individuals at the top demand decisions and then refuse to accept the responsibility of the consequences, while others farther down the food chain realize that they are being asked to decide in order to be blamed - and they, too, pass their decisions to yet others farther down the food chain, to the point in the book that a telephone operator is essentially forced to make the decision to send a train into a tunnel and almost certain death.

Perhaps the reason this is so much on my mind at the moment, and so poignant, is that I am seeing a version of this played out right before my very eyes. Decisions are called for but not made, and then when the consequences inevitably play out, the outcome is translocated to another individual. Suddenly, the original people who didn't make the decision but made the consequences want to get the item resolved as quickly as possible. "No time to assign blame" they say, or "What happened in the past is not important. We need to solve this problem now." The consequences of those decisions are never acknowledged by those who transferred the responsibility. Blame - if there is any to be passed around - always falls to the lowest level, to those dealing with the circumstances or solving the problem.

Abdication of responsibility. Our society reeks of it. It's in our business, in our politics, in our economy, in our personal lives.

How did it start? I'm not sure - at some levelit's always existed - but it occurs to me that when effects were separated from causes, when individuals were told they were not responsible for what happened to them and therefore not responsible for what they did, we began a walk down a road of no return.

Because - and this is one of the hearts of Atlas Shrugged - if an individual, business, society, or political system continues to abdicate responsibility, those who are responsible, who often times hold the whole enterprise together, abdicate their involvement as well.

An easy example: Businesses and management treat their employees badly, imperially, like interchangeable parts with no real hope of advancing, and are then confused why no-one shows initiative or that calls for sacrifice and long hours are met with indifference. Or when a political system calls for additional sacrifices from the productive and the productive, who have already watched their productivity be siphoned away, simply refuse to respond to such calls and instead endeavor to lower their productivity except for themselves. Or when an individual, constantly harassed or blamed by another in the relationship, decides to simply be and not engage.

Because abdication of responsibility can work both ways - not only for those who thrive and grow in it (to a point - no system can ultimately succeed without some responsibility) but for those who are truly and ethically responsible as well. When the first group does it, it is annoying and disheartening. When the second group does it, it is ultimately fatal - to the relationship, the business, or the society as a whole.