We all have a responsibility in life. Responsibility to ourselves, to our families and friends, to society, to culture, and to the future. We’re responsible for what we do in the present moment, and many people ignore this responsibility until it’s too late.
The term voluntariness is used to describe situations in which a choice is made of one’s free will, versus being made as the result of coercion or duress.
Why Responsibility Is Important
Responsibility is important because otherwise, we don’t weigh our actions before we take them, and this applies to everything in life, at work, and to our fellow human beings.
Every human act bears a responsibility. That means facing the consequences of our actions. Acting responsibly means that we take responsibility for who we’re and where we’re going in life.
We must be responsible so that we don’t leave a trail of destruction so that others don’t have to take responsibility for us. We have to be responsible so that people see in us someone they can trust and rely on.
You may not be able to change your past, but you certainly can change your future. When you take responsibility for your actions and decisions, you acknowledge that you did something or made a decision, whether it was good or bad.
You also acknowledge that everything that happened after or because of it’s directly related to your freedom of decision.
Taking Responsibility Requires Maturity and Courage
It’s not always easy, especially for those who are used to playing the victim role. These people tend to end up alone because those around them grow weary of the energy they consume.
On a larger scale, social responsibility is also important. It is the ignorance of previous generations that prevented them from taking responsibility and caused climate change, for example.
It is also due to the moral goodwill of previous generations that we have freedom of speech, the right to vote, etc. in many parts of the world. This is because they took on the responsibility of taking action so we have these rights today.
How Voluntarism Relates to Responsibility
Imagine a society where the government has developed technology that allows it to control people’s behavior without their knowledge or consent.
The technology is so powerful that no one can resist it, and even if they could, there would be no way to tell when they were being controlled, so any attempt to resist would be futile. Instead, people just go about their business, but occasionally they’re forced by the government to do things they don’t want to do. For example, the government might force them to vote for a candidate, buy a product, or take some other voluntary action that benefits the government in some way.
Now imagine that you’re a victim of this technology. You’re coerced by the government into doing something you didn’t want to do. You proclaim your innocence and say, “It wasn’t me, it was the government that made me do it.” But since everyone else is also under government control, none of them believe you. Instead, they judge you harshly for your actions and punish you accordingly.
We’re not responsible for the things that happen to us outside of our control. For example, I’m not responsible for being born, and you aren’t responsible for being born. But there are many things that we can control. For example, in many countries today we can vote, get educated, and so on.
Responsibility is best understood in terms of two concepts: “moral responsibility” and “legal responsibility.” Moral responsibility refers to one’s sense of duty toward one’s ethical responsibilities in society. Legal responsibility refers to one’s duties to the law and legal obligations to society.
And to understand them, we must voluntarily learn and then voluntarily act and bear the moral responsibility of our human action.
How Can Voluntariness and Responsibility Make a Difference When Everyone Has a Different Opinion?
In my teenage years, the idea of voluntariness was one of the most inspiring thoughts for me, and knowing that I’d this human freedom led me to misbehave sometimes because I didn’t understand the important element and consequences of human action.
As teenagers, we don’t always understand the circumstances of every voluntary choice we make as human beings, we don’t have the reason because it’s ignorance and motivation, and determinism to get what we want.
For young people, autonomy often comes first, we all know that! So we start with voluntariness, then we make our own judgment, and then we start to understand the important element of “responsibility of human freedom”.
Related: How Do Freedom and Responsibility Go Side by Side
The older we get, the more we learn about human nature and the positive outcomes or consequences of any conduct we engage in.
Experience gives us evidence as to where any voluntary action can lead. Our judgment becomes sharper and we either find an acceptable alternative to our belief or we make a voluntary consent with ourselves to ignore the consequence of each of our voluntary choice.
Our Moral Goodness and Conduct Can Make a Difference
We all have our own opinions about how we want to live our lives or how we want our lives to be. But as soon as we interact with other people and their views about life, problems arise. And these problems stem from the fact that we don’t value the opinions of others.
Because we don’t have the courage to accept the fact that everyone is different and has their own opinion about how they want to shape or live their lives. And when something doesn’t fit our personal interests or goals, we tend to judge it as bad. We tend to blame other people for what we don’t like about their opinions, ideas, actions, and way of life.
Our human nature tends to blame other people for what we don’t like about their opinions, ideas, actions, and way of life.
But if you “voluntarily” think about it more deeply, you can always find a common opinion with most people, even if it’s something small like a common dish or your favorite city.
From there, you have the freedom to start a conversation that can lead to trust and the opportunity to convince the person of your belief or decide it’s not worth it. Whatever you decide, the decision you make freely and voluntarily will have an impact.
The same applies to your virtue and behavior.
Responsibility and Voluntariness Are Our Greatest Power
Every day is a new opportunity to make the most of your time and make a difference. To seize this opportunity, you must take the responsibility and initiative to do so. Successful people wake up every morning with a purpose. They’ve goals and plans to achieve them.
You’ll find that successful people act quickly when they’re needed and don’t wait for someone else to make the first move. They don’t procrastinate, they just get things done. If something needs to be fixed, they don’t wait for someone else to do it, they take care of it themselves.
And when they see a problem, they don’t wait for the situation to resolve itself, they take action and find a solution. It doesn’t matter how big or small the task is, taking responsibility for your work gives you more control over your success in life.
Voluntariness is the ability to choose a path in life and decide how to live it. Even though we’ve no control over some things in life, we can choose how we respond to them and what we do next. It’s important that we don’t let circumstances define us, but instead use them as a drive for growth and personal development.
Every day we take responsibility and voluntarily do the things we need to do to live a happy life or build a better society.
Voluntariness Comes With Responsibility
Once you’re aware of the power of free will you have in terms of voluntarism and responsibility, the next step is to make informed decisions. For example, before you allow yourself to be manipulated by non fact-checked news and fall into the fake news trap, find out to what extent something is investigated before it’s posted on the Internet, and by whom. For example, during the COVID crisis, some doctors called themselves scientists, which isn’t the same thing. Ignorance is a liability, not only for yourself but for others too.
The good thing is that there are many tools to help you with this.
You can start with a simple search engine query. Then you can dig deeper and see if there are any sources for the story in question.
- Is it a reputable source?
- If so, who or what’s behind the website?
- A newspaper or magazine?
- A company?
- A country?
And even if it’s all true, it’s worth asking if it’s really important and relevant today. You can also check the news of different countries or official newspapers and see what matches in the different versions; there you’ll probably find true facts.