What Happened to Personal Responsibility

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...." John Donne

I read this the other day and I hadn't thought about it for some time. I remember how important John Donne was to me in English Lit class in college, when I had time to muse about life, a time when I knew so little. In those days I didn't have the same appreciation that I have for this poem's meaning today... today it speaks to me about: who is responsible for your life or for all of human existence?" One does not send to find for whom the bell tolls without realizing a profound level of responsibility for it all.

I had the honor today to attend a training in a rural community of Oklahoma that was designed to build awareness about the methamphetamine (meth or crystal meth) problem in our communities. The group was attended by law enforcement, school teachers and coaches, a church youth director, students from the local high school and professionals from community based organizations and the local Health Department. I attended because I am part of this rural community and I have experience in the development of prevention coalitions as well as representing the drug treatment aspects of this problem.

As the group teased out what were the problems surrounding meth in their community and all of the "why's" for that problem, it became abundantly clear that the problem of meth use as well as most of the other identified problems could be traced from a lack of personal responsibility on the part of the parents, in particular, but a lack of personal responsibility on the part of most people in the community that allowed this problem to continue.

I couldn't help but think of what is going on with the financial crisis and all of the Wall Street executives and others that are singing this same tune, which led me to ponder genesis of this lack of taking responsibility in our communities, government and, perhaps, our country.

I lived in Denmark for about five years and living in a country where the government "seems" to take care of everything from birth to grave, I experienced a public that wasn't big on accepting responsibility for their role in any of their problems. I wondered if we haven't become the same, but for other reasons.

When I work with an addict to help him overcome his need for alcohol and other drugs, my task is to get the person to realize that he is responsible for every condition in his life. As a patient begins to take on more and more personal responsibility and begins to recognize that he "could" be responsible for some of the misfortunate and unfulfilled dreams in his life, he becomes more functional. His IQ increases and likewise, his memory expands and the more and more that he truly feels responsible for his life, his care and compassion increases for his fellow man and it will continue to expand until he cares about his group, community and his country.

I have seen this phenomenon repeat itself in every case to the point that it has become, what I fell, is a law of human existence... If you want to be happy, then take responsibility for everything, or as much as you can do authentically.

(I am hoping to get others to begin to chime in on my post, but at this point, no one is reading my blogs, and so I haven't been able to have the challenge of others on my thoughts, but I will take full responsibility for what I have said and to this point, it is pretty easy.)

I decided that I would take responsibility for the fact that meth is the second most used drugs in our community, after alcohol, so I volunteered to start a parent training course, which I will design to be a examination of what we as parents should expect from our schools, community based organizations, churches and others and what we should do in terms of being the ultimate reason on why anything is going wrong in our world. Perhaps if I can start at that level things will get better at many other levels. It will be a challenge. Probably as hard or harder than getting the addict to see where he is responsible for his addiction and the actions that come from there.

Some of you that may read my past blogs will know that I dislike the disease model of addiction and this responsibility factor is the reason why. You can't get totally well with the idea that you have a chronic an progressive disease... unless you take the responsibility that you chose the disease and you created it...I have yet to hear anyone describe their role as a victim of addiction in those terms.