Radical Responsibility

Walking away from victimhood

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

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Radical Responsibility

We hear a lot nowadays—mostly from Millennials and Gen Z—about radical this and radical that. Everything in contemporary times is either about radical fill-in-the-blank, or else fill-in-the-blank phobia. The first one is used mainly as a primer for being super genuine; the latter is used (sometimes fairly, often not) as a pejorative conversation-stopper intended to make person A feel like a shitty, terrible subhuman maggot. (Often when person A simply has a different and rational view/opinion, or has—God forbid—questions.)

We also (as everybody knows) live in a “victim culture,” a mass callout Twitter culture (if “culture is even the right word here) wherein tribal groups compete against each other and sling mud at anyone on the “other” team. Red bad; blue good; fascism evil, Democracy invaluable.

These kinds of inane, reductive arguments aren’t really arguments, of course. They’re skillfully and maddeningly designed to immediately and effectively shut down dissenting views. No, this isn’t technically “government censorship,” but it damn well creates a censorious environment. Is that really what we want?

Anyway. I digress. Back to victimhood.

I do admit to having a phobia. I am Woke-phobic. Social Justice Warrior-phobic. Illogical-non-argument-I shut down speech when I can’t convincingly address your point-phobic. In other words: I am stupid-phobic. I’m not saying that Woke people (or people who buy into Woke ideas/culture/language) are themselves stupid, but rather that the conceptual framework they’ve created for themselves is stupid. And wrong. And moronic. And racist. And foolish. And young. And naïve. And a whole lot of other things.

Again: I digress.

I’ve been through a whole lot of things in my life. I’ll own up to reality: I am a white straight male (Yowza!!!) who was born and raised in the upper middleclass. Yes. I was and am privileged. No denying this. I’m also in no way shape or form a representative of ALL white people in America or abroad. Making bold, broad claims about any race of people is racist. And moronic. Groups may have certain general characteristics, sure, but in the end we’re all individuals. It’s like looking at the broad brush of history over thousands, or even millions of years. Yes, there are broad generalizations you can make about what happened, when, and why. Of course. But that’s with the camera (so to speak) zoomed way up at 35,000 feet. When you zoom the camera back in and get close, you see right away that there are all types of complex, nuanced things occurring. Nothing is ever as easy or simple or certainly binary is it seems. Almost ever. (Which is why we’re in the political quagmire we’re in now: We’ve got two polarized extremes, both unable to see their role in assisting the furtherance of extremism.)

Which brings me to my ultimate point. The word “radical.” I am all for radical honesty. Radical love. Radical acceptance. Radical truth. Radical integrity. Etc. But what I think our society needs right now is radical responsibility. I remember having an argument with a female friend of mine a few years ago. The topic was women being taken advantage of by asshole, bullying, shitty men. Her view was basically that most men are assholes and that they’ve been programed a la toxic masculinity and “the patriarchy” to treat women badly. My view was that, yes, there are plenty of shitty men out there, for sure, and many of them are assholes and they take advantage of women…but there are also plenty of GOOD men, too, and many of them are lonely as hell. Why? Because often women don’t WANT these men. They want the assholes.

I’m not saying it’s a “woman’s fault” if she’s with a shitty guy, or that women deserve it, or that all women chase only shitty men. Turn your 2022 Binary Brain off. What I’m saying is that both people, in my view, have a role. For me, the idea of radical responsibility means understanding that every single one of us has 100% agency. We get to choose in every single situation. Joan Didion got harshly criticized for her essay on second-wave feminism in the 1970s when she basically said that women didn’t have to stay at home and cook; they could do whatever they wanted to. They chose what they wanted. Look. I get it. Some of your are no doubt angrily rolling your eyes right now, thinking, But Michael, it’s not that easy. Women have such crazy societal pressures and expectations. I get it!! And you’re right. I’m not arguing against this. What I’m saying is that, even so, you still always have a choice. Hence the “radical” part. It takes courage to be radical. It takes nothing to be tribal.