The Missing Card

So I've been pondering the concept of self responsibility for a while now and there was something I kept getting tripped up on that I think I finally made sense of in my head. It seems like such a simple concept, You are responsible for your own actions and their outcome.

What's so difficult about that you ask? Well it's the fact that we don't just spontaneously act without cause. Every decision we make, every quirk of our personalities, is the result of the culmination of our own personal experiences in the world, but we don't experience the world alone. Our experiences are shared with, imposed on, and given to us. We each have our own perspective in the experience but others did contribute.

What had me tripped up was if the decisions we make are the result of our experiences of interactions with other people then why are these people not responsible for the result of our actions which they ultimately set in motion? This gets even more complicated when you stop to consider that these people's interactions with us were the result of their own experiences of interactions with other people who's experiences were the result of their own experiences of interactions with other people and so on. It doesn't stop. How could anyone ultimately claim responsibility for their own actions when they were the inevitable outcome of their interactions with other people who like wise can't claim responsibility for their actions as they were the inevitable outcome of their interactions and so on.

It really seems like I've over thought this doesn't it? And the thing is the conclusion I've come to in my ponderings seems so simple now that the beginning of this explanations feels utterly ridicules. My conclusion is that each person is responsible for managing their experiences, assessing what they have learned from each encounter and applying the knowledge to their next one. We have a responsibility to better ourselves with each experience.

It floors me how long I went around in circles in my head until I got to this. I think in general people like being able to say it's someone else's fault and avoid any responsibility. And can you blame someone for doing that? Responsibility is hard. It puts you center stage. You are the fall guy. However I think if everyone took responsibility for managing their own experiences, responsibility for themselves, then everyone would be working to better themselves. It wouldn't matter if you messed up because if everyone is center stage then center stage is just the stage everyone shares. All you'd do is learn from your experience and make yourself better.