Youare taking the position that they can do what they don’t do. You are also implicitingly suggesting there is a better rationality they could but do not reach. You term this being responsible. In short, owing to the system in which you have had your being created and maintained on the basis of the assumptions upon which that system’s foundations are built. You are stuck in the prison of trying to solve a problem the solutions you offer create. Because you are bound by the rules of ignorance by which the system operates, the solutions thus produced are not solutions at all but are the problem you are trying to fix. The problem is the system. The system generated solutions and the belief in them is the problem.
I'm taking the position that they can do what you say they cannot do. There is not a better or worse rationality, there is rational and irrational and the balance between them forged in the decision. I term accepting responsibility for your decisions which have real-world consequences as being responsible, and acting accordingly. You cannot articulate how a system-less world would work, how it would be different, nothing.
The crux of this is your question why would anybody change if there are no consequences for bad behavior. Here we can see the system in action. The moral position you state is conditioning by consequence, good behavior should be rewarded bad behavior discouraged by negative payback. This is conditioning by fear, fear that some behaviors are bad and result in negative consequences and that good behaviors have positive outcomes, and you compare it to putting your hand on a stove. But the consequences of putting your hand on a stove are physical and real while the consequences of bad behaviors are being put down as morally inferior by being physically abused or mentally shamed. In this way whatever random nonsense you are conditioned in this way to define as the good and the bad becomes in a sense your sources of moral pain avoidance. In short, your morality is a form of neuroticism. And the fear of negative consequences defined by your own personal lens based on whatever garbage you happened to have been inculcated with becomes the system via which you view and navigate the world. The feeling this conditioning is proper belief is generated by fear long suppressed and forgotten, but lingers as your North Star.
There is nothing about your moral beliefs you can demonstrate are absolute truth other than by the fear generated adumbrations of past events.
The crux of my question is my question, which is why would anyone change their behavior if they were told that they were not responsible for the choices they made or the real-world consequences of those choices. This is not theoretical or metaphorical, electing Trump President and enabling him to sweep his minions (or minders) into power has had enormous physical consequences in the physical world.
Ask an immigrant with legal status who was in the hallways of a courthouse where he was set to go through a legal process before he was wrestled to the ground, shackled and transported to Alligator Alcatraz, physically abused for weeks until he was shipped as cargo to a country he's never been to in his life, ask that immigrant if there were physical consequences, or if he merely feels put down and mentally shamed. Ask one of the sawmill employees who lost his job in a terrible job market if the consequences of his boss voting for Trump is of no consequence to him in the physical world.
The point is that the system from which you are viewing the problem is that the insanity of that system is required to exist in order to avoid insaniy. The system creates, defines, and, inculcates behaviors that require the insanity inculcated to continue to exist. You want me to give you a systemic answer to a conundrum manufactured by the system itself and complain I don’t do so. But all I can do is to try to show you the trap. Your responsibility, since you like that notion so much, is to suffer the realization you are neurotically identified with a sick system and survive the pain of hopelessness the system catastrophises will result if you let go of it. Only then will your mind be able to acquire new ways of understanding presently denied to you. You are a monkey trapped ina bottle grasping tightly to a piece of delicious looking fruit making it impossible to withdraw the fist. OK, so you refuse. It’s not your fault you cling to the irresponsible act of cling to the system in which words like responsibility have been invented.
Yesterday I was in an online video conference with someone who sent me a link to someone I was not familiar with. It was a rather lengthy podcast, a dialogue between two people. I saw in it a highly articulated expression of a vision of the world from a non systemic perspective. Perhaps you might be interested enough to give it a full listen.
You point at problems in the world and say, "None of you are responsible for anything you do! Unless you talk about other people causing problems, then you are the problem! Fix yourself by suffering the realization that you are neurotically identified with a sick system, let go of the pain of catastrophic hopelessness and acquire new ways of understanding."
I'll check out the podcast.
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