Heroic responsibility always struck as me the kind of thing that a lot of people probably have too little of, but also like the kind of thing that will just make you a miserable wreck if you take it too seriously. After all, interpreted literally, it means that every person dying of a terrible disease, every war, every case of domestic violence, etc. etc. happening in the world, now or in the future, is because you didn’t stop it.
The concept is useful to have as a way to remind ourselves that often supposed “impossibles” just mean we’re unwilling to put a real effort into it, and that we shouldn’t just content ourselves to doing the things that our socially-prescribed roles require from us. But at the same time, some things—like preventing every nasty thing that’s happening on Earth right now—really are impossible, and that won’t change just because someone tells themselves otherwise. And feeling guilty about all of it won’t do anyone any good.
Basically, “heroic responsibility” means telling yourself that yes, it’s possible for you to fix that problem, regardless of how difficult or challenging it feels. Which is obviously a falsehood, because some problems genuinely are unsolvable. But a small dose of that falsehood can be helpful in counteracting our biases towards self-serving behavior. Since we have those biases, introducing a small dose of an opposite falsehood into our reasoning can bring the system towards an overall more correct state. But if we introduce too much of it, we’ll end up more distant from the truth again, and believing in heroic responsibility too much may be worse for our well-being than believing in it too little.
Heroic responsibility always struck as me the kind of thing that a lot of people probably have too little of, but also like the kind of thing that will just make you a miserable wreck if you take it too seriously. After all, interpreted literally, it means that every person dying of a terrible disease, every war, every case of domestic violence, etc. etc. happening in the world, now or in the future, is because you didn’t stop it.
The concept is useful to have as a way to remind ourselves that often supposed “impossibles” just mean we’re unwilling to put a real effort into it, and that we shouldn’t just content ourselves to doing the things that our socially-prescribed roles require from us. But at the same time, some things—like preventing every nasty thing that’s happening on Earth right now—really are impossible, and that won’t change just because someone tells themselves otherwise. And feeling guilty about all of it won’t do anyone any good.
Basically, “heroic responsibility” means telling yourself that yes, it’s possible for you to fix that problem, regardless of how difficult or challenging it feels. Which is obviously a falsehood, because some problems genuinely are unsolvable. But a small dose of that falsehood can be helpful in counteracting our biases towards self-serving behavior. Since we have those biases, introducing a small dose of an opposite falsehood into our reasoning can bring the system towards an overall more correct state. But if we introduce too much of it, we’ll end up more distant from the truth again, and believing in heroic responsibility too much may be worse for our well-being than believing in it too little.