The Freedom We Find in Responsibility

A flourishing society requires people to accept that we each have obligations to one another.

It is easy to think of responsibility as the enemy of freedom. In reality, the opposite is true. There is typically an assumption within society that maximising freedom means having as few duties and obligations as possible. The individual who holds no responsibility is perceived to have optimal independence where unlimited choices are therefore available. The archetype of freedom is the person in possession of time, financial means, good health and opportunities to make choices which align with their preferences and desires. Invariably, the mental image conjures up someone who has perhaps recently retired, sitting in a deck chair observing the sunset with a chilled glass of pinot grigio in hand. There is nothing wrong with such a model of freedom, of course, but few would find the unending pursuit of personal pleasure to be the foundation for flourishing, purpose and a sense of self-worth. The reason why this image works at all as a synonym for freedom is because the individual can look back on their years of dignified labour and the rest that they have earned as a result. In other words, their right to a restorative and enjoyable retirement derives from the responsibilities they have fulfilled. The relationship between responsibility and rights is causative rather than simply correlative.

Rights and responsibilities

Unlike the recent retiree example above, many within society want rights without responsibilities. For a free society to flourish, it requires a culture where rights are understood alongside responsibilities rather than as an unlimited claim upon others.

The right to public services is only possible if enough people fulfil their responsibility to contribute to taxation. Yet the direct relationship between rights and responsibilities in the context of state provision extends more widely, even with reference to public goods such as the defence of the realm. The right to live peaceably and without the fear of attack is not possible should our armed forces, police departments and security services not fulfil their responsibilities of defending us, protecting us and neutralising threat. We need individuals to shoulder this immense responsibility and to sacrifice personal self-interest for the national good, as these extraordinary groups of people do on a daily basis.

This is also true at a much more localised level. The child’s right to be educated depends on adults taking responsibility to teach them. The patient’s right to healthcare can only be experienced if doctors, nurses and others within the medical profession fulfil their duties to serve. A society cannot sustain a culture of rights without a corresponding culture of responsibility. Nevertheless, one of the defining features of modern life is the tendency to outsource responsibility – typically to the state. When a child misbehaves, there is a tendency to ask what the school is doing about it, when someone is lonely, we ask what initiatives the government intends to introduce and when young people struggle, we look for a new public strategy or intervention. Now no one is saying that governments or institutions don’t have a role to play – of course they do, but a society cannot function if every responsibility ultimately travels upwards to the state.

The Privilege of Responsibility

It is common to see responsibility as a burden that is imposed upon us – something which we may grudgingly accept but certainly not welcome. Rather than understanding it as such, we are much better off viewing it as something to embrace, something which provides an opportunity to serve others, and by so doing, enables us to operate as individuals who experience fulfilment, purpose and identity. Responsibility gives us the chance to exercise agency, to be useful to our community and to be active participants in society, rather than someone who passively frames their existence around what they perceive is owed to them by virtue of their existence. Ultimately, we must not think of responsibility as the price we pay for freedom but one of the ways in which we experience it.

This is where community, social and civic groups provide a channel through which we can exercise responsibility and add value to our communities. Opportunities to engage, to give back and to contribute are myriad, ranging from serving on the boards of local schools or charities to joining river clean-up operations or fundraising initiatives. I recently accommodated a friend who was cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats to raise money for Harrow Litter Pickers, collecting refuse along the way. It is contributions like these which reflect responsibility in action and on which the effective functioning of our society depends.

The Basis of Rights

One must also step back and ask why humanity has rights in the first place. After all, what gives each of us distinction over other species or makes us unique? For the Christian, this relates to being made in the image of God – that each of us have a sanctity and inviolability because we reflect the holiness of the divine, albeit in an imperfect fashion. This doesn’t just confer dignity however, it also provides a sense of vocation because we have been called to create, serve and care for others, as well as to receive. For those who do not share that theological understanding, the basis for human dignity must be rooted elsewhere, and is likely to be grounded in humanity’s sophistication of intellect and subsequent communication, self-consciousness, and commitment to progress. It is only appropriate therefore that humanity possesses certain rights, which have long been embedded in common law. Yet these same reasons also deploy a responsibility on humanity – a civic duty to help one another and each make our own contribution, which will rightly vary in scope and nature, but which is surely incumbent on each of us.

It seems therefore that we have misunderstood freedom. It is not the absence of obligation or to live a life that is free of demands upon us. Instead, it is having the capacity and agency to choose what we give ourselves to, be that our families, our neighbours and community or to a cause or belief. Responsibility doesn’t undermine or reduce our humanity but is in fact, one of the primary ways in which we exercise it.