Responsibility necessarily implies care. For example, let’s say you are responsible for baking a birthday cake. What would be a failure in this context? Obviously, failure would be to neglect your responsibility, therefore no cake was made. Or, failure would be if you haphazardly mixed ingredients together, making a disaster or a subpar cake. Okay, then, what would be the best way to succeed at this job? It would be to pay extra careful attention to every important step and ingredient. Likewise, if you are in a position of power, you are burdened with great deal of caretaking. Parents know this. Dog owners know this. What is a bad parent? It is an irresponsible one, one who does not care. What is a parent? It’s someone who has power over a child.
Moving on to the second point now, a mother’s love for her child is often cited as the most powerful human connection. A maternal bond is the basis for all of us being alive right now. Do you think you’d survive, as pathetic newborn infants are, if humans were like snakes and left you immediately after birth? “You’re on your own, kid”. No, of course not. This applies to every level of authority, from workplaces to government. The maternal bond is the golden standard form of governing, and the citizens ought to be like crying babies (i.e., protests). The government should cater to each and every citizen like a doting mother.
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I think it’s a well-intentioned, but overly idealistic take. For one thing, you can’t please all the people all the time. The more people you’re dealing with, the more true this becomes. At some point, trying to “care” for everyone in the way you define leads to inaction. “If I can’t please everyone, I’ll stick with the status quo.”
There’s also different kinds of responsibility. For a parent or teacher, responsibility certainly means some level of care. A general has tons of responsibility, and good ones do care about the people under them. But they can’t let that obscure the fact that their job sometimes entails sending people to their deaths. What can be more careless than indirectly bringing about the death of a good number of people? In that case, what you define as a dereliction of duty is literally the opposite!
As for the maternal bond, I don’t completely disagree, mainly because I have a great mom, and am married to one as well. But plenty of kids grew up without parents over human history. Of course, some number wound up having issues as a result of that, but I would argue at least an equal number turned out just fine.
No one is raised alone or else they would starve. There are people responsible for you being alive at this moment, and that has always been the case since your birth. This is something easily ignored, like how oxygen is taken for granted
Of course nobody grows up completely alone. I never said they did. I said plenty of kids grew up without parents. That doesn’t mean they were left completely alone! There are plenty of kids in foster care in the US whose host families provide some food, a roof over their head, maybe a bed, and little else. It’s a pretty old story, and again plenty of those kids grew up fine. I’m not arguing that it’s an ideal situation, or that kids in those circumstances have as much chance at a happy life as ones in loving homes (w/ or w/o their birth parents). I’m just saying it isn’t as black and white as you’re making it out.
The general analogy is a category error bc “sending people to their deaths” is uncaring as defined as “not good” for wellbeing. All generals are therefore categorically not ideal.
There are jobs that are both necessary and fundamentally carry severe risk. We’ve gotten a lot better over the last few centuries, but fire rescue is still the first one that comes to mind.
I don’t even know what you’re saying here. Are you arguing that generals are uncaring? If you are, you haven’t met many. As I said in my previous original post, good generals care about the people under their command. When generals are sending soldiers to their deaths, the death part isn’t a certainty. The orders the general gives is intended to give the soldiers the best chance at achieving their goals w minimal loss of life. If for no other reason than if you lose all your guys because you did a Picket’s Charge, you… wind up like Picket. And now we’re getting into the motivations of the generals when they make plans and give orders. All of this is to say it’s way more messy that you’re trying to make it out to be. Good/Bad, Black/White, ignores things like perspective & circumstance - gray areas, of which there are a plethora because humans are often irrational, often unintentionally.
Not particularly unpopular an opinion IMO
We’re taught this concept many ways, it’s even one of the most famous lines from Spiderman: “with great power comes great responsibility”
Responsibility here being synonymous with “caring”
I can see that, but somehow it gets forgotten when people are in positions of power. Perhaps they do not recognize how much power they wield.
While I agree in principle, there are a few things that complicate this:
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More caring/responsibility is required than one person can possibly handle. So instead, it is more about delegating and monitoring and only intervening in cases where the system failed. Attempting to fix everything personally will result in burnout. Attempting to fix everything could result in institutional burnout/insolvency.
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Not everyone is a reliable witness: consider the cat that claims to be absolutely starving and hasn’t been fed in weeks. Sometimes people need to be refused what they want for the good of themselves, others, or the system as a whole.
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Human error exists and will screw up the best laid plans.
This does not mean that a particular system is or is not functioning well - but ‘maternal care’ and ‘spoiled rotten’ are not the same thing.
I agree with points 1 & 2
Point 3 is basically saying that, even with all due care and attention, people still make mistakes and people see still hurt or die because of those mistakes, or because of dumb luck.
Again, getting better, definitely not eliminated.
i agree with that too. That seems like a natural state of affairs, like a noble truth.
Not everyone is a reliable witness … Sometimes people need to be refused what they want
There’s crucial nuance here. if there is a wanting, something is legitimately wrong and needs addressing. Like babies, they might not know what they need (i.e., unreliable) but if they’re crying, refusing to tend to them is not the answer. Something is wrong, and it’s your job as the intelligent person in power to figure that out.
Sometimes, after considering all the factors, the best option is still basically to do nothing. Toddlers and cats will both throw tantrums to try to get something they shouldn’t have, and there may not be an effective substitute for them.
I can see this because I had a problem cat behavior recently, but i solved it through trial and error. So yeah maybe temporarily when you don’t know how to solve the problem, but that seems more so a caregiver problem or intelligence problem.
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