"You take too much responsibility"

Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

People say to me that I take too much responsibility for things, and that I shouldn’t bear the weight of the world. To them, I say, "AHHHHHHHH"

The world is really broken, and we need to fix that. And that requires personal self improvement.

If you're familiar with my thoughts, you might think this is about AI risk, animal welfare, or even global development. But you don't need to believe in any of these things to agree with me. I live in the UK, where there are homeless people, often going hungry in one of the richest countries in the world, at one of the wealthiest times in history. At the same time we have a political class, only half of whom know the chance of two heads on two flipped coins. We have a billionaire class who, at best, given their money to fashionable causes¹. And an intelligentsia interested in either endless culture wars or themselves. What are we doing²?

So no, I don't think I take far too much responsibility. Possibly I take a little too much, but I think that most people, most powerful people, most wealthy people, most intelligent people, and most people in the developed world take too little responsibility. And I am not telling you to do so. I want to show the anger I feel when people say to me, "Ah, you take too much responsibility."

On what basis?

The world is much better than it was, and that's really great. But there are many flaws, many people and animals suffer unnecessarily, even in our own wealthy countries. People have lives of misery and hardship; I know some of them. I have known homeless people, I have known mothers struggling to make ends meet on benefits. I once sat with a man in a small, gloomy flat as he tried to kick a drug addiction³. I do not wish anyone should have to experience what he was experiencing. We can do better. I can do better. So I will. And if I don't, then I will hold myself accountable for that. And the notion that that's wrong because it's a bit uncomfortable or because it involves judgement, it makes me furious.

I have a lovely life, I have friends, I am paid well, and I'm intelligent. What right do I have to say, "Ah, you know, being more productive, being better calibrated, being more emotionally stable, these are things that would take me too much effort. And I'm not really on board for that." It just makes me so mad, a madness I rarely engage with, which is why I thought I would today.

In general, I don't think my anger is that productive, so I don't surface it, sometimes with good reason. But it's not to say I'm not mad, fists clenched at the unnecessary brutality of this world. At the unending beigeness of those who wield power, neither improving the world nor trying to become people who could.

And yes, no doubt when this was said it was meant well. I’m not going to hate those who say this. But I am angry.

The world can be better than this. And I don't care what anyone else thinks. I don’t care if caring is weird, or “up-tight” or overly analytical. We are the adults in the room. And if we aren’t we, could carefully become them.

I'm not going to tell you what to do. I just don't want to. But the next time you see someone who seems to be taking responsibility for things and say, “it feels like you're too hard on yourself,” consider not doing that. Or consider instead saying, “are you looking after yourself?” or even “can I help?”. Because when faced with this world, it seems correct to find fault. So surely that we could take more responsibility than the median powerful, wealthy, intelligent person does?

“It feels like you take too much responsibility.”

I don’t know what planet you are living on.

1. Have these billionaires donated even $7bn in careful philanthropy, that’s 5% of their wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_billionaires_by_net_worth

2. Is there any developed nation that’s very different here?

3. We watched Breaking Bad, which is pretty funny. It was "The fly" which is a very strange episode of breaking bad to see, even given the circumstances.