The Pressure of Responsibility

Usually, we think of responsibility as a set of duties we are supposed to fulfill. It feels like a cognitive choice, a conscious decision to do what is right. We talk about being a responsible parent, a responsible student, a responsible citizen. And most importantly, we internalize the social narratives about being responsible. But what is it really to be responsible?

If we break this word into two, we can see what it truly signifies. Response. Able. The ability to respond. Respond to what exactly? And that is where context plays a very important role.

Let us turn to nature. Let us look at responsibility from its natural origin.

Consider a cat. When her hormones signal that the time for procreation has come, the cat changes her behavior. She becomes exceedingly vocal. She goes out in search of a mate, culminating in her becoming pregnant. After pregnancy, she embraces the responsibility of being a mother. She knows, in her programmed way, that she must take care of her kittens. She will go to any extent to protect them.

I once saw my own small cat attack a much larger dog. That tiny animal was ready to take on a life form many times her size because her ability to respond to the environment, the need to protect her four young kittens, was absolute. That is the pressure of responsibility. She did not stop to think about her own life.

A few weeks later, she is playing with her kittens, teaching them how to hunt and fight. By the third month or so, she changes colors. She stops caring for them. In fact, she growls at them and warns them if they come too close. She wants them to be independent. And then a few days later, we hear her calling once again. Calling a mate, because the hormones signal that the gametes are ready.

The cat acts responsibly at every stage, at every phase, doing just the right thing in the given circumstance.

If we extend this understanding, we realize that what we call responsibility is not always a conscious decision. It is something programmed into us. There are certain programs that run within all life forms, including Homo sapiens sapiens, compelling us to respond to our environment and circumstances. Responsibility, at its core, is simply the ability to respond to the need of the hour.

Now, when we observe this in animals, we nod and say, “Yes, that is natural programming.” But what about when this happens in us? Why do I love and care for my children so much? Is it love, or is it responsibility? Is it something genuinely chosen, or is it a program ingrained in me that says I have young ones and I must look after them? Is it genuine responsibility, or is it an epigenetically driven impulse, a program running in the background that makes me behave the way I do? That pressurizes me to be a 'good parent'.

But if we are honest, most of us operate from the pressure of responsibility, just like the cat. The cat, when her kittens are young, is ready to risk her life to save them. When she is alone and must hunt, she gives her best effort to fend for herself. The pressure of responsibility shifts based on the context. Her behavior when hunting is different from her behavior when protecting her young. In both cases, however, the pressure is absolute. She does not weigh options or negotiate with herself. She simply responds.

We need to look at our own lives in the same way. We need to see where our fights begin, where our divisions start, where we as humans collect ourselves into groups, where one group fights another, where one belief fights another. We must ask ourselves: is this also genetically programmed? Is this programmed within us so that we respond as herds, as animals, rather than as individuals with higher consciousness?

When we start asking these questions about our attachments, our desires, and our passions, whether they are procreative, recreative, for society or for survival, we begin to wonder what is truly driving us. Could it be a primal program running within me?

The biggest problem today is that we look at ourselves as if we are no longer animals. Even though we are animals with a highly developed brain, we are no different from other life forms, yet we insist on believing we are one hundred percent separate from our animal nature. In doing so, we negate the animalistic programs that run within us. We live as if those ancient drives no longer exist, and that blindness makes us vulnerable to their control.

Consider how we react to events in the news. When we read about a man who has abused a woman, we look at him as a monster, purely negative. When we read about a woman who has cheated, we say, “How could she do that?” When we see someone who has committed fraud worth millions or billions, we label them a criminal. But we rarely ask the deeper question: what program is running inside that person? What pressure of responsibility is making him do things that society condemns as unethical? We forget that the same primal forces that drive a cat to hunt or to protect her young can, in a human being, express themselves in ways that are destructive and harmful.

Consider the accumulator. When people begin to accumulate wealth, they often start with a few hundred dollars. Then they become millionaires. Then billionaires. Yet they are never satisfied. The question is, why is there no satiation? When a person is poor, the risk is understandable. But after becoming a millionaire, why must he become a billionaire? After becoming a billionaire, why does he dream of being the only trillionaire on the planet?

The answer likely lies in these animalistic programs running in the background. The drive to accumulate resources, to secure territory, to dominate. That program served our ancestors well on the savanna, but in the modern world, it becomes a force of endless, often blind, pursuit. If we can understand this, rather than simply blaming the individuals who fall into this trap, we can become cognizant of the programs that exist within all of us. We can start to address those programs so that, as a society, we learn to handle them with awareness rather than react to them with outrage when the untamed forces strike at the very fabric of what makes us human.

When we start questioning the things we do and the way we do them, that is when we begin to transcend the animalistic programs that run within us.

What separates us from animals is the 'Human Mind', an emergent operating system that has evolved over years of evolution. This operating system gives us the freedom to think and to act differently. We can now be cognizant and aware of the processes that run us, run within us, free us, bind us or even threaten us.

Only when we are aware of these primal drives and programs running in the background can we build firewalls to ensure that certain applications do not go rogue. It all starts with accepting our fragility and working towards mental strength. A software based strength of mindset that, with regular practice, helps build supporting neural circuits that solidify a mindset into a unique personality.

Even as we move beyond these primal forces, we should be aware of the fact that there will also be many who could succumb to the pressures of these primal drives, and that is where we need to be extra careful.

To go out alone in the midst of hungry wolves is something no sane person would do. Yet how many incidents come to light where, out of sheer confidence and belief in freedom, values, legal and man made promises, young women, men, children and the elderly have been hunted and abused? Not by animals, but by human wolves and felines who are in the grip of these primal applications.

To be more response able, we need to study not only these primal drives but also study how our ancestors coped with the hidden wolf amongst us. To do this, we might have to look at religion and certain religious practices through a different lens. As creative ways and means to protect man. As ritualistic practices and routines that disabled the wolf application by not providing it with the signal or the trigger to turn a harmless human into a dangerous predator.

Evolutionary anthropology provides direct evidence that ritualistic practices like dietary restrictions, purity codes, and communal worship, to name a few, functioned as socially evolved mechanisms to regulate predatory and free rider behavior within groups. Dress codes, too, carried a protective dimension, shielding the vulnerable from becoming unwitting triggers for predatory behavior.

So rather than being prejudiced and considering religious practices as non scientific, we need to 're-search' and find the motives that led to certain practices being considered absolutely essential. To take it further, we need to educate young minds on the scientific reasoning behind the rituals we have studied and validated.

Most importantly, we need to understand that responsibility is not just about being a good parent, child, citizen or leader. It is about our ability to respond to the environment in a way that is uniquely human. A way where thought precedes automation. Where responsibility is not mistaken to be just an impulse or pressure of fulfilling one's 'duty', but a conscious action with a well defined purpose.

The cat cannot make that choice. But we can.