I think you should be responsible:
Marino, Gordon D.
I THINK YOU SHOULD BE GORDON D. MARINO RESPONSIBLE ME, I'M NOT SO SURE N of long ago I was wheeling around the...
...We do not choose our parents...
...Vineyard, had a therapist to help him work through his selfdestructive impulses, the result still would have been the same, or so this narrative goes...
...hence, the pursuit of health much less than absolutely consistent, the individual who imagrequires a willingness to abjure from unhealthy defenses ines herself to be the pure product of her own choices is likeagainst anxiety...
...As the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, was fond of pointing out, we often create unpleasant states of mind and /or affairs which once set in motion acquire their own momentum and so spin beyond our control...
...herd of my flock would, however, have none of this meliorI offer my fingers ism...
...Though I am not sure that he would want to take responsibility for this moral, the pastor explained that what our impecunious neighbors really need are not Good Samaritans, but rather to Jack Lindeman take charge of their own lives...
...But no matter how indif- think, a responsibility to acknowledge that people who have ferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, had the rug, floor, and foundation pulled out from under them these choices and decisions are ours to make...
...That is why we do not want our armed robbers some of the money they were going to use for that much-needwalking free, even though they might plead that they grew up ed third vacation to help the horde of people whom life has in violent circumstances...
...Though most of us are thankfully tempts to stave off anxiety...
...It will, If he circumstances of our lives can render it more of course, be gainsaid that while we may not be able to control or less impossible to make certain movements of what comes our way, we can at least control our response to it...
...The church in which I heard the "take responsibiliwhether or not to live courageous, loving, honest lives) and it ty for yourself' sermon was a wealthy congregation, with conis in responding to these choices that we decide what kind of siderable resources for helping their neighbors up and down people we are going to be...
...All the clucking about owning one's choices notwithstanding, our lives are shaped by many contingencies...
...the death of Len Bias, a college basketball superstar and high N.B.A...
...And yet the outer Secret Passion, Dutton, 1980...
...and on...
...Had Len Bias played like a child wishfully imagined his high school ball at Phillips Exeter, summered on Martha's in the cradle of her extricated womb...
...We decide...
...Parents who could not put their ambitions aside for a moment when their children were growing up feel embittered when they begin to comprehend that their now grown Jack and Jill abhor the idea of spending time with them...
...In other whether or not to dip into her principal, or a single mother strugwords, the pursuit of health requires the courage to proceed gling to find a job, take care of a handicapped son, and come as though the lives we live are nothing more nor less than the up with the rent on a rat-infested apartment...
...Where character is concerned, there are no con- cally ridiculous civil war...
...Commonweal 12 February 1993: 13 choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the im- us, only to explain that they can't help it because mutual demediate circumstances of our upbringing" (Ambition: The ception was a way of life for their parents...
...And as we decide and choose so are our lives For people born into a family with a garden, the tend-toformed...
...to-last thing was that as winners in the lottery of material life Yet the conceptual pressures carried by such an assumption they ought to stop groaning about low interest rates and spend are palpable...
...fanatics of freedom intend the letter of their sermons is an open The commandment to take responsibility for ourselves is, question, but the claim that we ought to take absolute responthese days, frequently iterated...
...which is, in dial when I happened to catch a New Age evan- part, to concede that the ukase to take responsibility for onegelist sermonizing on the importance of eat- self has its proper applications...
...Indeed, on a recent Sunday I sibility for the kind of people we are suggests that we enjoy heard almost the same homily that I had caught on the radio complete control over our lives...
...The truth, as he intoned it, was that Len Bias was and I conjure my neighbor solely to blame for Len Bias's death...
...People neglect their bodies and then moan about their fate on the way to the emergency room...
...responsible for Len Bias's death it was the acceptance of just The windows are dark this kind of palaver about individuals not being responsible for like the faces of dead soldiers themselves...
...While I would hate to encourage anyone to think that they cannot control themselves, it is a mistake to pretend that the nurturing environ14: 12 February 1993 Commonweal...
...ably many sports writers blamed this young man's death on the I offer my hands fact that he grew up under crushing circumstances...
...The nextcreedal assumption is that nothing can rob us of our freedom...
...Given the and other virtuosi of suspicion have taught us anything it is epidemic cancer rate in this country, this about the necessity of reading our oughts for their connotaseemed like sound advice so I decided to listen for a few min- tions and submerged interests...
...Having offered specific dietary counsel, ing undertones...
...If, however, Freud, Foucault, ing only organically grown foods...
...How so, I puzzled...
...I am both the author and the book...
...your-own-garden ethos carries the possible implication that Interpretation: no matter how horrid our situation, be it we bear no responsibility toward people who don't have any Auschwitz or Cambodia, we are still left with choices (e.g., gardens...
...Not surprisingly, the first and last thing they did hear was exactly what they wanted to hear, namely, that we all need to take responsibility for ourselves...
...delivered from the pulpit of a local church...
...It is, for instance, We do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cow- up to him whether or not he will become embittered...
...In a softly hyp- There is a relationship between the way we talk to ourselves notic voice she exhorted her flock, "it takes great courage to and the way we talk to others...
...Naturally, the last thing this flock wanted to hear viction that human beings are nothing if not corruptible, the about was rich folk, salvation, and eyes of needles...
...The shepas a gesture to stars...
...And one could go on and on does cast its shadow on the inner...
...nor do we want our friends to lie to placed against the wall...
...We choose...
...Though depres- Depending upon your situation in life, some claims are much sive shades of mind can certainly obscure the fact, we do have easier to assent to than to believe, and yet surely everyone must more control over our lives than some of us would care to admit...
...Those of us in the pink of life have, I we do or what we refuse to do...
...I am not so sure...
...We do not pose, amongst those without a full belly and a therapist, much suffering is self-wrought...
...I THINK YOU SHOULD BE GORDON D. MARINO RESPONSIBLE ME, I'M NOT SO SURE N of long ago I was wheeling around the radio suffering as our suffering would make us think...
...Or is it...
...He insisted that if anything outside of Len Bias's will were to a touch of frostbite...
...The coda con- ly to think the same about her neighbor, be that neighbor tinued, "if you want to be healthy, the first and foremost thing someone whose most pressing problem is trying to decide is to be willing to take responsibility for yourself...
...Despite the nearly unanimous con- the road...
...He is currently finishing a book on Kierkegaard...
...are up against a slightly different beast than the rest of us...
...the speaker went on to more general issues...
...Whether or not the lives we have chosen...
...In order to give life to his invocation, the minister discussed 2 A.M...
...Different circumstances who cuddles her insomnia would not have made a bit of difference...
...On the other hand, social Darwinism is perfectly okay...
...This man could not control the fate tingencies...
...With this kind of an ear cocked, utes to what turned out to be the benediction of a weekly pro- the rhetoric of responsibility carries some potentially disturbgram of mass therapy...
...draft choice who died from a drug overdose before he Tonight in my thick coat was ever able to take a single jump shot as a pro...
...agree with the essayist Joseph Epstein who writes, "We do not Amongst those with a full belly and a therapist, and, I sup- choose to be born...
...UnderstandI am ashamed of nothing...
...What client of Club Med could chastise such a Job for cursing We decide that what makes us significant is either what the day he was born...
...That wasn't exactly her drift...
...If the truth be told, we are not always as passive in our GORDON D. MARINO is a visiting scholar in the department of philosophy and linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an assistant editor of Common Knowledge...
...the will...
...ardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or drift...
...Is it because many of our un- at themselves are either always snarling at others or always tryhealthy habits, like overeating, alcohol and drug abuse are at- ing to refrain from snarling...
...Guess what...
...We do not...
...Yesterday I read of a farmer who lost his Put another way, while we cannot choose the circumstances of wife and three children to dehydration brought on our lives we cannot help but choose what kind of people we by a water shortage caused by a long and typiare going to be...
...or, to put it in of his family but as the old dogma would have it, he can conEpstein's terms: trol how he is going to respond to his loss...
...People who are always snarling be healthy...
Vol. 120 • February 1993 • No. 3
