Responsibility Without Omnipotence

The culture of personal effectiveness is happy to tell you that the result depends on you alone. The idea gives a sense of control — and quietly credits a person with power over chance, other people’s decisions and the way the world is built.

In the early experiments of Martin Seligman and Steven Maier, animals that previously had no way to stop an unpleasant stimulus later made worse use of an available escape. That is where the notion of learned helplessness came from. Later work refined the neurobiological mechanism and showed that the original simple scheme was incomplete.

What matters for everyday life is the cautious version: a long absence of control can teach you not to act even after an opportunity appears. It does not follow that every person who fails to act “chose helplessness.” Sometimes the exit has to be made real and visible first, and only then can you demand decisiveness.

It is dangerous to believe that everything depends on us. Then any cruelty by others, any illness, accident or systemic injustice turns into the personal guilt of the person it happened to.

Cause, blame and responsibility for the next step are different things.

A person may be blameless for what happened and still be the one who has to deal with the consequences. A bench really does bear no moral responsibility for the blow. But a driver who hits a pedestrian does. A teacher may treat a pupil unfairly, and the duty to “find an approach” does not cancel the teacher’s behaviour.

Useful internal control does not ask:

How did I create all of this?

It asks:

Which part of what is happening is now within my power?

Sometimes that is:

• getting information;
• leaving;
• asking for help;
• setting a boundary;
• putting the violation on record;
• changing your own action;
• accepting temporary damage;
• giving up on the impossible.

Anxiety tries to control the whole situation at once. Action usually starts with one available step.

Acknowledging external causes does not make a person helpless. Acknowledging your own zone of influence does not make you guilty of everything.

Responsibility is not omnipotence. It is a willingness to manage your part of the task without claiming authorship of the weather.

The difference shows up in a layoff. The whole department was closed, the decision was made in another country, nothing could have changed it. And still it is the person who was laid off who has to rewrite the CV, who has to call former colleagues, and who has to explain the money situation at home. There is no blame; there is a task. Trying first to work out what his mistake was postpones the task by several weeks and adds nothing to it.

The opposite error is no gentler. Explaining everything by external causes is just as comfortable and just as reliable at stopping action. Between “I created all of this” and “nothing depends on me” lies a short working list of what can be done by Friday.