The Cult of Irresponsibility

2011-10-06

The dominant ideologies in the fields of Science, Marketing, and Free-market Economics all assert that the most good comes when we don't concern ourselves with the consequences of our actions. We are supposed to think only of ourselves in isolation, and never worry about how we relate to other people or the natural environment. We are supposed trust that we can and should conduct and use science, technology, and business without concern or awareness of anything beyond ourselves in isolation. We should never stop to ask what we are doing, why we are doing it, who and what is affected, how we as individuals relate to the whole, and how the whole relates to us. Irresponsibility is the ultimate virtue.

Yet we have limited time, energy, and material resources. Its easy to waste our resources and our lives. It's easy to careless harm others and ourselves. Life, society, science, and business is an experiment. Part of the process is making mistakes and fortuitous discoveries as we experiment. But with mindfulness and open hearts we have a chance of turning those mistake into betterment, and making real use of those fortuitous discoveries.