Personal responsibility is a shared responsibility.

On a recent excursion to the bookstore, I ran across a book that is a little outside of the norm. It sounded like an interesting change from normal reading habits, so I grabbed it. Rabbit Heart by Colleen Hitchcock is the fictional story of Nicollette Caron and it is most definitely an unusual tale.

The story revolves around Nicollette's unusual... problem. She sexes men to death. Literally. Her appetites are insatiable and all of her bed partners wind up dead trying to satisfy her. In the course of her life, she's killed thirteen men in such a fashion.

Like I said, it's an unusual tale and not something I would normally pick up. But, I decided to give it a shot anyway. I'm still in the process of reading it, and I can't quite decide if I love it or if I hate it.

The writing style is unique in that Hitchcock writes in both first person perspective (as Nicollette) and third person (as the other two main characters). I've rarely run across such style and it takes a little getting used too. But, back to the story!

A few pages into the story, Nicollette is whining over the death of her recent lover. But, she's not too broken up over it. I mean, she does want to remove his corpse from her home, load it up in a carriage, dump it in the middle of the road and drive over it just so no one suspects her. That is, of course, after she and her maid have broken the neck of his lifeless corpse.

But, in the course of her whining she says something that caught my attention. It's along the lines of the deaths of the thirteen not being her fault, how could it be? She told each of them "no" at least 10 times and well, you can't really hold a girl responsible after she said no 10 different times.

That line really resonated with me for several reasons. That mentality is one that you almost come to expect from self absorbed and not particularly likeable fictional characters. Denying personal responsibility is almost a trademark of the self absorbed and unrepentant. What you don't expect though, is to see that same mentality so often in reality where what people do really does mean something.

Unfortunately, however, that mentality isn't reserved just for less than likeable characters in works of fiction. It is one that we see everyday. Whether it be from the politician who denies responsibility for his less than forthright speeches, from the murderer who denies responsibility for stabbing someone to death or from the people who continually deny their role in any given conflict or situation, the mentality of denying responsibility at all costs has become so very predominant throughout society that the real shocker is when someone actually admits fault and takes responsibility.

Somewhere along the way to progress, we forgot one of the key components. That of responsibility. We can point the finger, play the blame game and stick our fingers in our ears until the world comes to an end, but the sad reality is that we're not making progress. No matter if we label ourselves Progressives or something else, we've fallen short of that particular goal because out of the millions, very few are willing to stand up and take responsibility when it matters. Doing the right thing because it is the right thing has taken the backseat to doing what we wish to do, saying what we wish to say, and looking innocently around for the culprit when it blows up in our faces.

One of the progressive principles listed here at ProgressiveU is shared responsibility. Many take a very different view of that particular principle than do I. To me, shared responsibility is much in line with that of personal responsibility. Shared responsibility doesn't mean that we agree to pay for everyone and everything, but that we recognize that in order for society to function, we share the responsibility of making it happen. Whether that's through being a leader or simply taking responsibility for our own faults and failures, it's a responsibility we all share. We expect others to take responsibility for themselves and we whine and complain when they do not, but point a little of that responsibility in our direction, and we pretend we didn’t see it or try to shove it off on someone else. And many have taken the denial of responsibility to near art form levels. They not only fool others into looking elsewhere for someone to blame, but they fool themselves into believing they hold none of that responsibility.

And that is going in an entirely wrong direction. What we need are more of those individuals who can screw up and then admit to it. More of those individuals who don’t look for escape routes and scapegoats. More of those individuals who realize that every time they deny responsibility for their actions, they allow another to do the selfsame thing. Until we learn how to do that and actually follow through with it, how to be the people who take charge and set examples, we share the responsibility for the failures of all because we let them happen, through our own ignorance, our own denial and our own inability to recognize that shared responsibility is more than paying for the failures, real or perceived, of others.

We’re quick to turn into a pack of rabid wolves when someone else screws up. But given the chance to admit fault ourselves, most of those willing to point the finger are no where to be seen. The line still standing becomes shorter. Because, to many of us, responsibility is one of those concepts that sounds a whole lot better when we're pinning it on someone else. In the end, we all pay for it.

And that leads me back to this particular story, I don't know if I'm going to like it in the end or not. But, despite that, it has reminded me of a few things. Progress and generation of thought don’t come just from those world-changing works or from discussion about those world changing events. It can, and does, come from everywhere. We just have to supply the initiative to find it, the sense to think about it, the desire to remember it and the responsibility of sharing it.

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