“Carbon Footprint:” Fact or Fiction? – Accepting Personal Responsibility

A man was once accused of a serious crime. The evidence was so incriminating that a guilty verdict was all but inevitable. “Your only hope,” advised his lawyer “is to enter a plea of insanity; but you must remember to act crazy in court.”

The man followed his lawyer’s counsel and put on a great act. He made the strangest sounds as he twitched his head and thrashed his hands. So well had he performed, that the case was soon dismissed.

To his utter dismay, when the lawyer came to collect his fee, the man resumed his ridiculous gig; strange motions and all. He soon realized that he had become the butt of his own ploy – his expert advice had come back to bite him.

“Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices” (Alfred A. Montapert).

It’s choice–not chance–that determines your destiny.” (Jean Nidetch)

Have you ever met a person, whose life is a shambles, musing over how it all got that way? “Where have I gone wrong,” is a mantra familiar to every psychiatrist, psychologist, clergyman or plain friend, who is kind enough to lend an ear. Its lamenter appears to have no clue as to how the kids turned out the way they have, the financial situation got so out of whack and their marriage so deteriorated. Not to mention the weight issue, employment woes, wrecked friendships and who knows what else.

Not only do the sounders of this refrain fail to take responsibility for the mess in their lives, they see no connection between anything they might have (or not have) done and the undesirable situation in which they find themselves. They fail to understand the very concept of personal responsibility – the negative consequences that stem from one’s shortsighted vision.

When to take responsibility for events in our life and when to cling to the “Bashert” principle (trust that G-d is in full control and fully responsible) may not be all that simple a feat. At least not as simple as some of the secular conservative dogma and disciplines would have us believe. The quandary might in fact be of the more complex issues regarding practical Judaism.

To be sure, there are enough things in our lives that are beyond our control, both of the good and the not so good variety. Still, while we cannot blame ourselves for every misfortune, neither are we always rightfully absolved of our share of guilt. We must at times accept personal responsibility for the situation in which we find ourselves. Included therein is the acknowledgment that: we are solely responsible for the choices in our lives and that others are not at fault for the choices we make, we alone are responsible to determine who we become and what affect our choices will have, we even, to a large extent, determine our feelings and perceptions.

Personal responsibility furthermore includes taking honest inventory of our strengths, abilities, talents and virtues, engaging in personal development and growth and ridding ourselves of anger, hostility, pessimism, depression and blame.

The notion that we must take responsibility for our own destiny is underscored in the beginning of this week’s Torah reading.

Our Parsha, Ki Teizei, opens with a series of seemingly unrelated laws. First there is the law concerning a soldier who comes upon a beautiful woman whom he wishes to marry. Then, about a man who has two wives – one loved, the other hated. He must, says the Torah, allot a double portion of his inheritance to the firstborn son, even if he is the child of the despised wife.

The third law of our Sedrah concerns a rebellious and gluttonous son who won’t listen to his parents. So delinquent is this child, he poses a threat to society. It is only a matter of time, maintain the sages, before he will begin to rob and kill innocent people.

According to Rashi, there is as much wisdom in the sequence of these laws as there is in the laws themselves. Woven into these three scenarios and their careful juxtaposition is a remarkable tale of progressive deterioration due to poor vision and decision making.

The story begins with a classic case of infatuation and lust – a soldier sets eyes on a foreign woman with whom he shares no common ground; neither by way of culture or religion. Their involvement is visibly not in the best interest of either – she is clearly not his “Bashert.” Still he cannot resist his libido.

This impetuous relationship sets the stage for the second scenario; hate! In fact, according to Rashi, the woman for whom our soldier was so lustful is the very subject of the second case – she has now become his loathed and rejected spouse. Surprised? You ought not to be. Is there really a more plausible end to a union founded on lust and selfishness? But wait, the plot thickens.

The hateful relationship of husband and wife quickly spills over into the lives of the rest of the family. When describing the rebellious son the Torah states: “If a man will have a wayward and rebellious son who does not hearken to the voice of his father and the voice of his mother.” The commentaries pick up on the phraseology the “voice” of his “father” and the “voice” of his “mother.” Why the redundancy? Why not say the voice of his parents, or the voice of his father and mother?

The commentaries note that the Torah implies herein that the parents are not of the same mind and the same voice. The father says one thing and the mother another. Now stop and think. When parents speak with two different voices – when parents portray a model of disrespect and hate towards one another – what can be expected of their kids?

Not only has the love and veneration for his wife dissolved into thin air, but as a result, the respect and love between father and son has been shattered as well. This is evident by the fact that he wishes not to allot his oldest son his deserved inheritance.

The decay spreads from the parents hate for each other to their hate for the children and, as can be expected; the children’s intolerance of each other. Before you know it there are all types of casualties. The most obvious, of course, being the unloved son of the unloved mother, who naturally becomes bitter and defiant. Before long he joins the ranks of the socially misfit and hopelessly delinquent.

The sequence of these three laws, according to Rashi, depicts the basic characteristics of the classic dysfunctional family. This, he asserts, is the breeding grounds for all types of problems. The road to child delinquency and rebellion; conveys the Torah, is not created in a vacuum, but rather in an environment of shortsightedness and irresponsibility. As one contemporary thinker put it: “It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities” (Josiah Charles Stamp).

The lack of personal responsibility results in negative consequences. Failure to accept personal responsibility runs the risk of failure in life’s important enterprises, including personal relationships and child rearing.
Much as we prefer to avoid taking any credit for this shameful failure, it is by no means an orphan. Criminal delinquency is most often the direct product of earlier reckless decisions and actions on the part of mentoring figures.

Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices. When this poor father comes knocking on the Rabbi’s door searching for an answer as to “Where have I gone wrong?” The sobering answer says the Torah, is that it began when you let your heart rule your mind and married a woman out of lust. From there on it was all downhill.

Life is about weighing our actions against their consequences and making the proper choices. This is something we all intrinsically understand. Suppose, for example one were to wake up one day wanting to go to the beach instead of to work, which would result in lack of badly needed pay. Is there really a choice here?

Of course there is a choice. He must choose between going or not going to work; he will either way have to face the consequences of that choice. Going to work means bearing his normal work responsibilities, as well as spending a beautiful day away from nature, despite a powerful desire or even need for some R&R. Going to the beach, on the other hand, has its own obvious, perhaps more severe, consequences.

With every freedom comes responsibility. With every choice comes consequences. So how do we apply our freedom to make a choice that’s right for us while enabling us to bear the consequences responsibly? Often we use guides to help us make our choices. For example, laws are some of the most determining guides by which we make decisions. If it’s against the law, most of us will decide against it, whatever it is.

In addition to laws, other prescriptions such as religious beliefs, ethical concerns, unwritten societal “rules,” or even gut instinct all help us in exercising our freedom of choice.

These same guides usually also help us bear the consequences of our choice responsibly. They help us know that we “did the right thing” or “made the right decision” because the law, religious or ethical principles, rules, or gut instinct said so.

The upshot of all this is the fact that our decisions and actions are very serious matters, they are far more than a series of isolated events. More realistically, they are equivalent to the sequential moves in a game of chess, the ramifications of which affect the entire make up of the board and ultimately the outcome of the game. Indeed our every action, forever impacts our lives and humanity as a whole.

This axiom is the subject of Pirke Avot 2:6: “He [Hillel] also saw a skull floating on top of the water; he said to it: Because you drowned others, they drowned you; and in the end those who drowned you will be themselves drowned.”

In another Mishnah in Pirkei Avot the sage, Ben Azzai, similarly states: “Run to perform even an easy mitzvah, and flee from transgression; for one mitzvah brings about another, and one transgression brings about another.”

In “Judgment at Nuremberg,” American Judge Dan Haywood sentenced Ernst Janning, an important legal figure in Germany even before the rise of Hitler, to life in prison for condemning an innocent Jewish doctor to death in 1935.

Janning pleaded to Haywood that he was unaware of the magnitude of the Nazi horror and that he would have never assisted Hitler had he known what the monster was scheming. “Those people, those millions of people,” Janning begged for his freedom, “I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it.” To which Judge Haywood replied: “It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”

The long and short of it is that there exists a behavioral eco system of sorts. Every member of society can affect the balance of this delicate system by what he or she emits into the atmosphere by way of human expression. The ripple effect of our every action is truly remarkable – it has a resounding impact on either “sensitizing” or “desensitizing” oneself and all of humanity. “Before every action ask yourself: ‘Will this bring more monkeys on my back. Will the result of my action be a blessing or a heavy burden?’” (Alfred A. Montapert). This is not just the case with the things we do, but also with the things we do not do.

Still, you may argue that this notion is viable only with regards to tangible good and evil – behavior that translates into actual benefit or detriment. What harm, you say, is there in conduct that causes no perceptible damage to anyone, like for example immorality “between two consenting adults?” I offer the following thought for consideration.

A healthy society, we can all agree, is comprised of healthy individuals. Healthy individuals, by definition, possess a good measure of self-discipline and self-control. A deficiency of self-control makes for people who are weak and lacking in moral and ethical capacity, especially in face of challenge. Such individuals are exceedingly vulnerable to temptation.

Each time a person succumbs to temptation he becomes further desensitized and loses thereby a little more of his self-control and ability to withstand challenge.

While in the beginning his temptations may seem benign and harmless, as he continues to succumb he becomes increasingly weaker and less fit to overcome his next bout with his animal inclination. Eventually he will be so weakened and desensitized he will no longer possess the stamina to resist any temptation even that which is harmful.

Much as with our good soldier, pandering to our animal instincts will only set into motion a vicious cycle of deterioration and decline – leaving destruction and anguish in its wake.

To negate our capacity for complete behavioral responsibility, not only strips us of our unique human quality, but it ignores the reverberating ramifications – the destructive cycle that is set into motion with each irresponsible act and misdeed. Not to mention the lives that are harmed or destroyed in the process, i.e. the rebellious child; product of our bad choices and irresponsible conduct.

Given the above why would anyone shirk their human capacity for responsible decision making? Here are some of the most common excuses: It’s not my fault I am the way I am. I never asked to be born. Life is unfair; there is no sense to it. G-d asks too much of me. If only I had better luck and had been born to a healthier family, or attended a better school, or gotten a better job, etc. How can you say I am responsible, doesn’t fate or luck have greater bearing on my future than I do? Racism, bigotry, prejudice, sexism, ageism and closed-mindedness all stand in the way.

The answer to all the above is that man is unique among the expansive mixture of G-d’s creation. The heavenly Creator has formed him in His very own image and likeness. Man hence possesses the capacity for responsibility and discipline. Human conscience and intelligence thus bestow man with the ability for undiminished self-control and behavioral responsibility – free choice.

Let us take the lesson of this week’s Parsha regarding the true potential and capacity of man’s every act. Let us set into motion a cycle of light and goodness – one Mitzvah at a time, thereby hastening the final redemption with the coming of the righteous Moshiach BBA.