Someone posed this question to me in another newsgroup.
I'm just curious, but if my problem was world hunger would that be something I created too?
Sorry I don't take responsibility for everyone else's problems.
Tex responded
If world hunger bothers you, yes, because you can take some actions
to do something about it if you choose to.
I think that too many people equate responsibility with blame.
Werner Erhard wrote a very good article about this distinction years
ago. I'll try to find it and post it.<end snip>
Here is the definition and an essay about jargon and responsibility.
For my next act, I'll play some Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young anti-
war songs on my guitar. {:-D
enjoy,
Retro-Tex
Definition of Responsibility
Responsibility starts with the willingness to experience your Self as
cause in the matter.
It starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from and with
the point of view, whether at the moment realized or not, that you
are the source of what you are, what you do and what you have. This
point of view extends to include even what is done to you and
ultimately what another does to another.
Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or
guilt. All these include judgements and evaluations of good and bad,
right and wrong, or better and worse. They are not responsibility.
They are derived from a ground of being in which Self is considered
to be a thing or an object rather than context.
Ultimately, responsibility is a context--a context of Self as
source -- for the content, i.e., for what is.
Copyright Werner Erhard
JARGON: WHO'S RESPONSIBLE?
(copyright 1983, The Network Review/A publication of Werner Erhard &
Associates/All Rights Reserved)
One of the ways you'll know that you are excluding people is that
what you discovered in the training will begin to be jargon for you.
You'll use terms used in the training and they won't create anything
for anybody; in fact, they'll be a kind of battering ram. One of the
worst words in this respect is "responsibility".
Almost any use of the word responsibility is jargon, and is a use of
the word as a battering ram.
If I say to you, "You are responsible" that statement is false. I'm
literally lying to you when I say you are responsible for the quality
of your own life, for the things that happen in your life. What
makes it a lie is the context in which I express it.
Responsibility is true only when you are the cause. Yet the only way
anyone can hear the statement, "You are the cause," is as the effect
of it.mIf in any way I talk about responsibility and it makes you
wrong or me right, you can be sure that it has become pure jargon.
The only place that responsibility really lives is in the domain of
declaration -- in the domain of bringing forth. It is not a prior
fact, it is created.
One brings forth responsibility, thus making a statement of
empowerment, not a statement of blame or burden or guilt, not a
statement of liability, not a statement with which you manipulate
anyone. If you feel bad bout something you did because you
are "responsible" for what you do, then you're lying to yourself.
You aren't responsible for it.
You can only feel bad when you are an effect, not a cause. You don't
feel bad in a domain of bringing forth, of creation.
Don't get caught in jargon. It doesn't work. It doesn't
communicate.
It belittles you, it belittles the beauty of the training, and it
belittles the person with whom you use it. Jargon just plain doesn't
work.
When you can use words you heard in the training to create new
possibilities for people, to bring forth new distinctions for
someone, that is wonderful. But remember, you did not "get" the
training.
There's nothing to get in the training. The training -- and that
includes the language of the training -- only lives in the moment
that you bring it forth.
I'm just curious, but if my problem was world hunger would that be something I created too?
Sorry I don't take responsibility for everyone else's problems.
Tex responded
If world hunger bothers you, yes, because you can take some actions
to do something about it if you choose to.
I think that too many people equate responsibility with blame.
Werner Erhard wrote a very good article about this distinction years
ago. I'll try to find it and post it.<end snip>
Here is the definition and an essay about jargon and responsibility.
For my next act, I'll play some Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young anti-
war songs on my guitar. {:-D
enjoy,
Retro-Tex
Definition of Responsibility
Responsibility starts with the willingness to experience your Self as
cause in the matter.
It starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from and with
the point of view, whether at the moment realized or not, that you
are the source of what you are, what you do and what you have. This
point of view extends to include even what is done to you and
ultimately what another does to another.
Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or
guilt. All these include judgements and evaluations of good and bad,
right and wrong, or better and worse. They are not responsibility.
They are derived from a ground of being in which Self is considered
to be a thing or an object rather than context.
Ultimately, responsibility is a context--a context of Self as
source -- for the content, i.e., for what is.
Copyright Werner Erhard
JARGON: WHO'S RESPONSIBLE?
(copyright 1983, The Network Review/A publication of Werner Erhard &
Associates/All Rights Reserved)
One of the ways you'll know that you are excluding people is that
what you discovered in the training will begin to be jargon for you.
You'll use terms used in the training and they won't create anything
for anybody; in fact, they'll be a kind of battering ram. One of the
worst words in this respect is "responsibility".
Almost any use of the word responsibility is jargon, and is a use of
the word as a battering ram.
If I say to you, "You are responsible" that statement is false. I'm
literally lying to you when I say you are responsible for the quality
of your own life, for the things that happen in your life. What
makes it a lie is the context in which I express it.
Responsibility is true only when you are the cause. Yet the only way
anyone can hear the statement, "You are the cause," is as the effect
of it.mIf in any way I talk about responsibility and it makes you
wrong or me right, you can be sure that it has become pure jargon.
The only place that responsibility really lives is in the domain of
declaration -- in the domain of bringing forth. It is not a prior
fact, it is created.
One brings forth responsibility, thus making a statement of
empowerment, not a statement of blame or burden or guilt, not a
statement of liability, not a statement with which you manipulate
anyone. If you feel bad bout something you did because you
are "responsible" for what you do, then you're lying to yourself.
You aren't responsible for it.
You can only feel bad when you are an effect, not a cause. You don't
feel bad in a domain of bringing forth, of creation.
Don't get caught in jargon. It doesn't work. It doesn't
communicate.
It belittles you, it belittles the beauty of the training, and it
belittles the person with whom you use it. Jargon just plain doesn't
work.
When you can use words you heard in the training to create new
possibilities for people, to bring forth new distinctions for
someone, that is wonderful. But remember, you did not "get" the
training.
There's nothing to get in the training. The training -- and that
includes the language of the training -- only lives in the moment
that you bring it forth.
