Privileged Irresponsibility
Line of reasoning:
- Living creatures, including human beings, have no other option but to move. (See the principles and the foundation.) We depend on each other and by means of mutual influence we shape each other. This is the way how our personal identity as well as our group identities and our cultural identity at large evolve.
- The Ethics of Care philosophy is based on the mutual dependency principle and put forward a caring democracy (Joan C. Tronto, 10 januari 2015) society.
- The consequence of this dependency and therefor the notion that no one can stand on his or her own in reflected in ground rule 1: co-dependency implies care responsibility.
- Not everyone is willing or able to take on the caring responsibility towards each other thereby inhibiting progress to be made in societal challenges. In the facilitator guide, a process is discussed based on mutual understanding and shared meaning to gain understanding in the nature of a societal challenge by investigating worldviews and the options for change. This usually requires, as is reflected in ground rule 2: diversity in opinions is a basic and essential right, that stakeholders must look beyond their own or their organizations interest and take other interests into account in order to move collectively in the right direction.
- Privileged Irresponsibility (PI) is a concept stemming from EoC that describes the underlying motivation to not take on care responsibilities. We apply PI in the realm of the Social Theory (ST) to expose various forms of PI and remedies to overcome them.
- PI is (almost) always a result of power abuse and to get away with it. Power is a factor that is at play because it gives someone the privilege to ignore the needs of others. PI can be manifested in many ways and it takes a close eye and know what to look for to recognize it. We investigate PI from different angles:
- Cornering: to use power to force someone or an organization to do something against their will or principles versus neglecting: to fail to pay enough attention to someone or something or to not do enough to properly care for someone or something.
- Deliberate, with intention versus unaware in the sense of not realizing that a certain action or the lack thereof causes abuse.