Universal Responsibilities

There is no "them" out there who owes us the rights we aspire to. There is only us — and the responsibilities we take up are what make those rights possible at all.

In times of oppression and tragedy humanity has managed to forge aspirational declarations of the rights it would like to enjoy. It has not managed to forge the sense of universal responsibility that would be the prerequisite to building a society in which anyone could actually enjoy them. That gap is the whole subject.

The claim is made in two halves. It is the responsibility of each individual and each locality to organize and integrate themselves, and climb toward the fullness of their potential, in a way that helps every other individual and locality do the same. And it is the responsibility of the Whole to co-operate in building the infrastructure, the ladders and the conditions that let each one climb. But the Whole is an abstraction; it is not of itself a thing. It is composed of the individuals and the localities. There is no Whole to delegate this to. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Then the line that makes this a distinct concept rather than an exhortation. Laws are merely the faintest restraints on the worst parts of our nature. A just and good society cannot be produced by not doing the wrong thing; prohibition can hold a floor and can never raise a ceiling. The best parts of our nature cannot be compelled by law at all — they can only be impelled by Love, which calls a person up into taking responsibility for elevating their life and their world toward the Ideal. Restraining laws and impelling responsibilities are two different instruments, and a civilization built only with the first will keep producing what it has produced.

What follows in the canon is a bill of twenty-seven — a long, deliberately provisional list running from everyone has a fundamental responsibility to ØNE and All through non-violence, the protection of those who cannot protect themselves, the exercise of whatever power is entrusted to one for the multi-generational good rather than for self-interest, the withdrawal of energy from what harms, and the closing rule that every group, tribe and nation carries the same responsibilities and stands under the same law as every individual. The list is offered as something like, to be co-created and improved, never as a code minted whole.

And beneath all twenty-seven, one sentence: if everyone took responsibility for progressing toward the fullness of their own potential by helping all others do the same, the world would spiral up and flourish.

Also called: the Bill of Responsibilities · impelling responsibilities · universal responsibility Stands on: Love · Sovereignty · Accountability · Law · Values Opens onto: Universal Rights, and Universal Aspirations · Rights extend first to the weak; responsibilities first to the strong · Authority derived from responsibility · The Meta Code · Stewardship · None Of Us Until All Of Us · Necessity Of Accountability · Right Use of Power · Citizenship · The Three Supreme Agreements · Justice In play: door · Society Sources: Universal Responsibilities.md (root page; draft — marks its own tentativeness, might be articulated as (Something Like)) · Rights and Responsibilities.md (root page; draft) · LIØNSBERG Core Documents/LIØNSBERG Provisional Documents/Provisional Code.md (draft) Open: Twenty-seven items is a first articulation and several overlap; no pass has reconciled them with the Meta Code's hundred behaviours, which cover much of the same ground at a different resolution. · The page asserts the restraint/impel distinction without argument; it is a claim about human nature, and the corpus nowhere tests it.