The Civic Imperative

Inspiration for this Post

One reason why I think people tend to focus a little too much on rights and entitlements is first-of-all because we are a democratic polity and people living in democratic nations tend to focus a lot on rights, which is good because India has come out of a very depressing oppressive colonial past around 78 years ago, hence, focusing on rights is good. Also, I think people focus on rights and entitlements because we have been a developing country for quite a long time now, even after independence. And in developing nations there tends to be a deficit in terms of facilities, in terms of good conditions that can provide a good quality of life. However, a more problematic and a more disturbing reason, in my opinion, that people tend to focus more on rights and entitlements is because it's easy and because it's easy everyone is after, like I mentioned earlier, what am I getting, how am I feeling and not towards what i should be doing and who should I be talking care of. And an even more problematic reason, atleast in my mind, why people tend to think on the basis of rights and entitlements and not on duties and responsibilities, is that it sort of gives them a reason to somehow distance themselves from the problems of the society or the country (pollution, crimes, corruption, apathy, indifference, insensitivity, violence etc.). Not thinking about responsibilities and duties helps people to distance themselves from such problems since there is no imperative, at least in their head, to make an effort or play a role in preserving the societal fabric. In their mind they somehow convince themselves, or sometimes they don't even have to convince themselves, in their mind it is a given, that whatever the problem is, someone else is causing it, and since they had no role to play in the society, they naturally had no role to play in causing the problems of the society. And when this happens it leads to the very problematic idea of banality of evil (I have discussed this concept in more depth in the post, 'The Civic Imperative').Hence, my idea of this post is to basically cover the importance of duties and responsibilities, which I've already covered in the post called ‘The Civic Imperative’.