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Excerpt from Endgame

What Does It Mean To Be Responsible? (p. 695)

From chapter "Responsibility"

What does it mean to be responsible?

How can one become responsible?

Maybe it will help to know what the word means. Let’s take a walk through a dictionary. “Responsible: 1) liable to be called upon to answer; liable to be called to account as the primary cause, motive, or agent; being the cause or explanation; 2) able to answer for one’s conduct or obligations; able to choose for oneself between right and wrong.”

Please note especially this final phrase: “able to choose for oneself between right and wrong.” Gandhi doesn’t choose for us. Cops don’t choose for us. The lobbyists and politicians who write laws don’t choose for us. Those who write books about taking down civilization don’t choose for us. I choose for myself. You choose for yourself. It’s an awesome and delightful and often scary task. But that’s life.

Now, let’s follow back the etymology. “Responsible: 1599, ‘answerable (to another, for something),’ from Fr. responsable, from L. responsus, pp. of respondere ‘to respond’ (see respond). Meaning ‘morally accountable for one’s actions’ is attested from 1836. Retains the sense of ‘obligation’ in the Latin root word.”

Let’s keep going back. “Respond: c.1300, respound, from O.Fr. respondere ‘respond, correspond,’ from L. respondere ‘respond, answer to, promise in return,’ from re- ‘back’ + spondere ‘to pledge.’Modern spelling and pronunciation is from c.1600.”

To be responsible is to promise in return. The questions become: To whom is this promise made? And in return for what?

This goes to the heart of everything we’ve been exploring in this book. It is, in some ways, the thread that binds everything together, from the discussion of morality over a glass of water; to the distinctions between civilized and land-based religions; to the conversation at the post office with the clerk who has forgotten he is an animal, and who bought a gun so he can kill himself when civilization falls; to questions of whom or what you most closely identify with; to the understanding that within abusive social dynamics everything is set up to serve the abuser; to what the predator pledges to the prey in return for the sustenance of its flesh.


Who feeds you?

What is the source of your life?

To whom do you owe your life?

If your experience—far deeper than belief or perception—is that your food comes from the grocery store (and your water from the tap), from the economic system, from the social system we call civilization, it is to this you will pledge back your life. If you experience this social system as the source of your life, you will be responsible to this social system. You will defend this social system to your very death.

If your experience—far deeper than belief or perception—is that food and water come from your landbase, or more broadly from the living earth, you will make and keep promises to your landbase in exchange for this food. You will honor and keep and participate in the fundamental predator/prey relationship. You will be responsible to the community that supplies you with food and water. You will defend this community to your very death.

When the social system into which you’ve been enculturated is destroying the landbases on which all life depends, that question of who you are responsible to—to whom you make and keep your promises—makes all the difference in the world.

Here are some more questions. To whom will you be called upon to answer? By whom do you wish to be called upon to answer?

With every word I write—especially when what I write scares me—I think about these questions. And here are the answers I come to every day. I write for the salmon, and for the trees, and for the soil beneath my feet. I write for the bees, frogs, and salamanders. I write for bats and owls. I write for sharks and grizzly bears. When I find myself wanting to not tell the truth as I understand it to be— when I find the truth too scary, too threatening—I think of them, and I think of what I owe them: my life. I will not—cannot—disappoint them.

And I consider myself answerable to—responsible to—the humans who will come after, who will inherit the wreckage our generation is leaving to them. When I want to lie, to turn my face away from the horrors, to understate the magnitude of what we must do and what we must unmake, to give answers that are not as deep and clear and real as I can possibly comprehend and articulate, I picture myself standing before humans a hundred years from now, and I picture myself answering to them for my actions and inactions. Them, too, I will not— cannot—disappoint.

I can sometimes lie to myself. I could probably even lie to you. But to them— to all of those to whom I hold myself responsible—I could never lie. To them, and for them, I give my brightest, deepest truth.