by Roxanne Cottell

Created on: May 24, 2008

We each have a greater obligation to our Selves, not Society, and the reason that I say this is because each one of us makes up society, and each one of us cannot be blamed singly for the ills which plague our society today. If a guy robs a bank, he is the one who is punished if he is caught, not society. I am not affected by his actions, and I am not obligated to feel like I contributed to his stupidity anymore than anyone else would.

We all have an obligation to be the best people we each can be, and when we do, this also lends to society. Society has nothing to do with what we do at home, who we marry, and where we go in life. If we allow society to take them blame for every little thing that each person does, whether good or bad, we are doing nothing more than passing the buck, which, by the way, is yet one more thing that we teach our kids not to do. It is far easier to blame society for its own ills, but the truth is that society is made up of more than just a general thinking in a population. Society is made up of individuals, and for anyone to really and truly believe that their obligation is to society before it is their obligations to their own Selves, is preposterous.

I can no more be responsible for what the neighbor's husband does, and I cannot be responsible for what the children of other people do. I can be an example to all these people, but I cannot be the one who will take the blame and neither be the individual who I am if I intend to make my obligation to that of society rather than my Self. The Self is a very important thing. It is what makes us each who we are, and each who we are measures up to what we are, which is society. We each make choices, and some of those choices will match those of others within society. Yet this does not make it be that we are more obligated to society than we should be to ourselves. We are not brought into this world to become martyrs, and we are not born to die for the sake of society. We are brought into the world with our parents' hope that we will contribute positively to society as a whole, but in no way were we born so that we would be more obligated to it than to our selves. We must each know our Selves before we can begin to try to take responsibility for all the ills in the world. We have no obligation to it, only to ourselves, because change happens within our own selves before it will ever materialize and manifest in the place we each know as society.

Society is what it is because those who live within it have contributed in part as single equals. Society is only what it is because those single equals have contributed to it in one way or another. Regardless of the contribution, there is no society and there are no social norms without singular people who have opinions and preferences of their own. It is only when we have addressed the populace that we can call ourselves "Society," and until we have done so, we cannot be obligated to society without first meeting our obligations to our Selves.

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