“What Are We Responsible For, Anyway?”
The other night I was watching The Dr. Phil Show which featured a face-off between a young, attractive woman in her 30s and a man of about the same age, an attorney. The young man, who is African-American, is bringing a lawsuit against the woman who runs a revenge-oriented web site for women who feel they’ve been treated badly by males.
The gist of the tale is that more than one woman posted their complaints about this particular man. Each of them cited a different problem, ranging from asserting that he is actually gay to alleging that he has herpes and did not inform them. His real name was used and a picture of him posted. This man argues that not only are these allegations untrue but that they could cost him dearly in terms of future employment, if any potential employer should “Google” his name on the Internet and turn this information up.
Both he and Dr. Phil made numerous attempts to get this woman to say that she at least understands his predicament; she did not. In fact, she asserted repeatedly that she has absolutely no responsibility for any of the information posted on her web site. This is what her lawyer told her. It is apparently her main defense.
None of us except the man filing the lawsuit can know where the truth lies, but where does the responsibility for posting this information line? It’s a question that’s has been intriguing and bothering me a little ever since. As the plaintiff pointed out, having this information posted on a web site is very different from seeing it in print elsewhere — on the Web, it could be there forever.
Isn’t this a familiar refrain? It seems that everywhere I go these days I run into people or organizations or institutions who believe they are being victimized, and they take no personal responsibility for the actions on their part that led to their victimization. If no one is responsible, how will we ever resolve our differences? Perhaps even more important, how will we evolve spiritually? Because evolution of the spiritual kind, which as far as I’m concerned is the most important kind, only occurs when we each make the choice to take responsibility for every word and every action that we put out there.
I know about this first-hand because I didn’t begin to take responsibility for my actions until I was 40 years old. Until then I blamed everything and everyone around me for my unhappiness, and that meant that I was dependent on change to occur from the outside rather than how it actually happens — from the inside out. The wonderful bonus for me (and everyone around me, I’m sure) was that as soon I began to say “I guess I created that”, I stopped feeling victimized. Who knew?
It’s as if we’re being asked to take responsibility now on the global level — anything less seems to be resulting in egos clashing, people dying, and situations becoming worse rather than healing. While it is certainly possible that the woman appearing with Dr. Phil has the law on her side, I keep wondering where is her sense of moral or ethical responsibility for the space that she occupies on the Web? Multiply her web site by just a thousand and imagine the possible consequences.
I had to make a decision a number of years ago that I feel relates to this issue. When I receive spiritual guidance from a higher source, it doesn’t feel as if it’s coming from Diane. Many times I don’t even know what I have written in answer to a question from a client — I have to read it over after I’ve channeled it. But I realized at a certain point that if I didn’t take responsibility for the words I am writing, who could? Spirit? I don’t think so. Although that would be nice…