It's not your fault

....except when it is

I was listening to a programme on BBC radio a few days ago: a phone-in asking how people were coping with the latest increases in the cost of living. Prices continue to rise - not luxuries, essentials: energy, heating, rent, food - the very stuff of daily life.

There was anger in the calls, and fear, and despair, Even those who said they were not personally struggling could see the hollowing out of all possibility of a decent life for so many people. They feared for the cohesion of the communities we share.

Some callers were on the the precipice, facing imminent disaster. One woman spoke with a passionate anger that she would soon move from her unaffordable flat to live in a van or a caravan.

‘How is a family supposed to survive in a fucking van?’ she said.

Her call was rapidly ended because swearing is beyond the limits of acceptability. The wholesale destruction of people’s lives is not.

What was noticeable in all the calls though was a general absence of the usual, familiar, tedious bullshit about ‘people need to pull their socks up’, ‘people need to get a better job’, ‘people need to budget better’, ‘if I can do it, so can everyone else’…. The lie that everything is an individual responsibility is finally being seen for what it is - a smokescreen created by those who benefit from the system to hide their privilege and advantage.

An uncompromising insistence on personal responsibility is claimed as being about ‘freedom’. It’s actually a form of imprisonment. We are not free to make wise choices if we are hungry. We are not free to give our kids a stable home if we’re working three jobs. We are not free to help our neighbours if we are struggling each day to survive.

In denying that the economic, social, moral and other systems we live in, bear any responsibility for the nature of our lives, we deny a fundamental fact: we are all both isolated from one another and intimately interconnected.

Sometimes if someone is struggling to survive, it’s the consequences of personal choices. Different personal choices will end their struggle.

Sometimes if someone is struggling to survive it’s because they are in an unsurvivable situation.

If you’re drowning, you don’t need to improve your work ethic, you need to get out of the fucking water.

If everyone is struggling, we don’t all need to get better at working with the (human-created) economic and social systems we inherited, we need to change them - radically - so that we can find economies, communities, societies that support our humanity rather than force us into continual survival-mode.

Those who privatise responsibility are usually defending a system that advantages them, indifferent to the disadvantages it imposes on others. When corporate capitalism invented the notion of a ‘personal carbon footprint’, it was a cynical ploy to distract attention from a simple fact - environmental degradation is fundamentally a corporation-created problem. It’s the oil-companies that need to change, not whether you take a holiday or not.

I’m not saying personal responsibility does not matter. I try - continually - to limit how much I consume resources and create waste. I recycle. I try to do things that I think make me a better, kinder person. In some areas I succeed more than in others.

Personal responsibility matters - but only in the areas where personal respobilbibity has an effect. When a system is broken, that’s where we need to focus our attention.

Capitalism - in the oligarchic/fascistic/authoritarian/nationalistic form it has evolved into is not the solution, it’s the problem. The solution is not for each of us to make personal changes (though boycotting companies that appal you, or countries whose behaviour you abhor is always a good idea).

The solution to systemic collapse is systemic change.

This is true on a societal level and also true in the lives of each of us. So many of us struggle to find our way, to be joyous, to thrive. Perhaps it’s not what you’re doing that’s the problem - perhaps it’s where you’re doing it. Perhaps you are part of the wrong community, in the wrong job, committing to the wrong relationship, living the wrong self-story.

Change the system and you change the texture of life.

Take personal responsibility for the things that are your responsibility.

Do not blame yourself for systems that actively work against your ability to thrive. Instead, imagine a better system, then do what you can to bring it into existence - whatever that means to you.

Let’s imagine a world where a woman with an income of £1000 a month and outgoing of £2500 a month does not have to ask how her family are survive if they have ‘to live in a fucking van’?

Let’s imagine it, each take personal responsibility for our part in it, and work together to make such a world our new reality.

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If you’d like to get perspective on where you’re at and how to move forward - personally and in terms of the environments you live within - be in touch. I’ve space for coaching clients right now. john@johnbritton.co