The Imperative of Responsibility (from Cain to Batman)

from Ossigeno 14

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«It is not my fault».

«I was confused».

«They coerced me».

«They misconstrued me».

«I am a victim of circumstance».

How often have we sought refuge in an excuse to evade the burden of responsibility for having erred or disappointed another? Responsibility means: being aware of one’s own actions and their repercussions, while also assuming the duty to be held accountable, without resorting to exculpatory subterfuge or displacing blame onto others.Especially not onto interns, as is the wont of inept leaders.

Cain was the inaugural practitioner of such cunning, as recounted in the Old Testament. When interrogated by God following the murder of Abel, he initially attempts to divert the topic: «Am I my brother’s keeper?». In a majestic poem by Victor Hugo, Cain flees into the desert, in an endeavour to elude his guilt-laden conscience. He erects walls to try to ensconce himself in the remotest locales. Ultimately, he seeks refuge into the depths of a cavern, convinced that he has at last secured safety; yet even there, in the utterest darkness, the gaze of the Divine remains unrelenting.

 

The crisis of responsibility

The poet’s message is clear: responsibility is inescapable. Cain was acutely aware that by hurling that stone at his brother’s head, he would bring about his death. But is it still so today? After all, it is exceedingly difficult to feel fully responsible in a world governed by deterministic forces, where everything is anchored in physical, social, and psychological causality. The youths of West Side Story understood this well: confronted by a policeman intent on arresting them, they proclaim in song, «It’s just our bringin’ upke / That gets us out of hand. / Our mothers all are junkies, / Our fathers all are drunks. / Golly Moses, natcherly we’re punks!».

Were Cain to stand trial in a contemporary court of law, he too might benefit from certain mitigating circumstances: emotional turmoil, diminished mental capacity, external coercion, or cultural conditioning… One can envision the defence’s argument: «As the firstborn in the history of humankind, the defendant endured a turbulent family environment, characterised by heightened sibling rivalry and a distant paternal figure, Adam – factors that may offer a psychological rationale for his actions».

To determinism must then be added complexity. Every occurrence has its causes and consequences, yet we – unlike Cain with his stone – are not necessarily fully aware of them. At times, between cause and effect, intricate and imperceptible mechanisms intervene, amplified by modern technologies. Who bears responsibility for the tragic suicide of Tiziana Cantone, whose revenge porn video was viewed by millions? Who is culpable for the suicide of Giovanna Pedretti, the restaurateur vilified – as if guilty of an unforgivable crime – for falsifying a review on Tripadvisor? Everyone and no one, much like in the Netflix series TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY, which scrutinises the diffuse layers of responsibility that may drive someone to take their own life: sociologists speak of compounded or perverse effect resulting from a multitude of individual actions.

Modernity is, in fact, a solvent of responsibility. Who is to blame for the economic downturn? Who bears responsibility for pollution and criminality? And above all, who is responsible if the planet dies, consumed by our relentless consumption? According to political representatives, never themselves. The blame always lies elsewhere: with prior administrations, the opposition, economic cycles, conspiracies… No one is willing to shoulder the burden of responsibility.

To be sure, modern democracy is predicated on the principle that those who wield power should be answerable to the citizenry – what the Anglo-Saxons term accountability. Yet, in practice, the ability to evaluate governance vanishes amidst the opaque entanglement of individuals, institutions, committees, agencies, and subcontractors in which modern power is exercised.

In such a scenario, it becomes difficult to hope that any effective action might be taken to rescue the planet from environmental catastrophe. The philosopher Hans Jonas had already observed, in 1979, that the key to addressing the ecological crisis lay in the Imperative of Responsibility: once again, it is a matter of recognising that causality is diffused, and that even the most minute individual actions do form a compounded impact.

The empty throne

And in everyday life?

«Let me speak to the person responsible».

When faced with inefficiency, when the individual before us seems unable to make the right decision, our instinct is to climb the hierarchical ladder in search of someone with greater competence and authority. Yet even here, responsibility is an increasingly rare currency, ever more elusive.

Ugo Fantozzi knew this all too well. In the words of his creator and interpreter, Paolo Villaggio, the hapless accountant «knows he lives in a society that will never protect him adequately, a society in which fear is a permanent condition, a society […] where the master has no distinct identity, is not even a physical presence». Indeed, «Fantozzi lives in a pyramidal structure, and at its apex, there may well be nothing at all. Does the Mega Galactic Director even exist? Perhaps he is pure invention». Three decades later, Danish director Lars von Trier explored the theme of responsibility in satirical and grotesque fashion with his film The Boss of It All. The plot follows the owner of a Danish tech company who feigns being a mere employee, fabricating the existence of an invisible superior onto whom he shifts the burden of every difficult decision.

We look to those in charge not only to solve problems, but also to serve as conduits for discontent and frustration. Imagine a river poisoned by industrial waste. The repercussions for the local population’s health are dire: contaminated drinking water, a surge in dermatological illnesses, bioaccumulation of toxic substances in the food chain, an increase in cancer rates. Who bears responsibility? The CEO, the shareholders, the engineer who designed the system, the worker who pressed the button, the legislator who turned a blind eye to environmental regulations? Who will pay for the victims? Beyond financial compensation, what is at stake here is the very demand for justice.Now, let’s envision an airport. A flight has been cancelled. The exasperated passengers seek an authoritative figure to take charge: the check-in clerk blames the airline, the airline blames the airport, the airport blames air traffic control. It is like speaking to a void. Worse, like being trapped aboard a pilotless aircraft. For this is how complex organisations operate: responsibility is so widely dispersed that, in the end, no one seems truly accountable. The pilotless plane serves as a fitting metaphor for a world gone awry: while conspiracy theorists indulge in the oddly reassuring fantasy of an omnipotent manipulator pulling the strings, the rest of us shiver at the thought that no one is truly at the helm. What if the throne of power were empty?

Anthropology teaches us that traditional societies rely on simple and direct power structures, whereas modernity has constructed a governance architecture composed of institutions, procedures, and delegations. Every decision is fragmented across multiple levels, each holding its fragment of responsibility. Our democracies operate much like the aforementioned airport, perpetuating an endless buck-passing: elected representatives may exist, but the bulk of power is dispersed within the administrative machinery and is dictated by the fluctuations of global markets. There is no tribal chief, no feudal lord, no absolute monarch capable of unlocking a situation against an administrative tribunal, a high court, or a speculative assault on sovereign debt.

The iron cage

A century ago, sociologist Max Weber spoke of the iron cage of bureaucratic rationalisation: everything is structured, regulated, compartmentalised, ensuring efficiency and predictability, yet simultaneously generating an unsettling side effect. Responsibility crumbles. No one possesses the authority to single-handedly effect change, and consequently, no one appears truly accountable for the consequences. Frustration mounts. «Let me speak to the person responsible», we yell in airports, at supermarket checkouts, in banks, and above all, at the polls when we vote. The hope is to find someone willing to assume responsibility when everything falls apart.

Flying on a pilotless plane is, understandably, not a reassuring experience, though some may argue that entrusting ourselves to an autopilot is preferable to the whims of a reckless, depressed, or drunk pilot. In the twentieth century, the demand for “strongmen” – those capable of assuming responsibility – led to the rise of tyrants such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, who pledged to take control of the state, society, and economy. The immediate consequence was the persecution of political opponents, an act for which Mussolini infamously declared his «political, moral, and historical responsibility» as quoted from his just as infamous speech of 3 January 1925 regarding the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti. More recently, the appeal of charismatic leaders presenting themselves as strongmen is a reaction to the widespread feeling that no one is responsible for anything anymore. The nostalgia for more vertical models of governance stems from the perception that contemporary democracy is nothing more than an excruciating buck-passing.

Yet totalitarian systems could not have worked without a legion of irresponsibles serving alongside a handful of those in charge: the most infamous being Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi bureaucrat whom Hannah Arendt immortalised as the epitome of the banality of evil. According to his defence at the Jerusalem trial, Eichmann was not a sadistic monster, but rather a functionary merely following procedures, stamping papers, signing orders. He did not perceive himself as responsible for the Holocaust because he was just fulfilling his “duty”: ensuring that the death trains ran on time. This is the darkest facet of complex societies: they can foster systems in which everyone is a mere cog in the machine, and no one feels morally accountable. Lewis Mumford referred to these individuals as Eichmanns, and he was used to seeing them at work everywhere, even in democratic societies. But let’s remember that Eichmann’s crimes were not a mere malfunction of Germany’s railway network. Had some particularly enraged “user” demanded to speak to the person responsible, the diligent functionary would have had to name names of all the hierarchs of the National Socialist Party, beginning with Hitler himself.

Against the disengagement of responsibility

What happens when one confronts the rubber wall of irresponsibility? In the novel Michael Kohlhaas, the Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist tells the story of a horse merchant who suffers the effects of systemic injustice under the feudal regime and sparks a revolt against the established order. His journey leads him to confront everhigher levels of power: first, the region’s courts subservient to aristocratic rule, then the equally corrupt governor, all up to the Elector of Saxony and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Kohlhaas wreaks destruction in his wake: this is what happens when responsibility fades away.

Systemic deresponsibilisation – that is, widespread buck-passing – makes the system unresponsive, paralyses innovation, and fosters corresponding over-caution. But the crisis of responsibility isn’t merely a functional issue of inefficiency. The deeper issue in a society where no one is responsible for anything is that any possibility of justice – and more profoundly, of meaning – is lost. Perhaps we are all indeed determined, at a subatomic level, in our behaviours, and it is pointless to attempt to counter our spontaneous inclinations, the forces of nature, or the laws of the market. But in this case, deprived of free will, the only role left for us is to be small cogs in a vast machine heading towards an unknown direction. Many little Eichmanns.

Perhaps behind every leader, there is another leader, and at the top of the pyramid, there is no great leader, as Fantozzi suspected: no one will listen to our complaints, no one will solve our problems. But if the function is absent, we will hardly be able to renounce the fiction. And this is why, sometimes, we must take responsibility, even when we are not responsible.

It is not my fault, I was confused, They coerced me, They misconstrued me, I am a victim of circumstances: often, this is indeed the case. And surely there’s no single culprit when facing crises, pollution, or criminality. Often we err in good faith, or because we’ve been deceived. Yet, in personal relationships as in politics, sometimes the only thing needed – much like Batman at the end of The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan – is someone who to take on that bejewelled responsibility.

If we are willing to solve the countless crises affecting human life on planet Earth, starting with the climate one, we must take the Imperative of Responsibility seriously. As Hans Jonas argued, we can no longer afford to say «It is not my fault» when we do consume resources, pollute, or sustain unsustainable systems, because our actions have uncontrollable and long-lasting systemic repercussions. It’s about taking on responsibility, even when it cannot be clearly assigned. In a world where power is diffuse and anonymous, where often no one is directly responsible but everyone is involved, the true act of courage is not finding a culprit, but becoming aware of our role and acting nonetheless, for the sake of those who will come after us.

We will be truly responsible, only when we can say: «I did everything I could to prevent this from happening».