When Everything Feels Broken
How Respect and Accountability Can Help With a Cure
What part do respect and accountability play in today’s world where we are often too busy to enjoy life’s pleasures, too overwrought with fear and distrust from information overload, and too insecure because everything feels broken?
We’ll take a closer look at accountability and how it relates to respect. Accountability, after all, leads to trust, to understanding, to integrity which ultimately leads to respect, and respect is what we are all about. Being accountable means having a moral sense of civic responsibility, being honest, being able to admit when we are wrong, holding high our sense of integrity and humility.
As we’ve mentioned previously, we see respect as a structure, the foundation for society, that if we can give respect to others, this opens the door to collaboration. We know that shouting in someone’s face is not the way to get respect. It just gets us yelled back at. And lack of respect for each other results in distrust, anger and fear, finally leaving us lonely and disconnected from each other.
We know it is an uphill battle to return to respect, but it begins by reconnecting with those we should be closest with—our family and long-time friends. That can be accomplished by just sitting down and listening to each other, with sincerity, something that can easily be accomplished during something as simple as a family dinner.
It’s also not all our fault. Lack of respect across the country, and the world, has been increasing slowly and steadily over the years. The change in attitude is apparent in our news and other media, our entertainment venues, our educational system, and our changed attitude regarding the once treasured American Dream.
How did this happen? That’s the big question. There are many reasons, but it is complicated now by the speed with which rumors and rhetoric and conspiracy theories and just plain gossip and untruths can spread. It’s common knowledge that saying something over and over eventually becomes “the truth”. Add to that, the fact that our news and others have figured out that fear and anger sells much better than niceness.
What do we do about this? That’s another one of those big questions. While we can never get back to the innocence that childhood (or even that of the 50’s) once gave us, there are many things we as individuals can do to help bring back trust and reduce the anger and fear and loneliness in our own lives. The easiest beginning to a return to respect is to render the rumors, rhetoric, hate, gossip, untruths and conspiracy theories. as well as those spreading them, impotent and irrelevant by ignoring them, thereby cutting their conduit to the next person. That alone would give you and your acquaintances a head start back to respect, trust and friendship.
In our polarized system today, being accountable is sometimes confused with being “answerable to”. Accountability, however, means being responsible for the outcomes, to make sure we are making decisions based on right and wrong. Being “answerable to” means being able to explain our actions in regard to the success or failure of someone’s particular expectations, regardless of right or wrong.
It is easier understood if we address accountability as “being accountable for” rather than “accountable to”. This automatically moves accountability into a category where we must maintain a certain integrity, to be able to show our actions are meant to bring about fair and just conclusions. Also included in here is the ability to display humility by being able to admit when our actions go awry. After all, to err is human.’
We want our elected leaders to be accountable for making the right decisions, decisions that will give all of us the best results, decisions that work toward the benefit of our society, our country, as a whole. We want our neighbors to be accountable for making the right decisions, to keep our community safe and help it to grow its social fabric, giving benefits to all. This goes both ways of course. the expectation that we will do the same.
When we all pull together, one cannot overtake the others. Unfortunately, often times these days we instead have a tug of war. We are so busy arguing that we have forgotten that the best way to succeed is to pull together through mutual obligations. The way to know whether you are in a tug of war instead of pulling together is that in a tug of war someone always ends up getting dragged through the mud. It is neither accountable nor respectful and happens when we lose sight of the bigger picture.
If we are not pulling together well right now, the blame again is not all ours. Our thoughts are being maneuvered daily to tear us apart, and unfortunately such maneuvering is not a new thing either. George Washington in his farewell address said it best:
“The unity of government which constitutes you one people (joined together) is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence. (In other words, independence is our foundation with unity as our cornerstone)
it is easy to foresee that from different causes and from different quarters much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point of your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively — though often covertly and insidiously — directed, (in other words, media manipulation and those who benefit either monetarily or prestige wise from it)
it is of infinite moment (great importance) that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity, watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; (in other words, by sticking together we protect and preserve our Constitution which is meant to protect us from fear and failure.)
discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned ; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.” (we need to strongly resist any attempt to divide us.)
We’ve been through a lot since that early beginning, but those words need to be remembered. We need to stand together, to be accountable to each other, to be accountable for the sanctity of our nation, to jealously guard against the weakening of our safety and prosperity, that without unity we do not have a strong foundation.
It doesn’t mean we all have to think alike, but what we do need is to be working together, making sure the needs of all are meshed together into the best conclusion for everyone. We need the friction of differences of opinion so that we do not stagnate, but move forward in the best possible way by not belittling anyone else’s needs along the way.
Washington warned against the weakening of our minds and leaving us confused as to what is true. Our modern dilemma is just that. Algorithms, AI distortions, slanted headlines and other media geared toward making us fearful leave us believing even our friends and neighbors are not to be trusted. As a result each and every one of us is considered by someone else to be their enemy.
Washington’s very words could have been written yesterday instead of yesteryear: “It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection.”
True accountability is humble; it wants solutions. Prestige is hungry and always needing more by making you choose sides, by creating fear of others and then anger to keep you loyal. If the media or anyone else’s advice resembles Washington’s admonitions above, making them out to be the hero, the leader, or the only voice you can trust, they aren’t working toward solutions. They are just trying to perpetuate the discord. Otherwise, a solution would render them irrelevant.
In the end, harmony, peace, trust and respect cannot occur unless we are accountable to each other. To uphold these advantages, we need to rebuild respect and this comes down to those two traits in that 1904 handbook I found that describes how to be a good citizen: Polite listening with Sincere authenticity. Politeness instead of cynicism and sincerity instead of distrust.
I leave you with this one thought. The next time the media or someone leaves you with fear and distrust, feelings of hopelessness, or anger and thoughts of revenge, first stop and think about what’s in it for them. If they are selling you fear and anger to get your loyalty, they are not being accountable. They are maneuvering you to build prestige for themselves, to feed their ego, and at the same time working to keep the system broken so they can go on pretending to be important.
Respect and accountability. We can’t have one without the other. Accountability means all of us have to have the integrity, the moral sense, to move us forward together by respecting each other including our opinions. Then, and only then, can we reap the benefits of trust, better lives for all, community, and the safety of a government that works for all instead of the few.
If you need some respite from the division, drop by our facebook page at www.facebook.com/groups/return2respect. There you will find those the many folks who are promoting and working toward bringing back respect. Enjoy their comments and even videos to give you a few quiet moments.
Respectfully,
Brenda Marinace