Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The forces of Individual Action

The Issue that I would like to address :

" The concept of 'Individual responsibility' is a necessary fiction. Although societies must hold individuals accountable for their own actions, people's bahavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making"

The concept of ‘individual responsibility’ is a necessary fiction. Although societies must hold individuals accountable for their own actions, people’s behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making.

People in the world have different task that corresponds to their behavior and decision. Nevertheless, activities are based on many experiences or cultural backgrounds that each individual uniquely has. The forces that are experiences, education level, community norms and rules, cultural background, and family condition are very influential to each people behavior, role, and manner in the community. Moreover, in several villages with strict norms, most people are controlled by the village law, such as in Padang, Indonesia that make the bride to pay certain amount of gold to marry the broom or in Javanese rites that forbid their children to marry people from other rite. In consequence, many actions in numerous areas are based on unlogical but relevant to each person backgrounds.

Before going further to describe the power that motivates people to have different actions, there is a big difference in responsibility depending on the the age or intelligence of each person. Normally, people with the age of older than 17 have bigger responsibility; yet, different country has different views on age. People with that age of 17 are allowed to drive having bigger risk of accident. Nevertheless, different country has different rules like in Finland that has a strict rule that individual starting from 21 year-old are allowed to drive, reflecting the degree of responsibility. Intelligence is one of the factors that influence the degree of responsibility. Logically, crazy people don’t have the opportunity to make their own decision. Moreover, the degree of education also influences the trust to decide something or becoming an example of certain behavior. Age and intellegince also correlated like in the case of in the age 17 people usually studies in college where provide them many opportunity to choose freely. As a result, the individual that has responsibility is in the age from 17 year-old and in a healthy phsycological condition.

Experiences are affecting every actions and behavior, like several height phobic behavior that is based on his/her experience of falling from high ground or his/her realtives accident from certain height. Many society tales are based on the elders experiences like not walking under that ladder is based on the experience that the ladder can be broken. Furthermore, family and education background are mainly influential on thrusting each person decision or behavior. One of the examples how education background affect individual’s way of thinking is between an artist with an engineer. An artist tend to design things esthaetically in the sense of beauty and harmony, yet an engineer design object based on it’s function so an engineer doesn’t care whether the object is solid unattractive thing as long as it can comply with the function of the object. Moreover, laws and norms are differentiating society in diverse areas, like between China that allows abortion because of the big number of population and Indonesia that uphold the Eastern culture and influenced mainly by Islamic rules forbid abortion except for the sake of the mother’s safety. Countless motives are forcing unique bahavior and action.

Inspite of the fact that many factors affected every decision and behavior, the spiritual concept of heaven and hell is definitely based on individual role in the community; therefore, each individual must be aware of the consequences. Moreover, laws are binding in the terms of individual, mostly. As a conclusion every individual despite of different or the invinsible hand that controls his/her behavior must realized that each behavior and action are affecting many people and can create bad or good consequences.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

An artist tend to design things esthaetically in the sense of beauty and harmony, yet an engineer design object based on it’s function so an engineer doesn’t care whether the object is solid unattractive thing as long as it can comply with the function of the object

well i guess i'll have to agree with this hehehe >_<

Judge Ahmad said...

Iseng2 lewat, boleh ya saya komentar..

Menurut hukum, yang harus bertanggung jawab atas suatu perbuatan melawan hukum gak cuma si pelaku utama (as what you said that 'laws are binding in terms of individual'), tapi juga orang yg membujuk dia, membantu, menyuruh melakukan, membiarkan, dll. Dikenal juga adanya teori adequate (kapan2 aja dah jelasinnya..).

Trus tentang 'the spiritual concept of heaven & hell'.. Dalam Islam, ternyata yg masuk neraka bukan cuma mereka yg gak sholat, tapi juga orang2 yang sholat tapi gak mengingatkan mereka yg lalai.

Mungkin, qt seharusnya tidak hanya sadar bahwa "each behavior and action are affecting many people and can create bad or good consequences", tapi lebih dari itu: sadar bahwa each behavior and action are affecting many people and can create bad or good consequences TO OURSELVES AS WELL.
Kayaknya kesadaran semacam ini bakal lebih memotivasi kita utk gak memberi pengaruh buruk ke orang lain, demi keselamatan diri kita juga soalnya.

Ini cuma pendapat lho, bisa bener bisa salah.

Ismail Al Anshori said...

I'm just reading Ishmael, a Daniel Quinn novel. It has many similarity with this article coz it presents an alternative view of human history and proposes a different method for human lifestyle change.

There, Ishmael says :
"There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact, in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now."

It's a philosophy novel,,hard for me to read..

and...why u put this : "..or in Javanese rites that forbid their children to marry people from other rite." remain ur past?? hehe

Unknown said...

I've reed one of your blogs and is interested in your work. So, i'd like to make an input. I don't know if its connected or not, i let you decide that.
Have you red about pop marketing? Or the amazing trend of anthurium? The sudden explotion of demand for a regular plant who has no significant feature? I don't know but you, but in my opinion this is closely related to your topic of economic complecity. In my opinion it's good to research it. Or at least read it since marketing to me is a way of understanding how people react to a market.
People here is very easily persuaded in buying, just because of the history. The anthurium is the most intriguing. The story is questionable, yet it somehow creates a very high reaction that causes excess demand in a period of time. May you've reed it but just in case, it's a very interesting topic. Anw, iam not a sistematic kinda researcher, but i can conclude that indonesia is special. And is a very big country, but lack of solidarity and small hearted. Maybe it's because of the devide et imperia strategy that's rooting to the core of most of the indonesian people. I don't know, i let you decide on that. Good luck! with the research. If there is a way i would like to help. Sincerely. Caca.