By Decades ago, in a British prison, Dr. Anthony Daniels heard a murderer explain how he came to be serving a life sentence. “It’s just my luck to be here on this charge,” the prisoner answered. He had served a dozen prior sentences. He carried the knife to the scene. He sought out the victim. Luck?
Daniels worked for decades in prisons and poor neighborhoods of England. In his book Life at the Bottom, writing under his pen name Theodore Dalrymple, Daniels explores the responsibility-dodging mindsets of the British underclass. Dalrymple explains that prisoners commonly “describe themselves as the marionettes of happenstance.”
One inmate told Dalrymple of an attack he had orchestrated, “‘The knife went in…” Dalrymple, with his characteristic wry wit, quipped, “The knife went in – unguided by human hand, apparently.”
A thief in prison for a spate of church robberies blamed churches “for the laxness of their security.” It was their laxness, not his criminal mindset, that “first caused and then reinforced his compulsion to steal from them.”
A car thief explained that his behavior was compulsive and that he was therefore not responsible for his actions. Responsibility, he argued, lay with those who had failed to properly treat him.
Dalrymple eventually viewed exposing this dishonesty and self-deception as an essential part of his work. He wrote, “When a man tells me, in explanation of his anti-social behavior, that he is easily led, I ask him whether he was ever easily led to study mathematics or the subjunctives of French verbs.”
Even criminals would sometimes confess to the absurdity of these beliefs, Dalrymple reports, but still found some psychological advantages to pretending.
Rob Henderson added some pointed commentary to the introduction for the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Life at the Bottom. Henderson is known for his work on what he calls luxury beliefs, or “ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class at very little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.”
Henderson grew up in impoverished foster homes. He recalls being “mystified to hear elite university students deride marriage, family stability, personal responsibility, self-control — the very norms that had fueled their rise” and his own ascent out of poverty.
Henderson explains, “Clear moral norms and the expectation that adults will behave responsibly are not mere bourgeois niceties. They are the minimum conditions for ordinary people to build decent lives.”
People who flout these conditions in favor of luxury beliefs “trade stability for fleeting pleasures.” In the absence of a culture that expects and socially rewards responsibility, people don’t seem to discover these virtues on their own. But pointing this out to people, Henderson writes, and emphatically defending some actions as “better, more worthwhile, or more moral than others” may garner a label of “reactionary outcast.”
Henderson wants us to realize that when people refuse to judge behavior, those in the underclass often suffer the consequences, while wealthier groups have enough stability and margin to avoid the negative impacts of their luxury beliefs.
We might think we have little in common with the prisoners Dalrymple studied. But many of us are beholden to only slightly better-polished versions of these same views.
Born a slave, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus begins his classic Handbook: “Some things are up to us, and some are not.” Epictetus continued, “Up to us are judgment, inclination, desire, aversion — in short, whatever is our own doing.” By assigning control over improving these to someone outside ourselves, we give up both responsibility and hope. What lies within our control is relatively unhindered. What lies beyond our control is fragile, dependent, easily obstructed, and ultimately not truly ours.
In what is “up to us,” we can choose virtue. We get up in the morning, show up to work on time, take care of our bodies, and nurture our loved ones. We strive to be good colleagues and neighbors. Importantly, we take responsibility for cultivating our minds, preparing them for the pursuit of liberty, guarding against the endless rabbit holes of mob psychosis that rob us of the ability to live as free people.
By comparison, many outcomes — whether we get a promotion, whether our neighbors like us, or whether our marriage works out — may not be within our control. Yet, none of the vagaries of life subtract from our duty to own up to that which is our responsibility.
Taking responsibility has nothing to do with controlling outcomes. If we believe otherwise, we will waste our energy, or as Epictetus put it, “you’ll be obstructed, dejected, and troubled, and you’ll blame both gods and men.” We should care about outcomes while understanding that we do not control them.
Indeed, like Dalrymple’s criminals, when we blame others for things that were our responsibility, we will be “dejected and troubled.” We will behave as victims, sure our troubles are caused by others. When we believe or act as if we cannot control things over which we clearly have a choice, we might even narrate our excuses, justifying our behavior and further undermining our ability to make responsible choices in the future.
Our excuses are mostly lies. A billiard ball does not manage its self-image after being struck. The individual who insists he was pushed by circumstance is, in the same breath, demonstrating the agency he denies.
The next time you feel wronged by another person — perhaps a rude colleague, an inconsiderate driver, a partner who spoke sharply — notice how immediately and confidently you assign them agency, fully assuming they made a choice to behave so. Then ask yourself whether you grant yourself the same standard in the moments you have been the rude colleague, the inconsiderate driver, or the partner who spoke sharply.
Listen for this contradiction in your own thinking. The moment you find yourself constructing an account of why something was beyond your control, ask what kind of person is doing the construction — a victim of happenstance, or a free person building a meaningful life?