The first part of this blog is simple. For the moment, my relative has agreed to moving into an assisted living arrangement. My last post addressing this was re: her addiction problem and the hard choices the family might have to take.

I hadn't realized this, but I am the oldest adult male who hasn't advanced into "old" age myself in the family; I had been approaching this in terms of protecting my mom's emotions, not in terms of familial duty overall.

In any case, my relative's decision takes some work and stress off of me.

But, this situation raised some moral questions in my mind. One point that was raised in the comments was that my relative's behavior was on her, and that she would not be grateful for any help. Another point to me was how far did my own responsibilities go?..What is my duty here?

What is duty in the first place?

We'll start by saying it's something people don't like. They don't even like discussing it.

See for yourself. Do a couple of search engine queries on "duty", or maybe on "concept of duty".

OK, now try a search on "vacation", or "how to take it easy". See the difference?

Duty and obligation are such unpleasant concepts to most people that they just aren't written about much.

Why is this?

For now, let's go with Wiki's definition of duty:

When someone recognizes a duty, that person theoretically commits himself to its fulfillment without considering their own self-interest

Remember, a key in my political writing is that people act individually on a basis of self-interest, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. So any concept that hinders self-interest is going to be instinctively disliked.

And let me preempt commenters who take the potion that duty is a sham, or a foreign imposition on free will. Your argument is noted.



Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote De Officiis a few years ago if you're interested in an old-fashioned view of duty

What kinds of Duty exist?

Family Duty (like the situation that sparked this discussion)

Religious Duty

Societal Duty...but then again, isn't every form of duty societal in practice? Sometimes we say we have a duty to ourselves, but isn't that just balancing off short term versus long term goals of self-interest?

Transitioning my thoughts from Family Duty To Societal Duty

I actually had no "sacrifice" issues with helping my relative out. I like this relative, and as I said, this was more focused on my mom's interest. Yes, it would be a pain in the ass, but not a interference with the "work" I am currently doing.

In fact, I was getting a bit dragged out emotionally from working on the #informationwar tag. I had talked about the personal prices to pay in research and activism as part of that series, but I was also getting very resentful that most people are just blowing the whole thing off. While I don't specifically mean...They aren't paying attention to ME! WAAAAH!, there is a bit of that in my emotional response as well.

🙈 🙉 🙊

And here is the crossover in discussion from Family Duty to Societal Duty...in both cases(My relative, and Information War), we are talking about taking on a case which has personal implications and in which the primary victims don't want or aren't invested in recognizing and dealing with the issues.

In either case, I can say Not my circus, not my monkeys and look to my own self-interest first.

But wait, there's more...backtracking to long-term versus short-term goals of self-interest...and how duty relates to long-term self-interest.

We are social animals, as much as it pains this quite anti-social person to acknowledge that. Social ability trumps hard work, intelligence, or brute strength in a human's ability to succeed in life, unless that person chooses to live in seclusion from other humans.

Societal duty can be considered as the "buy-in" to social relations.

The level of duty required is going to be the central political disagreement in any human society, with leeches, socialists, and other members of the Democrat Party always demanding MORE duty (taxes, obedience, silence in political or cultural speech, etc etc), and liberty-minded folks always demanding LESS.

However, there is also the "free rider" problem.

To start the explanation of this problem, let's look at the cost of some duties as compared to others...IF I pay a sales tax which is made part of a sales price, then I am sacrificing my own self-interest without much effort on my part. Or an even easier societal duty...don't use racist (actual racist, not identity politics racist) in front of children of that race...hell, THAT shouldn't even be a sacrifice of your self-interest unless you like making little kids cry. So some easy-peasy duties. Yes, we can look at basic courtesy as a duty.

On the other hand, other duties require a lot more sacrifice. Military and law enforcement duties require a lot of sacrifice in terms of personal cost even before we come to the risk of life. These personal costs are even harsher when the soldier or policeman is working for an immoral government or society.

I will talk about conflicting duties in another post

And the harshest duty?

Risking your family to do the right thing in the long term, like arresting corrupt politicians!

So it's easy to see that some duties require much more self sacrifice than others...and this is where the Free Rider problem comes in.

In economics, the free rider problem occurs when those who benefit from resources, goods, or services do not pay for them, which results in an underprovision of those goods or services.

In other words, if no one is willing to shovel shit, the streets are going to be full of shit.

When no one arrests corrupt politicians, out politics will be full of shit. When we as a society in toto put the onus of confronting corruption onto a small group of people who are legally subservient to the corruptocrats, and then refuse to either call for those arrests or to support the watchmen when those arrests are actually made, then we are Free Riders.

We expect other people to hold the bag, and then complain when it isn't done.

So we can see the value of duty to our own long-term self-interest.

Conclusion

Duty is dirty, nasty, and has a personal cost.

We argue about what duty is actually duty; those of us that want more out of others will claim higher levels of duty are necessary for society.

Nobody likes duty

Because we don't like doing our duty, it very often doesn't get done.

Sometimes duty isn't done due to the Free Rider problem.

When we don't do things that are actual duties, negative consequences follow.

This is actually a good way of determining real duties, btw, instead of made up "social justice" duties

We say that actions have consequences and we need to include that lack of action also has consequences.

My duty to write about duty is completed for the day ;>

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