Responsibility assumption

Responsibility assumption is a doctrine in the spirituality and personal growth fields holding that each individual has substantial or total responsibility for the events and circumstances that befall them in their life. While there is little notable about the notion that each person has at least some role in shaping their experience, the doctrine of responsibility assumption posits that the individual's mental contribution to his or her own experience is substantially greater than is normally thought. "I must have wanted this" is the type of catchphrase used by adherents of this doctrine when encountering situations, pleasant or unpleasant, to remind them that their own desires and choices led to the present outcome.

In popular culture

The theme of responsibility assumption appears in several places in popular culture. For example, it appeared in Richard Bach's bestseller, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and Bach addressed the topic more directly in a less-popular later book, Illusions.

Related Topics:
Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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John Denver, a proponent of est, wrote two songs about it, Farewell Andromeda (1973) and Looking for Space (1975), and the opening lines of Farewell Andromeda capture the essence of responsibility assumption:

Related Topics:
John Denver - Est

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:Welcome to my morning, welcome to my day

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:I'm the one responsible, I made it just this way

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:To make myself some pictures, see what they might bring

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:I think I made it perfectly, I wouldn't change a thing

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The 1956 movie Forbidden Planet featured an analogous concept to responsibility assumption, about a race who, through technology, became able to materialize their thoughts, to disastrous ends.

Related Topics:
1956 - Forbidden Planet

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The 1967 television series The Prisoner featured an ambiguous climax spawning several interpretations, one of which implicates responsibility assumption. Throughout the short seventeen-episode series, the eponymous prisoner, a man held against his will by a mysterious group, attempted to determine—and in the final episode apparently succeeded in determining—the identity of the mysterious person who led the group and thus ultimately determined the prisoner's fate. The moment of revelation in which the mysterious leader was literally unmasked by the prisoner was brief and unclear, but there are fans of the series who believe the unmasked leader was the prisoner himself.

Related Topics:
1967 - The Prisoner - Eponym

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In a deleted scene from the 1999 movie Dogma, a fallen angel explained how the subconscious demands of the damned that they be punished, as they believed God could never forgive their sins, remade the face of Hell from a simple separation from God into a "suffering pit."

Related Topics:
1999 - Dogma - Fallen angel - Hell

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Though these are prominent examples, varying degrees of the doctrine of responsiblity assumption have formed a minor theme more broadly within the United States cultural landscape since the decline of the 1960s counterculture.

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