Ch 9. Accountability, Risk and Courage

 "Courage is the most important of all the virtues
because without courage,

you can't practice any other virtue consistently."

- Maya Angelou

Accountability. What does it mean to you? 

The dictionary description means a willingness to accept responsibility or to account (be answerable) for one’s own actions. (Webster, 2023.) Do you consider yourself to be accountable? Most of us strive for this but sometimes (or often) fail. Then there are those who don’t strive for accountability at all.

When I was discussing the ideas and concepts in this book with various people, the majority had different flavors of the same reaction.

“I vote, and that’s all you can do!”

“Well, somebody’s got to do something…” (cue the crickets.)

“Isn’t the government supposed to take care of this kind of stuff?”

It reminds me of an old Simpsons episode where Homer runs for mayor on a stumping point of “can’t someone else do it?”...and wins. (The Simpsons, Season 09, Episode 22.)

The list of responses of this nature is nearly infinite, but the general gist is always the same: This problem is too big for me to do anything about, and therefore, it’s not my problem. I’m off the hook. I don’t have to be accountable.

There are two aspects of this attitude of unaccountability. The first aspect is that these problems are too big for one person to handle.

And I agree. Completely, whole heartedly. Problems like global warming are so huge and complex that a single individual can’t possibly affect the necessary change to combat it. But just because you can’t change it on your own doesn’t mean it stops being your problem.

Global warming is your problem, and it’s my problem too. It’s going to be our children’s problem, too, unless we take immediate and decisive action in the present. Just because a problem is big doesn’t mean you have zero responsibility to address it.

The second aspect of unaccountability is cultural. We live in a capitalist society with a representative government. What does this mean? We’ve been conditioned to abdicate our responsibility to experts, i.e., our “betters.” Big tech and big business are responsible for innovation and progress. The government is responsible for our well-being (as long as you pay your taxes and vote on election day).

You get to enjoy some of the benefits of progress without ever being forced to risk anything yourself, or be truly accountable. But the current state of affairs, the status quo, is the bitter harvest of this line of thinking.

If you look at it, we’re still taking the risks. Our so-called betters take the risk on paper, but if they fail, then taxpayer funded corporate bailouts and subsidies will rescue them. Still, despite this fact, conventional wisdom says that our betters deserve the lion’s share of the benefits.

These betters and their enablers in Washington dictate what progress looks like for you, and for your children. They pick the cap on your wages, they dictate how your tax money is spent, and they say it’s okay to cut funding for education. They also think you don’t deserve healthcare.

We have surrendered our accountability to these people, and understandably so. After all, it’s the way things have always been done in our lifetimes, and we’ve been conditioned to know our place.

Let’s go back to the people I discussed this book with. One of the most common questions they asked was “Can you guarantee that these ideas will work?”

Of course I can't! No one can guarantee that. Still that doesn't mean it’s not worth the risk of trying new ideas, because it just might make the world a better place. We have become risk averse as a people. We’re afraid to stick our neck out, we’re afraid to take a stand, and we’re afraid to stand out.

The Japanese have a saying that encapsulates this perfectly: The nail that sticks out, gets hit.

We have come to prefer the comfort of the known, even if it’s poisoning us. We shy away from the uncertainty of the unknown even if it has the potential to heal us.

However, if we want a better world, we're going to have to build one. And you can’t do that without taking accountability. This means declaring yourself to be responsible for the future as well as the past and the present. And yes, being accountable in this case entails taking risks.

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. Even when you’re not sure you’ll succeed.” – Martin Luther King.

We must invest in the future. If enough people get together and pool their time, energy and resources, then the individual investment will be minimized. But we can’t build a better world for free. We must be willing to take risks and invest in the future of our society. It’s not easy. It takes hard work, but most of all, it takes courage.

But you can draw strength from the fact that you are not alone in this fight.

“Successful innovators don’t ask customers and clients to do something different;

they ask them to become someone different…

Successful innovators ask users to embrace- or at least tolerate new values,

new skills, new behaviors, new vocabulary,

new ideas, new expectations, and new aspirations.

They transform their customers.”

– Michael Schrege

from Who do you want your customers to become?

This concludes the first section of the book. In our next section, we’ll tackle the economy in depth and examine how this system of “economic extractionism” has put us on this path to destruction and how we can choose a different system and use this new system to build that better world.