The Question – What is our responsibilities to the world

We all have different responsibilities in life regardless of who we are and what we do. But what does that mean to the people we affect, work with and meet, the decisions you make can affect others. Although not many of us hold the power to make the decisions, we have the responsibility to hold those with the decision making power to account.

Every decision we make has the potential to impact someone else, so then it becomes imperative that those decisions are made with the best understanding and good intentions. We need to think of how our actions impact others as part of the responsibility is being accountable.

The most important responsibility I believe is to look after and help each other. Whether that be helping someone when they are ill or the little thing like picking something up for them. We will need help at some in our lives and it important we have to give and take when it comes our way.

Looking after each other should not be something we only do when there is a disaster or a crisis, but part of our everyday lives. You never know when someone needs help, they could one day be the one helping you. The kindness is something that can go a long way, it can turn around a bad day.

We all know regardless of the Coronavirus that health services are under pressure, but all year round there is pressure. The best thing we can do is to eat healthily, listen to our doctors, keep active generally not to create any extra pressure.

We all have to conduct ourselves courteously, this is important as if you have a position where you are managing people, in an elected role you must be careful.

It’s our job to work with those we need to even if we don’t like them, this is because we cannot choose our colleagues. When working with people, we must be open to sharing our expertise and use common sense, this builds up professional trust.

We all have different roles, as a member of society, which organisations we work with but that comes with the responsibility to represent them and ourselves in the best possible way.

If you are in an elected position, a doctor or a religious leader you have a extra moral responsibility to show trustworthiness, and level-headedness when your making decisions. You need to make these discussions on what is best for the majority not induvial gain. This is important for you in building your own reputation in both your personal and professional life.

Owning your mistakes is an equally important part of being responsibly, but serious mistakes must have repercussions. The person who takes on a responsibility to do something needs to take full responsibility when they go wrong.

Responsibility varies throughout life, but it’s a collective duty for us all to be responsible for our actions. We need to remember that as we get older, we have more of a moral duty to behave, this includes how we react when things are happening, we don’t like.

Being part of a group of people who can take decisions means you must act in the interests of the people who have elected you, but not change who you are. That could be a challenge for you, and you may not always like the decision, but democracy is something we must respect.

We know that our public services are under pressure from an ageing population, austerity so it’s even more important we think about the services we are using and how much we are using them. The people we are on the front lines often suffer the abuse for following the instructions they have been given, and can be equally frustrated by the system.

Our responsibility then is to give everyone the best chance throughout their lives and that is the most important thing. Our welfare system often supports the disabled and elderly, some of that support is not linked to their working or financial situation. But the image you get from the media is things like Benefit Street, which is a “misrepresentation” of life for people on social security.

At the time Labour MP and then chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, Anne Begg said, “I can sympathise very much with the community, particularly disabled people who have perhaps worked all their lives and have had no choice but to fall out of work because of an accident or ill health, who have paid their National Insurance payments and therefore are entitled to the benefits.”

“Pensioners are entitled to the payment that they get because they have paid into it and it is quite right that they do get those payments. To concentrate on the unemployed, when less than 3% of the benefits budget goes to people who are unemployed, and even within that on a very narrow type of person”

The current Coronavirus situation has meant all of our societal duties have changed, they are now to stay home, wash their hands and not hoarding food. Hoarding food isn’t going to help the situation, we all need to take what we need and look after supply. No one wants a second wave, but sadly from what I’ve seen people do and reading the data, as I watch the media.

Our responsibility is to build ourselves a good public image, both in our personal and professional image. Most of us are law obeying people, we need to remember that forgiveness is the most important thing, and that is our main duty.

Health and healthcare have been the most important thing in the last year through this pandemic, we are lucky in the UK the care we need regardless of our ability to pay we can access health care. This is not a right it’s a privilege as in so many countries if you can’t afford the treatment, you can’t have treatment.

While the NHS is there to pick us up in our time of need, it’s our responsibility to keep ourselves as healthy and try to avoid causing ourselves injury. But we should not be over cautious as we know it will be there to pick up and fix us if things go wrong, the staff will probably be the ones you will be dealing with in difficult and upsetting situations.

It takes time to build that trust and we need to continue to seek to improve our trustworthiness and our moral standing. It’s not something we can do with a single act, but we can lose it with a single act. Trust is not only about you as an individual, but to who you represent, as you are effectively representing the organisation.

In a decade which has seen more divides between rich and poor, discrimination of minority groups and politics become more divided between left and right we are at an important moment. We need to reach out and try to understand each other.

When we hear of groups being persecuted by different governments around the world, we must challenge the regimes that carry out these acts. Offer refuge to those fleeing the violence and help with recovery when these regimes collapse.

We need to remember that once these regimes fail and if we don’t help to rebuild a lesson is, I think from the last decade is militias and harsher regimes will take control. Our duty for our own national security is to build strong nations following wars.

We cant have repeats of Libya where we toppled the Gaddafi regime, and then didn’t help sort out and rebuild stable democracy as well as the infrastructure needed to create strong countries.

We are in the middle of a pandemic, one which has prompted fears about wealthy countries hording PPE, medical supplies and more importantly treatment and vaccines for Coronavirus, as that is our short-term priority.

But after the pandemic we need to build international structures through the WHO and UN, to ensure when we have another outbreak of a virus like this and epidemics that the poorer countries don’t suffer further. These countries often don’t have the same infrastructure as we have in the developed world, one factor also is a development of the things people need like access to clean water, food and housing.

The other battle we face is climate change, this requires everyone to work together, what can we do? Look to use greener transport, cut our waste, realise that little things can make the difference. Green technology has come a long way in the last decade, battery technology is now lasting longer, and more recycling of energy.

But people who contribute very little towards climate change are often the ones who see the worst effects. When we are cutting down the Amazon, seeing rising sea levels or more pollution, this needs a response. The challenge I think we need to move to greener solutions without changing our lives too dramatically.

We need to look how our daily activity can affect the wider world, whether that be using our cars rather than public transport, buying a bottle of water rather than re-filling bottles. Small change or person can change the world, as Malala Yousufzai said, “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”

Giving everyone access to education is one the most important responsibility of a parent and a country, after health. Amid this coronavirus pandemic around the world governments have tired to keep schools open. I believe that health should always out way the need for schools to be open, but we must allow children to catch up when the pandemic is over.

Children are our next leaders, artists, creators, politicians, journalists and doctors. It’s our duty as parents and society to give them the best possible chance to succeed, as they will be running our world. The most basic thing we can give each other is education, as it helps us all.

If we give them the best possible chance in life, I am not a father, but believe parents shouldn’t within reason prevent their children from being what they want to be or do in life. However, you need to be realistic in what they can achieve, but that shouldn’t be used to discourage them from what they want to try or do with their lives.

As a society, I believe its our duty to give our children and young people should be given the best tools to succeed by funding education mainly for the under twenty fives. But we need also to have affordable lifelong learning, as we live longer and our way through life, we may want to have many different things we want to do in our lives.

What do you believe are our responsibilities to the world?