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Earlier I showed that saying that a past event “could have been different” led to infinite regress, since it necessitated changing prior events which could only be affected by changing even earlier events, etc. If the past could not be different from what it was, then a man cannot have acted differently from the way he did, and the concept of responsibility must be meaningless when applied to the past.
But responsibility is not meaningless when applied to future events, and it is based on the real self-reflective ability to predict future events and intervene in them. Human beings are able to respond to events in advance, and it is this “response-ability” that we call responsibility. Responsibility is the realization that our behavior is one of the important determinants of our own future and hence we are in part responsible for our behavior and its consequences. This realization itself acts as a determinant of our behavior, causing us to increase our efforts to know and predict in order to avoid the unpleasant consequences of error or inaction. This meaning of responsibility asserts that reality itself will reward the responsible individual and punish the irresponsible one. Charles Bray lucidly stated the essential characteristics of responsibility more than a century ago:
All true responsibility must have reference to the future, never, as is commonly supposed, to the past... This view involves a much stricter responsibility than the common one, for we are thus accountable... [whether our act] proceeds from our ignorance, our conviction, or our feelings; whether our actions be voluntary or involuntary, or proceed from free will or necessity. (1841, pp. 39-41)
We are responsible for the consequences of our acts and we are equally responsible for the consequences of not acting. Although we areresponsible for the consequences of our behavior, we must always choose without complete knowledge of the consequences, and with the knowledge that to refuse to choose is also a choice. This is what is meant by saying that “man is condemned to be free;” and the realization that because of incomplete knowledge one may make a choice which has harmful consequences is called existential anxiety. Mental illness can be defined (Termerlin, 1963) as a futile attempt to evade the responsibility of choosing and acting in spite of this existential anxiety.
Glasser, in his excellent book Reality Therapy (1965) writes: “Responsibility, a concept basic to Reality Therapy, is here defined as the ability to fulfill one's needs and to do so in a way that does not deprive others of the ability to fulfill their needs.” (p. 31) The last portion of this definition follows from the understanding that in order to satisfy his own needs, a human being must be involved with other human beings. Glasser's definition of responsibility is essentially identical to the definition of freedom as the ability to actualize inherent purposes and goals. Freedom and responsibility are two fundamentally inseparable aspects of behavior.
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