thoughts of county

No one lives in solidarity. We all are forced to interact with one another in some form or matter to even conduct our day to day business. This being a fact how then do we create our own personal responsibility, when so much of your life is dependent on your interactions with others? In the readings Arendt talks about this idea of collective responsibility and while there is no direct contribution on your part you are still held responsible. This I believe applies to the mentality that I see in County. This idea that “we are all guilty” (pg. 148) unites the students with one another, since they see each other in the same place in life. This unity is great for creating and defining a community, but the problem that arises counteracts exactly what the community stands for; individual responsibility. In a community where “everyone is guilty”, in reality creates one where “no one is guilty” (pg.148). This is where my question arises; how do you create an environment that promotes individual responsibility, when the very community that is formed seems to promote the opposite? I don’t know the answer to this question and it vexes me when I see it played out at County. Yet at the same time you can see those students we don’t identify with this group mentality and it makes me smile when I see students try to make a difference. I bring this up because it proves that this problem of group thinking isn’t impossible to overcome, but we still need to fix the institute so that group think isn’t only overcome by those of the strongest of wills and inner discipline.