Going on a holiday by plane or train? Spending more time with your family or working a few extra hours? Allowing more refugees in Europe or not? Questions concerning responsibility. Responsibility is consciously choosing to take care of something or someone and accepting the consequences of your choice to do it or not do it. To accept these consequences knowledge about your choice is necessary. However, the choices are often not only two sided. The current world is extremely complex. Life on earth is getting even more complex by new developments, the infinite access to information and the continuously growing connections.
Nevertheless, is the search for responsibility is a hot topic. We share posts from Greta Thunberg on Instagram, we proudly buy biofoods, we vote for a party which claims to reach a perfect balance for refugees and love to talk about women’s quota on every party. But does this really help? Aren’t we fooling ourselves?
You realise what taking your responsibility can do for you and your environment, but still you sometimes choose to not do what it actually takes. Does responsibility, as we know it now, ask too much of us, because of which we just let it go? Do we have to learn again how to prioritise? In society private life, professional environments and public space are intertwined. Additionally, there are institutes trying to direct our way of acting. Is it strange that we sometimes choose the easy way out and not surrender all the way to our responsibilities? What does it mean if we do so? Who does take responsibility then?
During the forty-first symposium of the Veerstichting we challenge ourselves to have an open conversation. We confront ourselves and search for the chances the quest for responsibility brings us. A complex world asks for a critical view on the way we act. Who is responsible here?
Partners
Cultiveer
