Dwain Northey (Gen X)

For as long as I can remember, we have talked about responsibility in terms of we. Our Constitution begins with “We the People,” not “I the Influencer,” “I the CEO,” or “I the Politician.” Somewhere along the way, though, we’ve managed to invert that idea. We’ve become a society that wants collective credit when things go well but individual victimhood when things go badly.

It’s a strange evolution.

When success happens, everyone rushes to the front of the line to declare, “I did that.” When failure happens, suddenly it’s, “They did this to me.”

We’ve replaced accountability with blame.

Take recent examples. Graham Plattner refuses to simply acknowledge responsibility for his own alleged sexual misconduct. Instead, the story becomes that the Democratic establishment somehow victimized him by exposing or accusing him. Whether the allegations are politically inconvenient is beside the point. If you committed the act, then the responsibility belongs to the person who committed it—not the people who reported it.

Donald Trump operates from the opposite direction but reaches the same destination. Nothing is ever his fault. Inflation? Someone else. The deficit? Someone else. International conflicts? Someone else. Every problem supposedly originated with somebody else, yet somehow he’s also the only person capable of fixing it—even when many of those problems began under his own watch.

That’s not leadership. That’s marketing.

I’ve seen this mindset outside of politics, too. In hospitals, when someone makes a serious mistake, the immediate instinct is often to blame the individual. Yet sometimes the real failure belongs to the organization. Was the employee properly trained? Were procedures clear? Was staffing adequate? If an institution sets someone up to fail, then the institution shares responsibility.

That’s where “we” matters.

Climate change is another example. No single person caused it. None of us individually filled the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. That’s a collective problem requiring collective responsibility. We all benefit from modern society, and we all bear some responsibility for improving it.

But collective responsibility has limits.

Some things simply belong to the individual.

If someone drives drunk, assaults another person, commits fraud, rapes someone, or murders someone, that isn’t society’s fault. It isn’t the media’s fault. It isn’t your political opponents’ fault. Those are personal choices. Those are moments where the word “I” matters.

“I did it.”

“I was wrong.”

“I accept the consequences.”

Those may be the hardest words in the English language.

We’ve become so eager to explain behavior that we’ve forgotten to judge behavior. Understanding why someone made a terrible choice is not the same thing as excusing it.

There is wisdom in the old coaching cliché that “there is no I in team.” Teams succeed and fail together. Organizations rise and fall together. Nations solve problems together.

But there absolutely is an “I” in responsibility.

Responsibility begins with the individual. If I made the decision, I own the decision. If we created the problem together, then we solve it together.

The trick is knowing the difference.

Our culture seems to have forgotten that distinction. We’ve become experts at outsourcing blame while privatizing success. We demand grace for ourselves and accountability for everyone else.

Maybe it’s time to reverse that equation.

Start with the mirror.

Own your mistakes.

Share the victories.

And remember that “We the People” only works when each one of us is willing to occasionally say, “I was wrong.”