Thanksgiving Resources

The holiday season is a time of reflection for many.  As we prepare to gather (or not gather) with family and friends, many of us are asking, where are we as compared to where we were last year at this time?  Things certainly aren’t back to “normal,” but for some, the situation is much improved as compared to Thanksgiving 2020.  How we respond to this question is dependent upon so many factors: how we’ve experienced the pandemic, where we are in the country, our financial situation, our political, social and cultural beliefs, and our values.  In many cases, personal perspectives may be different from those of our family and friends, and these differences may indeed come to a head over Thanksgiving dinner.  Some are asking, is it safe (link) to gather?  Others are wondering, how can we reinvent this holiday (link) and honor historical truths?  Meanwhile, still others are wondering how to best budget (link) for the holiday during a time of economic hardship.

With that in mind, we thought we’d share some resources that might help:

1. Arguments happen. The Better Arguments Project (link) tells us not to avoid them and asserts that “we don’t need fewer arguments, we just need better ones.” Explore their methods here (link).

2. Perhaps the disagreements have to do with items in the news, and trying to discern facts from fiction. You might try using this (link) thinking routine from our colleagues at Project Zero.

3. Try one of our Good Project frameworks (like the rings of responsibility (link)) to unpack differences and try to find points of commonality.  For an example, here’s (link) how TGP team member Shelby Clark used an exercise about values (link) in thinking about familial differences at this time last year.  

4. The Family Dinner Project (link) offers resources, advice, discussion starters and games to help approach the “new normal” of Thanksgiving gatherings.

Are there resources you’ve found especially helpful in facing some of these challenges, either in your classrooms or at your tables?  Share them in the comments below!

On American Presidents: Rings of Responsibility and Irresponsibility

by Howard Gardner

Caption: Image of Rings of Responsibility: Inner to Outer rings are: Self, Others, Workplace, Domain, Society

In the first months of life, we are necessarily in the midst of a small circle of relatives and friends.  Throughout history (and presumably pre-history) most of us have remained within those confines. But it is possible to broaden one’s circle—and to be involved, for better or worse, with a much larger world.

In the original Good Work Project, we developed the concept and image of Rings of Responsibility. The basic idea: As we grow and venture forth from home, we can begin to relate to larger entities and groups—to our neighborhood, our school, our community, our workplace. Ultimately, we may relate to the nation, the region, the wider world—indeed to the whole earth. As researchers seeking to understand good work, our focus was on positive relations to this ever wider set of concentric circles. But, of course, there can be less positive relations as well—one can carry out compromised or patently bad work in these several widening circles of responsibility.

Of late, I’ve been contemplating the lives of individuals who have chosen to exert responsibility with respect to the outer circles: individual who have attained powerful leadership roles in government (or other sectors), as well as individuals who have chosen to address issues of global significance—climate change, nuclear arms control, a pandemic.

For the most part, we should probably assume a default sequence of events unfolding over the course of a lifetime. That is, we should assume that even powerful leaders began with relatively small spheres of responsibility and gradually expanded to regional, national, or even global spheres of influence. Perhaps the most familiar example comes from the life of Abraham Lincoln: born with modest means in the legendary log cabin, and gradually working his way westward to Illinois and to local politics, and then eastward to the White House and national (and to some extent) international relations.

Whatever the validity of this default assumption—which accords with common sense—it is instructive to consider cases which apparently violate the canonical sequence of rings. Recently, I’ve considered the unusual sequence of events surrounding the rise of John F. Kennedy to become the youngest elected president in American History.  Kennedy was the offspring of parents who were worldly: his maternal grandfather was the mayor of Boston and a major political figure in the Democratic party. His father, also from an influential family in the Boston area, became a major business, financial, and government figure, with international as well as national credentials.  While still a youth, John Kennedy had the rare opportunity to meet with American presidents, British royalty, and the Pope—and so it was natural for him (and his siblings) at an early age to feel a relationship to, and perhaps a responsibility for, individuals who lived well beyond the neighborhood.  A similar story could be told about British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (much admired by the young Kennedy), whose family was part of an international “jet set” before that phrase had been coined. Here, we behold a textbook contrast to the Lincoln saga.

Enter President Barack Obama, who has recently authored a fascinating account of his early life and the first years of his presidency in his A Promised Land. On one imaginable account, Obama would seem to have been a textbook case of someone who had to work his way over the decades through the rings of responsibility—culminating at the height of his career in nomination and election for the Presidency. And yet, as I connect the dots, Obama’s case is as similar to Kennedy’s as it is to Lincoln’s. Moreover, it may exhibit some of the same deficiencies as well as the same assets.

Of course, it’s only one case, but it can stimulate hypotheses that could be tested.

Several aspects of Obama’s background are rare in U.S. presidential biographies:

• Absence of a father: While his father was alive during the first years of the future president’s life, young Barack essentially never knew his father. Accordingly, he was free of any constraints that the father might have imposed on him while also being able to imagine him as he wished him to be. Other figures in history without father figures have described both the freedom and the burden of this familial constellation.

• A mother with a career of her own: Most American’s presidents have had powerful and influential mothers, perhaps more often than they have had potent father figures.  But Stanley Ann Dunham was unusual in that she was a working anthropologist, who traveled, taught, advised, wrote and juggled. Much of Barack’s childrearing was presided over by his maternal grandparents, two attractive figures.

• International travel: Though of modest means, young Barack had the opportunity to travel—notably to Indonesia, where he lived for awhile as a child. He also travelled around the US and lived for years in Hawaii, to which his grandparents had retired.

• Bi-racial parentage: Obama was able to move within and across groups but perhaps never felt like he belonged to either group—the delineation and scope of the ring was unclear.

Clearly very gifted and with an attractive personality, Obama had the usual uncertainties about career and life choices. As he reflects in the memoir:

I understood the absurdity of my vision, how wide the gap was between my grand ambitions and anything that I was actually doing in my life. I was like a young Walter Mitty, a Don Quixote with no Sancho Panza…my preference for navel gazing over action.

But once he had decided to go into electoral politics, his rise was meteoric—at least as swift as John Kennedy’s—and perhaps swifter. Kennedy was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1946 and to the presidency in 1960. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1997, the United States Senate in 2004, and the Presidency in 2008.

I am content to leave it to historians to judge the success of the Obama presidency. But his recent memoir reveals what was long suspected: that he gladly grasped for the wider rings of responsibility, but (like future President John Kennedy), he was not particularly interested in or adept at the intermediate rings.

Evidence:  

• While pleased to have been elected easily to the Illinois Senate, Obama did not find the work of much interest. He was glad that the sessions were short and pleased whenever he could leave Springfield and return to his family in Chicago.  As he reflects

A state senator wasn’t a glamorous post…on the other hand I had start somewhere and pay my dues…Also the Illinois state legislature was in session only a few weeks out of the year.

His election to the US Senate was triumphal and tremendously important. But in the Senate, which proceeds so much by seniority, it would ordinarily have taken decades for Obama to reach a position of power and influence.

Instead, almost from the time of his election—even more than John Kennedy, who had been interested in the Vice presidency in 1956—Obama was talked about as a future presidential candidate. He was an immediate media sensation at a time when media was extraordinarily powerful and influential. And when Senate majority leader Harry Reid told Obama that he was a strong  potential candidate, and that powerful Senator Charles Schumer concurred, Obama ceased active involvement in senatorial affairs and began to run the presidency. We might contend that he catapulted from being an Illinois representative directly to being a presidential candidate.

Once elected president, Obama moved easily and readily into being a global figure. In his first year in office he gave a historic speech in Egypt to the Muslim world; he won the Nobel Prize for Peace; he travelled around the globe and had reasonably effective relations with the gamut of world’s leaders.

But at home there was much essential work to do—to repair the economy after the fiscal crisis of 2007-2008; to make health care available and affordable; and to attempt other national initiatives, ranging from higher wages to better highways.

Obama had good ideas, capable advisers, and the ability to speak knowledgeably in many forums.

But like his predecessor, John Kennedy, Obama did not like the wheeling and dealing that is required if one is pass legislation in a government composed of three equal branches. Put sharply: he did not fully understand that making law was, in Bismarck’s immortal analogy, like “making sausage.” One had to be willing to speak to everyone tirelessly, and to make compromises widely and predictably, if one wants to get legislation passed.

Consider Obama’s own reflections. To get TARP relief, he had, to his own distaste, bargain with four senators—Collins and Snowe from Maine, Nelson from Nebraska, and Specter from Pennsylvania. 

None of these senators were shy about charging a hefty toll… even as their priorities added billions, the group insisted that the overall bill had to come in under $600 billions, because any figure higher than that just seemed too much …some went so far as to suggest that I barnstorm against Snowe, Collins, Specter, and Nelson in their home states…I told them this wouldn’t happen.

To be sure: it is not essential that the President always get involved in the making of political sausage. If you have a supermajority, it’s not necessary.  If you have Lyndon Johnson as your vice president (which JFK did), you have someone who can not only bargain with the opposite party, but who actually enjoys the give-and-take. Or, if you do not like the bargaining with individual legislators yourself, you can form a relationship to the leader of the opposition—which is what Republican Ronald Reagan did with “Tip” O’Neill, a fellow Irishmen and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

And whatever you do, don’t make fun of the leader of the Opposition—which is what President Obama did at the 2013 White House Correspondents meeting, where he quipped,  “Would YOU like to have a drink with Mitch McConnell?”

On reflection, Obama came to realize what he may have lacked:

FDR would never have made such mistakes…He’d known that in a crisis people need a story that makes sense to their hardships and spoke to their reactions… a morality tale with clear good guys and bad guys and  a plot they could easily follow… governance could not be so antiseptic that it set aside the basic stuff of politics: you had to sell your program, reward supporters, punch back against opponents, and amplify the facts that helped your cause while fudging the details that didn’t… whether trapped in my own high-mindedness, I’d failed to tell the American people a story they could believe in, and whether, having ceded the political narrative to my critics, I was going to be able to wrest it back.

So much for Barack Obama—and the costs for not having navigated mid-level rings of responsibility.

What about his successor?

Donald Trump was elected as essentially a political novice. It’s difficult to think of any president who arrived in the White House with so little experience in the give-and-take of electoral politics—the closest examples would be those Presidents who had previously been generals—Eisenhower, Grant, Taylor, Jackson come to mind. And so, Trump had to improvise his mode of dealing with legislation.

Essentially he didn’t. Instead, he dealt directly with his fans and public—those to whom he tweeted, or spoke directly through Fox News and Talk Radio. 

If he felt responsible to anyone beside himself, it would have been to these constituents.

And so it is worth asking about his own family background. Unlike that of most other presidents, Trump’s relationship with his mother is clouded in mystery. Our only clues come from the memoir of niece Mary Trump. On the memoirist’s account, Trump’s mother was distant and ill—her relation to her five children is unknown. Donald Trump was essentially raised by—or at least imprinted on—a self-made millionaire who was extremely tough-minded and who skirted the law for most of his life.  One might say that Fred Trump went through the rings of irresponsibility and that his son followed his examples. But this is not the occasion for further speculation.

© Howard Gardner 2021

John F. Kennedy and the Rings of Responsibility

by Howard Gardner

For those of us over the age of 70, the name “John F. Kennedy” brings back vivid memories: his youthful energy,  meteoric rise to the presidency,  apparently storybook marriage, event-filled 1000 days in his office—and of course, his tragic assassination and the ill luck that plagued and has continued to plague the Kennedy family.  As his aide Daniel Patrick Moynihan reflected shortly after Kennedy’s death, “We’ll laugh again but we’ll never be young again.”

Of course, for those a generation younger, Ronald Reagan is vivid while Kennedy is but a distant name—just as, for my parents’ generation, Franklin Roosevelt dominated their consciousness, while his cousin Theodore was just for the history books... and the face of Mt Rushmore.

But whether you know the details of Kennedy’s life, or just some headlines from movies or  stories, you probably have an opinion of his presidency:  how successful it was, whether he achieved what he wanted, whether what he achieved was good for the country, how he related to persons, institutions, and issues—to put it bluntly, whether, as a president, he carried out “good work”, was OK, or not up to the task.

I’ve wondered this myself for many years—and my own views have swung back and forth. 

On the ‘"good Kennedy” side of the scale:  he was highly intelligent and articulate, made excellent appointments, and after some early blunders, reached wise and courageous decisions, particularly with reference to foreign affairs.  Of critical importance, once he realized that the struggle for control over Vietnam was a never-ending morass, he would have found a way to withdraw American forces…. and the latter part of the 1960s would have been entirely different

On the “not good” side of the scale:  he was a spoiled East Coast playboy.  His father, a person of great wealth and questionable ethical standards, “bought” his son elected offices, including the presidency.  JFK himself was an ardent cold warrior; he displayed cowardice with respect to the case of Senator Joseph McCarthy and was as diffident as possible on civil rights.  And as a man of the mid-century, who had accused the Republicans of allowing a missile gap with the Soviet Union, he would never have had the courage to withdraw from Indo-China .

But now I have two new tools with which to ponder this question: a biographical tool—an impressive biography of the young Kennedy; and a conceptual tool—the rings of responsibility

A Biographical Tool

I had thought that we had our fill of books about JFK, but now Swedish-born Harvard historian Fredrik Logevall has written a hefty volume on the first part of Kennedy’s life—up through his unsuccessful bid for the vice-presidency in 1956. (Still to come in Volume 2: JFK’s run for the presidency in the late 1950s; his closely won election in 1960; and the 1000 days before his assassination). The book is thoroughly researched, carefully argued, and well written. I doubt that we will need to have another book on young Kennedy. Unlike Robert Caro, author of five volumes on Lyndon Johnson, Logevall has not devoted most of his writing life to a single President—and yet, the Logevall volumes may well become the definitive life of JFK.

As one who has become increasingly critical of JFK over the years, I can affirm that Logevall does not attempt to hide JFK’s weak spots—his reckless womanizing,  even with women whose other political or criminal liaisons were being investigated by the FBI;  his careless treatment of one-time friends, his startling insensitivity to wife Jackie’s wants and needs, his reluctance to speak out on issues of civil rights,  the dispute about how much he  himself wrote of the Pulitzer Prize winning “Profiles of Courage,” and most damningly, his unwillingness first to denounce and then to vote to censure the reckless demagogue Senator Joseph McCarthy (who was  a friend of the senior Kennedy and for a time the boss of brother Robert Kennedy).  At the same time,  JFK seems to be admired by the author—I expect that the Kennedy Presidency will get high marks in volume 2.

I’m neither an historian or a biographer.  I was engrossed by the book (read it in two sittings) but don’t feel competent to comment on it critically. But as a social scientific researcher—one long interested in what it takes to carry out “good work”—I was struck by an unusual and unexpected aspect of young JFK’s life.

The Rings of Responsibility  

In our studies of ‘good work (thegoodproject.org), we denote and analyze individuals’ recognition of the “rings of responsibility”—these are the areas of life experience about which individuals show (or do not show) concern.  For the most part, young children are interested in and concerned about themselves and their immediate family—psychologists often speak about the egocentrism of the young. Our research has revealed that circles gradually expand—as they grow, individuals become concerned about friends; then about neighbors and those who live in their community; then as they become adults, about the atmosphere and relations at their workplace and the health of their profession; and gradually, in the most impressive cases, about their relation to the wider world, including individuals and even regions of which they do not have much personal experience.

On this analysis JFK turns out to have been very unusual. From a very early age, he was interested in large scale adventures involving conquering heroes; and while many young people, especially boys, admire super-heroes, JFK was equally interested in live historical figures—most particularly, by Winston Churchill. (It helped that as a youth he had met many political and religious leaders, including the Pope, but so had dozens of other young persons who came from powerful families).  Nor did he simply echo his father’s views—while his father clashed repeatedly with Winston Churchill, JFK admired Churchill’s foresightedness and his conduct in the 1930s and thereafter.

An indifferent student throughout his formal education (though he was talented enough and wealthy enough to gain access to elite institutions), young JFK  focused on what he found most intriguing:   political and historical events and figures—the outermost rings in our scheme. That’s what he thought about, studied in depth, wrote about, identified with—from childhood on.

JFK’s family was incredibly close knit. He was the third of nine children; they all spent a great deal of time together and were tightly bonded with one another.  Within the family, the boys took unquestioned precedence; no matter how personally impressive they might have seemed to others, the girls were almost considered decorative. Father Joseph Kennedy was a  lifelong womanizer, whose covert and overt infidelities were tolerated by his wife, and the five sons clearly saw this pattern as one to be emulated—sometimes fathers and sons even competed for the affection of the same woman! 

Tellingly, when any non-family member attempted to broach the family circle in anyway, these ‘intruders’  were clearly and sometimes roughly rebuffed. Indeed, throughout her relatively short and (we learn) very tumultuous marriage to “Jack”, Jacqueline Kennedy never felt that she belonged in the family. The inner ring was very tight and not easily broached. Tragically,  Rosemary,  the one disabled child, was lobotomized and essentially expelled from the family.

Once his older brother Joseph had been killed in an air crash in World War II (when JFK was in his middle 20s), JFK clearly became the family member destined for politics. And indeed, right after the War, with ample help from his father’s financial base and from all members of the family, he was elected to the House of Representatives. He began a rapid rise to the Presidency, indeed at the time of his ascendancy to that office, he was the youngest person ever to win a presidential election.

During his relatively brief terms in the House and Senate, JFK worked hard and was deemed competent; but biographer Logevall  suggests that (unlike most Massachusetts politicians who gained national stature) JFK was really not interested in local or regional issues—and, as noted, the young politician steered away from issues which were controversial and might lose him votes in forthcoming elections.  From his first days in the House of Representatives he had his eye on the Presidency and – with whatever help he could garner—would do what was necessary to achieve that goal. 

Importantly, in addition to the assistance of  cash and kin, Kennedy also had incredible human help along the way—friends, hired staff assistants, and above all Theodore Sorensen, a gifted young lawyer who essentially devoted his life to JFK from the time that they first met in 1953 until Kennedy’s assassination and indeed, one could add, until Sorensen’s own death almost  half a century ahead.

It must be stressed that Kennedy gained the support of such individuals not only for his intellectual and political acumen because of a property that cannot be purchased or faked—personal charisma. Logevall presents numerous vivid examples of how young JFK was able to attract and retain the affection of others—men and women, young and old,  from his own Boston-Irish class and from demographies remote, in person or via the media, notably television . Indeed, few of us who were enamored of Kennedy in the late 1950s and early 1960s knew him personally (I once got a letter from him, no doubt signed by an office machine, and actually spied him at a  Harvard football game a month before he was assassinated); but we felt a strong attraction to him, his photogenic family, and his “New Frontier”.  

Returning to the rings of responsibility, JFK seems to have been quite unusual. I find little evidence in the biography for a concern with the feelings and reactions of peers that transcends the transactional: JFK was charming but when individuals—male or female—were no longer of use to him, he had few qualms about removing himself from their circle. (I should acknowledge his heroic efforts to save members of his naval crew when their boat PT109 was sunk). By the same token, while he paid lip service to the issues that arose in Boston or in the New England region, these clearly did not compel his attention. And when there were national issues on which he might have spoken up—specifically civil rights and McCarthy—he found it convenient to mute his tongue and pocket his pen. 

Perhaps we can say that Kennedy was destined to occupy the widest circles of responsibility—dealing with issues of war and peace across the international landscape—but that does not indicate whether he would handle them effectively. For one person’s considered view, we must await the second volume of Logevall’s biography.

The case of JFK raises intriguing further issues. How usual or unusual is it for individuals who seek and attain the highest rings of power to move easily to that region or even to skip the intermediate rings altogether? Comparisons  could be instructive: with others who attain national and international leadership roles at an early age—Churchill, deGaulle come to mind; as well as with others, like Richard Nixon,  Ronald Reagan, or Bill Clinton—who were able to transcend a childhood with few of the supports that the Kennedy children took for granted.

© Howard Gardner 2020

Encouraging College Students’ Responsibility During the Pandemic

by Shelby Clark

A few weeks ago, The Good Project researcher Kirsten McHugh wrote about “Parents as Educators: A Good Work Perspective”. But what about the other side of the story--the students? What does it mean for students to be good workers during a pandemic?

As college campuses have become the new “hot spot” for COVID-19 outbreaks, this question has become even more important. College students consistently encounter ethical dilemmas, but the pandemic has thrust new ethical dilemmas upon them, such as whether to “snitch” on fellow classmates holding gatherings, or even large parties where numerous people might become infected. Because of COVID-19 we are now asking young adults to think more and more beyond their own needs, and to be responsible as well to others in their community and society; yet, we know from past research that youth often have difficulty with such “beyond the self” thinking. With COVID-19 constantly throwing new dilemmas in young people’s ways, how can we as educators and adults help our students to think about their responsibilities to self and others during the pandemic? 

When trying to help youth handle ethical dilemmas, it is helpful to use a tool such as The Good Project’s Rings of Responsibility. This tool was originally designed to help individuals think about to whom or what they are responsible in their work. The rings of responsibility are five concentric circles that begin with responsibility to oneself, and then expand to wider and wider areas of responsibility. The second ring represents responsibility to others, like family, peers, and friends; the third ring represents responsibility to community, such as one’s school or neighborhood; the fourth ring represents responsibility to one’s profession, which, for students, indicates commitment to being a student and the rules and norms of being a student; and the fifth ring represents responsibility to the wider world or to society as a whole (see image). 

Let’s take the example of whether a student should “snitch” on their classmate’s unallowed party on a college campus in the age of COVID-19. Below, I consider how I might reflect on my own responsibilities if I were a student in such a situation. 

• Self: I would most likely feel guilty if I did not inform on my classmates. As such, “snitching” would be a way to ease my guilt and by doing so act responsibly towards myself.

• Others: Perhaps the classmate holding the party is a close friend; if so, I would think that my responsibility to “others'' would be to not tell on the friend in order to save my friendship. 

• Community: On the one hand, I can see that being responsible towards my community means informing on the party; in doing so I can protect the public health of other students on the college campus. On the other hand, I’ve seen as a researcher that when students are expelled for misbehavior, it can create stark divisions on campuses that lead to mistrust amongst the student body--it may therefore be better for the community’s mental well-being that I keep silent after all.  

• Profession: Are there codes of conduct for the students at their university regarding these parties? If so, informing an authority is likely the correct thing to do according to the student code of conduct. I would also need to consider whether doing so would promote or hinder student learning at the university, which is, ultimately, the “point” of higher education. 

• Wider World: In light of the ripple effect seen from a variety of parties held during the pandemic, it seems likely that informing on a classmate’s party could save lives. 

Ultimately, the choice becomes whether I would not inform on the hypothetical campus party and potentially save a friendship and campus dynamics, or whether I would “snitch” and uphold the college community’s public health, the student code of conduct, societal public health, and ease my own guilt. For me, as an adult, the choice is clear: the outer rings of responsibility should come first, and I would inform on the party. However, for youth the choice is often not as transparent. 

Given that youth often have difficulty thinking beyond their own self-interest, it is more important than ever that adults and educational institutions continue to find ways to help young people to think about, and make decisions in light of, their broader impacts on society. Certainly, considering the rings of responsibility doesn’t give a student the answer of what to do in a difficult situation. In fact, students might feel that it pits their responsibilities against one another--what’s good for them versus what’s good for others. Ultimately, though, it should help a student consider the pros and cons of a situation, and how they might weigh their various responsibilities to self and others when things become difficult. We know the pandemic will continue to throw new ethical challenges in the way of our students; as such, let’s give students the skills needed to become the socially responsible adults the world needs.

Intertwining the Rings of Responsibility

by Kirsten McHugh, with thanks for editing by Howard Gardner and Lynn Barendsen

A popular activity coming out of The GoodWork Toolkit is “Thinking About Responsibility”. The activity asks the reader to “Think about an activity or work that is particularly important for you” and poses a simple but poignant question: “In this work, to whom or what do you feel responsible?”.

The Good Project relates the answers to these questions to what is termed “The Rings of Responsibility”. As seen in the graphic below, the rings are described as:

• responsibility to the self;

• responsibility to others (including family, peers, and colleagues);

• responsibility to the workplace;

• responsibility to the domain or profession; and

• responsibility to society.

In general, individuals—and especially young persons—tend to focus on the tightest rings, the self and others (e.g., close friends and family). Working adults often include their place of business, and sometimes the sector in which they work. Only the rare person—mostly older “trustees”—thinks about their relationship to the broadest society and to the whole planet. One reason why Greta Thunberg is so unusual is that, while still a young person, she has focused on responsibilities to the planet.

With all the recent changes to our daily lives and upheaval in our social and political realms, many of us have broadened the ambit of our thinking. The Rings of Responsibility can help us to conceptualize and to understand how current events may have nuanced our answers to the question “to whom or what do you feel responsible?”

The pandemic has made many of us more aware of how interconnected we all are—from our own social circles, to local communities, and even to our fellow human beings around the world. It has also brought up new ethical considerations. We wear masks in part to protect ourselves, but mostly to protect others, including persons whom we do not know. We have groceries packed by individuals who are exposed to others or delivered to our home by people whom we do not know. Front line workers from countries that we have not visited and may not have heard of risk their own lives—and put household family members at risk—in order to care for the sick. Our decisions not to shop in brick-and-mortar stores cause people to lose their jobs and whole companies to declare bankruptcy. Migrant workers who we count to clean our buildings are not allowed to return to their home country or to come back to ours. Women shoulder the brunt of household responsibilities and family care, despite one in three being an “essential worker.”

Looking at this change through the lens of the Rings of Responsibility, we can see how this crisis has expanded our purview past our normal consideration of the self and others, and pushed us to examine the outer rings in ways that we may not have been quite as aware of in the past. As a result, some of us are now seeing the rings as connected and intertwined rather than as distinct from one other. In some cases, this pushes us to act differently than we may have in the past. Among our own research team, one member has continued to pay their housekeeper even though she has not been able to come to work for three months. Similarly, another member paid pre-school tuition for four months even though the school was closed and the child was uninterested in engaging with teachers online.

The Black Lives Matter movement provides yet another impetus to reflect on the Rings of Responsibility. As many of us personally acknowledge that we may not have been as active as we would like to have been in the past, and use that as motivation to be more hands on at this time, we should also remember to address issues in our workplaces and professional domains. Perhaps your organization has always hired from within its own convenient networks, but the movement has made it clear that it is time to explore new avenues for engaging a more diverse pool of recruits. Put in Good Project terms—if you haven’t in the past, it is now time to move beyond the “neighborly morality” of hiring and promoting those from within your own community and begin to consider responsibility to the domain and society through diverse recruiting strategies. Efforts towards these outer rings can help contribute to a more equitable society moving forward. 

The ways in which each individual translates a renewed sense of responsibility into action will be unique and depend heavily on their role and profession. For example, a police officer assigned to a peaceful protest march might chose to walk alongside community members in solidarity; a sports journalist who wouldn’t normally cover the movement might feature a story about changing a racist team name or a story about an international athlete taking a knee in support of Black Lives Matter; a history teacher might create and share out age appropriate lesson plans outside of the expected curriculum, linking this movement to similar efforts in the past. Just recently, the head of NBCUniversal News Group announced his 50% Diversity Challenge (a commitment to hiring 50% women and 50% people of color), PepsiCo Inc. and Mars Inc. announced their dropping of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s brand lines due to racist roots, and high-ranking officers are speaking out against military bases named after confederate generals. We each have different levels of influence within our workplaces, and yet we all play a role in contributing to or deconstructing systems of oppression within professional domains.

The current pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement have pushed some of our thinking past the inner rings of self-others-workplace and further into the outer rings concerning the domains in which we work and the societies in which we live. In some cases, we have also begun to see and feel the interconnectedness of these rings and the effects of our actions within them. For this, perhaps we might also consider a more interconnected image of the rings (below) alongside the traditional bullseye (seen above).

Has your answer to the question, “To whom or what do you feel responsible?” changed over the past year? Have you considered how you can address these issues in your various rings of responsibility? More specifically, have you reconsidered your workplace hiring strategies? Have you shifted contributions to a new charity, or decided to donate time to a different organization? Have you considered a career change to directly address these issues in your professional life?

If you feel moved to share your own reflection on your responsibilities with us, The Good Project has expanded our efforts to improve our curriculum so that it better reflects the diversity of human experience. As we strive for greater variety and representation in our dilemmas, we are asking individuals to submit their own stories of responsibility by clicking the button below.