Responsibility, some take it and some do not

Brian Bresnahan:

At what point do young Marines exceed civilian society with regard to taking personal responsibility and initiative, even under the most intense, life-threatening situations and who is that enables them to attain this level of personal productivity?

Are the time-tested methods at Parris Island and San Diego so skillfully implemented by our drill instructors that young recruits are molded into warriors, devoid of their previous civilian hesitancies and shortcomings, capable of thinking and acting for the good of their peers and themselves?

Is it the Noncommissioned Officer’s who train and teach junior enlisted Marines to become responsible, decision makers as they themselves have become?

Is it the Staff Noncommissioned Officer’s who mentor them, passing along the wisdom, leadership, and experience of their years, providing them the personal and professional tools to become self-sufficient at any level?

Those questions originally raced through my mind when watching the coverage of Hurricane Katrina. I found myself making the comparison between some in the Gulf Coast area and the Marines I’ve known who took responsibility for themselves and their fellow Marines, even through the most trying of times. The Marines stood in stark contrast to those who appeared to have made poor decisions or even any decisions on their own behalf. I knew there were many storm victims who simply lacked the means or ability to exit the path of the storm. My heart went out to them. But I also knew there were those who had both the means and the ability, yet stayed, and then had full expectations for someone else to take care of them. Why?

And why were there expectations by so many observers that those caught in the storm need not take responsibility for themselves? They demanded that someone else (usually the entity farthest from them, the federal government) be held responsible, neglecting the concept of personal responsibility.

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There is more. Most of the high functioning people left New Orleans before the storm hit. Many of the low functioning people kept on doing the things that had made them poor and dependent, and the storm did not change that. While storms never last, peoples habits do. Brian has more on how the high functioning deal with adversity.