Do Your Part

This is an all hands on deck kind of year.

Our school is influenced by the world that surrounds it. What happens outside of school walls comes to school. In this manner, we teach and learn in an open system. For this reason, everyone’s effort is necessary to keep our community functioning.

A dialogue in Chapter 24 of Epictetus’s Enchiridion frames this issue:

--It’s enough if everyone plays their part. Wouldn’t you benefit your community by adding another loyal and law abiding citizen to its rolls?

--Yes.

--Then, evidently you have it in you to benefit it all on your own.

--Well, what will my role in the community be?

--Whatever position you are equipped to fill, so long as you preserve trust and integrity. If you lose that in your zeal, what use will you be to the community once you have been rendered shameless? (24.4-5).

In this dialogue the philosopher is attempting to argue that “it is enough if everyone plays their part” and does not get too concerned with what lies beyond their control. In particular, he urges the student not to be concerned with their reputation and distinction because that is only an impression held by others, and not under their direct control. He warns that getting concerned with what is beyond our control leads to unhappiness. In short, comparison is the source of misery. On the other hand, playing our part, being useful to others and making a contribution leads to purpose and fulfillment.

His idea applies well to our own community. We each have an important role to play. Each day we choose to show up on time, prepared, with the materials we need, and engage with others in the common pursuit of learning, our community stays strong and efficient. Better yet, if we have excess capacity or find a particular task comes easy, we should offer our help to others. As a result, each of us adds surplus value to the system. We give the best of what we have to offer, others benefit, they offer their best, and the virtue cycle begins to sustain itself.

When the opposite happens, the community weakens and everyone is affected.

If we are late, unprepared, lack the tools we need, create social tension, or generally act selfish, our outcomes collectively suffer, the system grows less efficient, and resentment builds as others are eventually forced to make up for these deficits. One person’s apathy can result in a slippery slope to degradation and decay.

Collectively, this suggests that each individual has an important role to play. That each of us has a unique ability that adds to the overall wellbeing of the community if we are willing to share it.

The bystander experiment is a good reverse illustration of this idea. In the experiment, individuals were less likely to help a person in need if they were part of a larger group. The assumption was that surely someone else would act. The result was that no one did, and the person in distress continued to suffer. This became known as diffusion of responsibility and leads to tragedies of the commons. It’s also the effect that underlies mob mentality or groupthink. We tend to lose our moral direction and willingness to help when we are submerged in a group. We can either do really stupid things or do nothing at all because we lose our sense of individuality.

So the challenge is to maintain our sense of self. The sense that we have agency, and that our actions matter. This is John Donne’s argument when he claims that “no man is an island unto himself.” What we do, or fail to do, has an impact on others. That impact eventually comes all the way back to affect us for good or ill whether we are aware of it or not. Even the smallest actions can have a massive impact over time. So, as Donne urged, “ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

Mister Rogers made the same observation as Epictetus and Donne centuries later when he observed that,

“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility.

It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, no my problem!’

Then, there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”

So, in a world that needs us to play our part, choose agency over apathy; choose to act rather than to sit out; choose to make a positive contribution instead of being a bystander.

We rise or fall by the accumulation of our individual actions over time.