"My brother's keeper?"

I am very aware that my post yesterday was more like a pout from a first world perspective. The issues I was concerned about were really minor in the course of even my life. It was just the way I was feeling which is what this blog will deal with among other things.

The whole sense of responsibility goes back so far in time that the writers of Genesis incorporated it into the very first of the human story. Cain kills his brother Abel and when God asks where Abel is, Cain replies that he does not know and asks, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Interestingly, God does not answer that question but rather asks another, "What have you done?"

The implication being, "Yes, you are." And that implication continues throughout Judeo-Christian scripture and many other spiritual and philosophical writings. Every religious writing has somewhere in it what Christians call the Golden Rule: Do to others as you would have them do to you. Be responsible for and to others as you would have them be responsible for and to you.

We are responsible. Parents take on the responsibility of raising children, and an awesome responsibility that is! Over the years, men in particular have taken on the responsibility of making money, caring for a family, building a business. People in the military take on the responsibility of protecting and defending the nation. And politicians are supposed to take on the responsibility of representing the people who elected them.

And because we all wear this mantle of responsibility, and that mantle slips from our shoulders, we have a right to be asked (or to ask), "What have you done?"