I’ve been puzzling over a response for a while now, and still haven’t got it right, but I’m going to anyway.
Some people seem to equate “duty” with “blind obedience to the government” or something. I’ve never seen it as that - At home you have a duty to your family and your community. A good person recognizes a duty to help the less fortunate. In those times that try mens souls, there is a duty to not turn a blind eye and to try to make things better. I don’t (personally) feel I have a duty to any god, but if one was to exist it would have a duty to us. Duty doesn’t work from weak to strong - a crippled child has no duty to me. A citizen has no duty to the government, but only to the society that the government also has a duty to serve.
The decline of certain organizations reflects a decline in the tendency to talk about such things, but I don’t believe one caused the other. I’d fully expect to be mocked if I were to talk about such concepts outside certain groups, and so I don’t. Yet every week I see a group of parents concerned that their children learn something of duty, and while it is not my place to teach their children what their duty should be, I can try to show them that I have a duty to them and their generation.
“To help other people at all times”, indeed.
I’ve deleted several mean-spirited comments about various politicians trying to push their idea of duty out to all of us, and since I keep wandering off into those diatribes I’m going to post even though I realize it’s only half completed and doesn’t really seem to have a conclusion.
Crotalus, the things you list are particular duties. To me, they all fall under the rubric of “obligations to pay debts”, including the debts we owe society for providing for us. For example, I have an obligation to give blood because I owe society for providing, among other things, a store of blood that I myself might need someday.
Now, if duty means the specific things you list, we should be able to answer the OP with objective data (whether blood donations have declined, etc). Respect for these duties may have waxed or waned over the years.
But that’s not the topic of this thread as I understand it. The OP asked whether the notion of duty had been discarded. If “duty” is understood to mean “obligation to pay debts”, I don’t see that. But I suspect that people who see a decline of the notion of duty are talking about something else. Hence my request for a definition.
Duty mandates aid. I do not feel duty towards my family or my society; I help because I feel like it, not because I feel it is necessary. I would argue that’s “worth” more than a simple “I must do this because I was born here” reasoning.
It appears that the notion of duty has been replaced with a notion of “quid pro quo.”
You don’t pay taxes because it is your duty, you pay taxes because of the services you receive and the fear of jail.
To me duty goes beyond any actual personal reward. You do it because it is right, not because you will personally benefit from the action.
I pick up trash on trails I may never walk again. I rebuilt houses not just in my area, but in an area hit by Hurricane Katrina. I will never see those people again (probably), I don’t live in the area, and it cost me a week of vacation time. But I felt it was my duty.
We seem to have more “what’s in it for me” thoughts than “what can I do to help” today. Perhaps that is because of the abuse of the concept of duty when it comes to military service - starting with Korea, not just Vietnam.
One might add: How many feel a sense of community any more? Bowling alone didn’t just happen.
I’d argue that communitarian feeling today is strongest in four spheres of life:
The political.
The religious.
The socially aware, most of whom also have some degree of political and/or religious motivation.
Inside “own” groups:
a) one’s own religious denomination;
b) one’s own neighborhood (physical or, in the case of you and I tap tapping on keys at each other, virtual);
c) one’s own vocation (especially if not upwardly-mobile white-collar);
and yes, sometimes,
d) one’s own political or
e) ethnic cohort.
No aspect of 4. above is really a greater community, like a city or town (even though there are more people on the Dope than in my hometown :eek: ). But I would say “own” groups seem to have sucked up a lot of the general sense of commonweal that people liked so much about the 1930s, '40s, '50s, and certain bits of the '60s.
Which makes me ponder whether duty to community comes most out of simple hardship, and whether the succeeding generations haven’t simply Had It Too Easy. But that, in turn, implies we ought to want to make people poorer, hungrier, sicker, less educated, and less free if we’re to achieve community and foster dutiful care for it. And I’m not sure what else will do it other than the current veneration of deeply flawed traditional institutions.
I guess you view your motivations for doing various things differently than I view mine. Blood donation, for instance, is hard for me to view as a debt that I owe, and I have never thought of it that way. I have donated at least four times a year for over thirty years. The number of individuals who gave blood at least once actually rose steadily from 1997 to 2002 , but it’s still a relatively paltry 4.3 million people out of a population of 300 million. Seems like a whole lot of people feel they have no debt in that area. As I said, I don’t feel that I have a debt to pay there; I’m paid up. I feel that I have an obligation to identify some ways in which I can make a contribution to the local and global community, and then to make some of those contributions.
Voting is an example that I think falls outside of your debt model. It certainly fits my impression that in some areas the notion of duty has diminished. I believe that I have a duty to inform myself about issues and cast informed votes on all issues and candidates. This belief was planted in me by the example of my parents and the education I received. It is a belief that seems less common as time goes on.
This is so right. I chose to serve my country for 4 years out of a sense of duty. I give blood as a duty to fellow man; I fight for a cleaner environment out of duty to make a better future for mankind. I vote and serve jury duty because it is the right thing to do. Actions speak louder than words and I do what I can.
It is a deep seated care of duty that drives me. Perhaps like Paul in Saudi, I partially picked it up as a Heinlein fan, but I also got it from my Dad. He did a tour of duty in the Air Force. He believes in this country without thinking the government or any one party is always correct.
It is also our duty to speak up when we feel the government is running amok. I do see many people have abandoned the concept of duty. They ask, “What can the country do for me?” This did seem to turn during Vietnam and Watergate, but I believe duty was less common before WWII also. I suspect that widespread belief in duty by all classes has a shorter history then some might think.
My family was lesser nobility. I’m always struck by how differently my relatives on that side see the old “private laws” - as “right and duty” and you can’t have one without the other - and by how other people see them - “rights”, as if they implied no duty.
To me you can’t have responsibility without control, nor rights without duty. My right to vote is my duty to vote.
There’s some duties of mine that I hate but I still shoulder them. Cos they’re my duties and I feel like I’d be failing a long line of duty-bound ancestors if I reneged on them. They never reneged theirs.
I’d define it as: “the obligation a person has to make his or her community as strong as possible.”
Certainly there are ambiguous situations, and how a person sees or defines community shapes how that person fulfills his/her particular sense of duty.
It is most definitely not a blind deferment to authority, except in as much as obeying authority is good for the community. Soldiers obey their commanders not because it is their duty to bow to authority, but because obeying authority makes their community stronger. The goal is not obedience, but community.
With that definition, I’d say that the notion of duty is directly dependent on how much any given person values and experiences community. People often argue that we’re losing community these days, particularly with the rise of technology and the internet. I’m apt to agree, though for some the internet has provided an alternate community, as opposed to destroying community. I do think that, in general, people in virtual communities are likely to not feel the same sense of responsibility/duty that they might towards a more geographically localized community.
If duty is given as a reason for anything, yes it is obsolete. Reason should rule any debate. Duty is like the superego, placing the dead hand of tradition over the eyes of the present.
Having been alive, but young, during WWII, I can assure you duty was paramount in the minds of all. It was a different world then, people really helped each other and were concerned about the defense of our country. Soldiers were very well treated and respected. There was a draft, no one complained, we were in a fight for survival. Even those who were kids like me contributed. After school I collected old newspapers, scrap metal, anything that could be used in the war effort. I also collected money for flowers to put on the doors of families that lost loved ones. We all helped, gave what we could. I remember seeing an elderly woman on a bus stand up and give her seat to a young soldier, when he declined she said: “I am too old to do much, but I can do this, I want you to have my seat.” The soldier took the seat with tears in his eyes. I wish we could capture that feeling again, but without the war.
I know, WWII was a special time in the history of this country. I said in my post “before WWII”. I think that the US Citizens sense of Duty peek with WWII and did not wain until the Sixties, Vietnam and Watergate.