I believe that there are five layers to responsibility, if a person is capable of explaining these layers of responsbility or at least can provide clear examples of how they have exercised them in the real-world then they have some real-world experience. They are:

1. General responsibility
2. Responsibility to/for
3. The responsibility/fault fallacy
4. Accountability versus responsibility
5. Victim mentality

1. General responsibility

Responsibility is the state of control over x, y and z. X, y and z could be just about anything, a person, a cat, a piece of information. As long as the construct exists, there will be some aspect of responsibility associated to it.

2. Responsibility to/for

Responsibility to/for is a matter of relation between two or more entities, it is a form of responsibility that is best explained through example. Here are some examples:

1. My parents are responsible for me from a legal perspective until I turn 18 years old, by then I become a legal adult and the to/for aspect shifts from my parents on to me. I now am legally responsible for myself and my parents become responsible to me, and that is if they are willing to accept it.
2. As a human being living on this planet, I can choose to be responsible to the environment but in this case the environment is not responsible for me. It is possible that I can be responsible for the environment if that is a responsibility that is clearly defined in a job description, I could take on the responsibility for the environment as a part of my general work.
3. I am responsible for my cat but my cat has zero responsibility to me, this is a one-sided variation of responsibility to/for.

It is important to note that responsibility to/for is not a construct that is absolute, it is malleable in terms of the case that it is being applied to.

3. The responsibility/fault fallacy

Where responsibility to/for is a matter of relation, the responsibility/fault fallacy is a matter of event. It makes it clear that there is a fallacy in regard to the relationship between fault and responsibility. You can be at fault for something but not necessarily responsible for the fault in terms of the remedy of the fault. Fault is past tense, while being responsible for the fault is either present or future tense.

For example, imagine you are in a restaurant, you accidentally knock over a glass and it breaks on the floor. You may be at fault for the glass breaking or at least the events that led up to glass breaking but the restaurant cannot hold you responsible for the remedy of the fault, they cannot make you pick up the broken glass. They will have to get a staff member to do so.

4. Accountability versus responsibility

It is often the case that accountability and responsibility get conflated with each other, even though they overlap with each other they are used or applied in different ways. For example, a manager can pass on the responsibility to an employee or someone on their team for a task that needs to be done but in the event that the task owner does not complete the work or something goes wrong, the business will hold the manager accountable for the work that is not done. Accountability is something that is chainable, the business can hold the manager accountable and so the manager can hold the task owner accountable.

5. Victim mentality

Victim mentality is a mental state or belief that one is not responsible for misfortunes that occur in their lives, essentially a person that subscribes to a victimized mindset are:

1. not necessarily aware that they are subscribing to said mindset
2. absolve themselves of responsbility to their problems
3. belief that they are entitled to special treatment due to their misfortunes, they have an entitlement mentality
4. feel as if bad things always happen to them and for no reason whatsoever

These are some of the attributes of victim mentality, I believe that these are the core attributes and they are all linked together in some way, one creates the other and leads to an interesting cyclical dependency.

Victim mentality does not directly relate to responsbility in the way that the three other points that I have listed in this document:

1. General responsibility
2. Responsibility to/for
3. The responsibility/fault fallacy
4. Accountability versus responsibility

It is more of a construct/concept that exists in parallel, it is important to be aware of and once you become aware of victim mentality and you are aware of the responsibility/fault fallacy you come to the awareness that all your actions, decisions, thoughts, pumping of your heart, the cells dividing in your body through the process of mitosis, the itch that you scratch on your back and everything else is in your state of control is your responsbility.

The responsibility/fault fallacy breaks victim mentality because if you understand that you may not be at fault for the events that have lead you to a misfortune in your life but you are still responsibile for how you respond in terms of the remedy of the fault.

---

Aside from the layers of responsibility that I mentioned above, there are also forms of responsibility, responsibility in different contexts such as:

1. Personal responsibility
2. Social responsibility
3. Financial responsibility
4. Professional responsibility
5. Academic responsibility
6. Environmental responsibility

These are just a few examples of the forms of responsibility but every context that exists has its own form of responsibility.

Responsibility is not fullproof, it is not absolute, it has it's edge cases and can be broken in many ways. There are variations to responsbility. Personal responsbility is a form of responsbility where a person believes that everything that occurs in their lives is in their direct state of control regardless of what has occured to them, this form of responsibility breaks victim mentality. Even though personal responsibility is a nice idea, it is hard to put in pratice in many ways. I often think of the late, great Peter Tosh, an original founding member of Bob Marley & The Wailers who once said in one of his songs "Everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die". I feel that this verse from Peter Tosh holds true for responsbility as well, it is nice to attach yourself to responsbility in your mind and believe yourself to be responsible but putting responsibility to practice in your life is hard, so hard that some people give in and have mid-life crises and throw tanturms due to their attachment to something that is fairly hard to maintain.

It also takes a collective to determine what it objectively means to be a responsible person, responsbility as an idea was constructed by someone, a person created it and because it was created by a person it was also defined and accepted by others through that person's teaching. Immanuel Kant was a famous philoshper who was well known for his quarks and odd ways of living but he subscribed to a variation of responsibiity in which he believed that you can be responsbile for someone's death but if the individual who has died subscribed to personal responsibility then they would believe that they are personally responsibile for their own death which breaks Kant's variation of responsbility.

Responsbility is a construct that can be contorted, extended, composed and twisted in so many ways but it takes a collective to define what it means to be responsibile and what does exercising responsbility looks like in a day-to-day practice. I often ruminate on responsibility, every single interation that I engage in leads me to wonder about the applicability of responsibility.

My exposure to responsibilty has been vast in my short life but I have grown found of her, I like her but as I said before, putting her to practice is not an easy task as you might believe that you are being responsible yet others think you not and vice versa. I love responsibility but it is more of an unrequited love, a love that is one-sided, a love that you give you all but will never get anything in return but you know that you give your heart to responsibilty every single day in the hopes of her loving you back but the sad reality is that it is a one-sided responsibilty that will exist till the day that you die hence an unrequited love.

If you want to know of a story of unrequited love, the most famous one is from Eric Clapton who had an unrequited love for a friend of his, George Harrison's (Guitarist of The Beatles) wife, Pattie Boyd. Eric Clapton loved her so much that he wrote a song for her called Layla (1970) which ended up being one of his most popular songs. Eventually he got want he wanted, he got the love of his life but sadly their relationship did not work out or stand the test of time but that is what life is about I guess.