- Civilization organizes responsibility at a scale beyond individual capacity, shifting from individual to collective duty as capabilities grow.
- Modern institutions often fail by concentrating authority while displacing responsibility onto individuals through moralizing, turning structural issues into questions of personal virtue.
- Examples like air conditioning debates and carbon footprints illustrate how moralizing diverts attention from institutional failures to individual choices, blaming people for preventable suffering.
- Institutions should align authority with responsibility, but often invert this via a 'responsibility gradient' where power rises while accountability falls, exacerbated by bureaucracy.
- Moralizing leads to optimization and trauma as individuals internalize structural failures, replacing collective action with self-blame and burnout.
- Environmental and antinatalist concerns can invert from humanistic care to suspicion of humanity itself, risking a focus on reducing people rather than alleviating suffering.
- A balanced approach requires institutions to bear collective responsibilities, individuals to act within their agency, and civilization to foster flourishing without abandoning technology or ethics.
- The goal is not to eliminate personal responsibility but to ensure institutions are worthy of the power they wield, preventing the normalization of preventable suffering.