When I do something that I think is wrong, the first thing I need to do is ask what I can do to make it right: to make restitution to anyone I have harmed, for instance. Suppose I've done that: what then? One impulse I usually have when I've done something wrong is to wish that I could literally undo it: that I could go back through time and do things differently, or at least reach back in time, grab my former self, shake her, and say: stop! think!

Unfortunately, that's impossible. But there is a next best thing: to try to figure out what on earth I can do now in order to prevent myself from doing the same sort of thing in the future. And it won't be enough just to resolve not to do it. After all, the next time I find myself in a similar situation, I don't want to confront that situation with the same flawed character or judgment that led me to do the wrong thing in the past. And if I am not to confront that situation as the same old flawed me, I will need to figure out exactly what it was that led me to do the wrong thing, and try to change it.

I will need to ask: What was it about me that led me to do this? Did I not bother to think about what I was doing? If so, why not? Was I just oblivious to the issues at stake, or afraid to think too hard about what I was doing, or what? Did I know that what I was doing was wrong? Why, then, did I do it? Was I afraid I'd look like an idiot if I didn't? Did I give in to some cruel or spiteful impulse, or was I perhaps just lazy or selfish? Did I think, at the time, that what I was doing was right? If so, why did I make this mistake? Had I not bothered to think hard enough about my own values? Did I allow myself to distort them in order to rationalize something I wanted to do independently? What, exactly, is it about me that explains why I did what I did?

Once I have answered that question, I can set to work changing my character in whatever ways seem necessary. I can try to become more perceptive, more thoughtful, less careless or callous or cruel, more willing to do the right thing even when the people around me are doing the opposite, or whatever I think might have made a difference the last time around.

Trying to figure out what led me to act wrongly is unpleasant. No one likes to admit their mistakes, and they like admitting their character flaws even less. However, in trying to figure out why I acted wrongly, I'm not motivated by self-hatred, or by a desire to cause myself pain or make myself feel guilty. (At any rate, I shouldn't be.) I am trying to figure out what about me accounts for what I did, because it's only by answering that question that I can see what I need to do in order not to do the wrong thing again. And trying to change the future is as close as I can come to changing the past. The pain is just a by-product; what motivates me is the desire to do the right thing.

Moreover, if I am not willing to do what it takes to avoid repeating what I did, that calls into question the sincerity of my belief that what I did was wrong. If I think that what I did was wrong, I must think that doing the same thing in the future would also be wrong. While I cannot affect the past, I can affect the future; and therefore the most direct way of acting on my belief that what I did was wrong is to try to ensure that I do not do the same thing again.

Likewise, if I find reflection on the moral faults which my conduct reveals mortifying, that is presumably because I think those faults are bad; and if I think that, then I must think that I should try to remove them. If it hurts me to think that I cannot erase my misdeeds from my life, then I must think that allowing myself to disfigure it further would be at least as bad. The source of my pain and the source of my efforts to change are one and the same: the fact that what I did was wrong. And while guilt does not consist solely of attempts to change those faults in me that led me to act wrongly, to the extent that it is disconnected from any such attempt, it is motivationally incoherent.

Or, in short: if you care about doing the right thing, then you should not avoid recognizing your own responsibility just because it is painful: to do that would prevent you from doing what you need to do in order not to keep on doing things wrong. Nor can you wallow in guilt at the expense of seriously trying to change your character: that, in my view, is either self-hatred or a way of avoiding the tedious work of actually becoming a decent person while using all that guilt to convince yourself that you still care about morality.

*

It's also worth noting that responsibility is the flip side of agency and power. It is, of course, possible to be active in the world without ever being responsible for anything bad, the way (by her own account) Miss Manners does: "guilt is an emotion Miss Manners does without, having taken the simple precaution of doing everything right the first time." But when you have done something wrong, the only way not to be responsible for it is not to be an agent at all.

If you are, in fact, completely powerless, the mere passive plaything of irresistible psychological forces, then no one can hold you to account for what you do. (Personally, I don't think it makes sense to say this of anyone who doesn't have a fairly serious mental disability.) But this is not a condition anyone should want to be in; and to attribute it wrongly to another person is a deep, deep insult.

Agents are responsible. It comes with the territory.

*

So what does all this have to do with the matter at hand? Well: government, according to me, is the means whereby we undertake collective action when we think it's necessary. As Matt said, it's essential that we try to figure out whether the people we have deputized to act for us are doing a good job on our behalf, and if not, try to change it. And this requires that when something goes  wrong, we ask: what, exactly, caused this? And how can it be changed, so that nothing like this ever happens again?

One reason is, as Matt says, that if we never hold public officials responsible for anything, we will deprive them of any incentive to do their jobs right. But I think that this reason for holding people responsible, though very important, is a sort of by-product of another reason that is more fundamental: that holding people responsible for what they do is the only way we have of figuring out how to prevent something that goes wrong from being repeated.

As before: we cannot change the past, but we can try to ensure that we don't repeat our mistakes. And the worse we feel about what went wrong, the more reason we have to try to figure out exactly what accounts for it, and to do whatever we can to see that the problems we discover are corrected. Typically, we conclude either that some policy or administrative structure should be changed, or that some people should lose their jobs.

Because losing their jobs, or at least (in the case of elected officials) having a harder time winning reelection, is always a possible result of doing things wrong, correcting faults in our government does, as Matt says, provide incentives for public officials to do their jobs well. But I think that the need to correct our government's faults is more fundamental.

I take it this is why Matt says that "assigning blame is a deadly serious matter." It's serious partly because to blame someone for the serious problems in the response to Hurricane Katrina is a serious matter, and should not be done lightly. Much more importantly, though, it's deadly serious because getting the right answer to the question, 'why did things go so badly wrong? Which people, or which policies or institutional arrangements, are responsible?' is the only way we have of making sure that we never again have to watch tens of thousands of our fellow citizens trapped for days without food, water, or medical care needlessly, or see them die on the sidewalks when they could have been saved, or listen to them beg for help that we should have ensured would be provided. And it doesn't get more deadly serious than that.

If we care about getting it right in the future, we have to care about figuring out who or what is responsible now, and changing whatever needs changing. And the sooner we do this, the better. Of course anyone who is in a position to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina should be helping them. If any firefighters or National Guardsmen or EMT workers in Louisiana or Mississippi are reading this, and it's not part of needed and scheduled down time, I thank you for your hard work, and politely urge you to return to it.

For the rest of us, though, there's not a lot to do besides giving whatever we can. One thing we can do, however, is precisely to try to sort this out. It might be good to wait if we could be assured that there wouldn't be any further catastrophes in the time we spend waiting. If we knew that hurricane season was over, that no terrorist attacks would happen in the next six months or so, that all the earthquakes were on holiday and all the floods in check, then we might have the luxury of waiting until "the right time", whenever that is.

But we don't. All of us in the USA, presumably, have asked ourselves what would happen if a major disaster, whether natural or man-made, befell the city we lived in. And none of us, in the wake of Katrina, has any real reason for confidence that the Federal government would manage to do whatever it needed to do quickly and efficiently. The longer that situation continues, the more likely it is that our luck will run out once again, and disaster will strike. We need to act as quickly as possible to make sure that when that happens, we are better prepared than we were for Katrina.

This is, as Matt said, deadly serious. And it is not a game. It is quite literally a matter of life and death.

(Cross-posted at Obsidian Wings)