Shared Social Orientation and Responsibility as Constituents

Unorganised collectives that are interesting in terms of moral responsibility are a set of individuals picked out by some normatively relevant fact. With the collective harm of climate change, this could be about things like one’s consuming habits, line of work, or the potential of the constituents to do something good together. What is common for unorganised collectives relevant for climate mitigation responsibility is that their activity is interdependent and based on shared values to some degree. Shared social orientation can help us to conceptualise our responsibility as constituents of unorganised collectives who help to shape each other’s actions and values, including through social norms. When a systemic issue becomes individualised, the structural aspects can get blurred or fade completely into the background, meaning that the overall picture is also lost in terms of responsibility. Awareness of our embeddedness in collective contexts helps us to make sense of our moral lives and responsibility in our interdependent world. I suggest we try to pay attention to the harmful structures that we are part of. More specifically, we should try to become aware of our social positions within these structures and be willing to take action to make changes for the better, should such an opportunity arise. When we become aware of our shared social orientations, change can happen even from unlikely sources.