Are You Responsible for Everything that Happens to You in your Life?

To me it seems that the obvious answer is 'no'. I am not responsible for things which are beyond my control. If a meteorite were to crash through my roof right now and smash off my big toe, I would not be responsible for the loss of my big toe.

However, if I have a choice which directly, in a manner I have foreseen, leads to the outcome, then I am responsible. So, if I know that pushing this glass will knock it off the table, and that it is then likely to break, and do it anyway, then I am responsible for breaking the glass.

Complications enter in several different ways. What about when I ought to have foreseen the outcome, but did not? To me, it seems that I am still responsible to the degree that it was an easy and obvious possible outcome to predict, and that I was negligent in not foreseeing it. This sets up a continuum of responsibility, from full to lesser.

Similarly, I may be an actor in a complex situation where the actions of other actors all contribute to the outcome. Here, I can also be only partly responsible, to the extent that my own actions contributed foreseeably to the whole situation (German Nazi’s for example).

I might add that it is becoming increasingly common (in our culture of victimhood) to claim that I am not responsible for my actions because some outside event means that I did not choose freely. For example, I am not responsible for my choice to rob you, because my parents beat me as a child. I find this trend deeply disturbing and dangerous to our society.