[pueblito]

I’m an American and I fail to understand what duty I am failing to meet? I pay my taxes, obey the laws, treat others with respect and honor my ancestors - as do nearly every single person I know. What duty am I missing? Have not millions of Americans served their country already?

[curryst]

I'm American as well; those things don't count as a duty, they're just things you legally have to do. Duty is beyond the things you have to do without being thrown in jail.

Many military people do feel a sense of duty, and that's why they serve or served. In a civilian sense, duty would be things like acknowledging that a park is a shared space. If you walk past a piece of garbage and don't pick it up, you have failed in your duty to maintain the shared space even if you aren't the one that dropped it. A contemporary one would be cutting down on CO2 emissions. It's everyone's duty to cut back on that; someone who bought a Hummer would be shamed, as would people who keep their thermostats super high or low. Gossip spreads that you're a clod who's damaging the environment we all share, and you get shamed.

People used to patch potholes in public roads near their house because they felt a duty to keep the neighborhood nice.

These things don't happen anymore. I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing, since there were certainly downsides to duty. I don't even know if it's legal to patch potholes in public roads anymore.

[pbourke]

You have precisely nailed it.

Following the rules (when there is no hard penalty for breaking them) and being community-oriented (beyond your own family/church/social circle) are a necessary but not sufficient part of duty.

As another Canadian in the US, I have noticed this difference as well. I have also regrettably noticed Canada becoming more like the US in this regard as time goes on.

[throwaway201103]

There seems to be a line somewhere between doing one's duty, and enabling other's bad behavior, based on the examples given. E.g. why am I enabling the city's negligence in keeping the park clean or the potholes filled by doing these things myself, when I already pay taxes ostensibly to pay other people to do these things.

[pbourke]

We take our dog to a park where dogs are permitted but must be leashed. Signs are posted that the “leash law is strictly enforced” but it’s not, and in fact has never been.

Most dog owners follow the rules but there is a small cadre of regulars who don’t. These people are aware of the rules (I know because I’ve sometimes reminded them of their existence) but choose to ignore them.

Now, who cares, right? What does it matter if some people choose not to follow this nanny-state rule?

Well, here’s what: once or twice a month we’re forced to end our walk early when someone has an unruly dog off leash in the direction that we’re walking. We’ve spoken to others who have had the same experience.

The park has a children’s playground and multiple sports fields. Many of the regular users are elderly and they choose this park because the path is paved and level. Not everyone appreciates being approached by an off leash dog.

So the off leash dog owners either don’t care about or don’t comprehend the effect of their actions on the rest of the community. This is a minor example of a lack of duty contributing to a “tragedy of the commons”

[marcus_holmes]

similar is the "return the shopping trolley" thing - identified as almost uniquely representing an act demonstrating commitment to community. Not returning the shopping trolley to the designated space is not punished. But if enough people don't return their trolleys then the whole system breaks down and the car park becomes unusable.

waits for American to suggest shooting the shopping trolley to solve the problem

[corty]

shoot the unruly dog in defence of a child. problem solved.

You should not be ashamed to get rid of an animal that threatenes people.

[sushisource]

What an incredibly boneheaded comment. The kind that makes me worry about the future of HN.

Not only are you asking someone to literally kill an animal, something many people are de-facto not going to be comfortable with, you're knowingly recommending something I'm almost certain you know deep down isn't reasonable because it'd be a heinous overreaction, and it'd result in a mountain of paperwork and legal troubles for the commenter you replied to.

Ridiculous.

[pbourke]

That wasn’t the point. The point is people’s illegal enjoyment of the park is actually impeding the legal enjoyment of the park by others.

Some sense of duty along the lines of “I’ll follow the rules in the park even if it inconveniences me” seems to be missing.

[pdonis]

Part of it is probably just the cost of doing one's "duty". Picking up a piece of litter and throwing it in a nearby trash can is a very low cost thing to do, so even if technically the city is supposed to have someone picking up the trash in a public park, an individual who sees some litter can still clean it up with minimal effort.

Filling potholes, OTOH, is a much higher cost thing to do, and so people are more likely to feel that the city should be using the money they have already paid in taxes to do it. (Another aspect is probably also legal risk--if I decide to fill a pothole and do it wrong and someone suffers damage to their car, I might get sued. The city has many ways of mitigating that risk that I, as an individual, do not.)

[pdonis]

> A contemporary one would be cutting down on CO2 emissions. It's everyone's duty to cut back on that

You have just illustrated why the concept of duty has lost a lot of power: it got misused.

I don't agree with you that it is my duty to cut back on CO2 emissions, because I don't agree with the underlying factual belief that leads you to make that claim. Every claim of duty rests on some underlying factual belief like that: but if we're talking about, say, the duty to pick up litter in a public park because it's a shared space, the underlying factual belief--that the public park is a shared space with shared responsibility for maintenance, and that littering decreases the value of that space--is much easier for everyone, or at least a majority, to agree on.

Of course, that still doesn't guarantee that everyone will agree; someone else upthread described kids in a public park telling him to mind his own business when he pointed out that they were littering. They obviously didn't share his factual belief about what kind of shared space the public park was or the impact of littering on it. But it took quite some time for society to reach the point where that concept of duty was no longer felt. And a major reason why that happened was that people with certain policy agendas tried to manipulate other people's sense of duty based on factual beliefs that weren't as widely accepted or easily supported as the belief about public parks and littering.

[contrast]

Bottom line is, if you do all those things and most everybody you know does too, you’re truly exceptional.

Even perfectly dutiful people usually know someone who clearly resents paying taxes (which at the very least encourages others not to fulfil their duties), or has no particular regard for the law beyond not getting caught. Most people know folks who vocally disrespect entire categories of people. Most people know folks who deny climate change, which clearly brings with it duties that would not otherwise exist.

If you don’t really know anyone like that, you’ve got yourself a nice living environment. That’s great - but there’s a genuine concern out there for people who know a range of folks. Even you yourself will be affected by significant externalities whether you recognise them or not.