Going Kerouac on Everybody's Ass

I watched "Step Brothers" the other day. Funny movie. Made me laugh.

There is a job interview scene in the movie where Dale, the character played by John C. Reilly, explains twenty some years of unemployment by saying that he had "gone Kerouac on everybody's ass." Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny.

So, you know, I've been wrestling with the idea of responsibility recently. Especially after Obama talked about "a new era of responsibility" being required of us. Big important questions like, you know, what does responsibility even mean? Or: did Sal Paradise live responsibly?

Because, don't you see, maybe Sal was living more responsibly than any of us. Maybe he was just being responsible to the gift of life, and that's why he gripped life so hard and then ripped it again so hard.

This column about institutional thinking helps me understand what I think is an important piece of the puzzle. So often we frame questions about important decisions in terms of ourselves. This is the way we are trained to think. What am I passionate about? What will make me happiest? Thus, the archetypal journey of self-discovery makes intuitive sense to us. Kerouac occupies a prominent place in our collective conscious. We aspire to live passionately, to dig life right alongside Dean Moriarty.

I guess Kennedy's famous exhortation to "ask not" hinges upon the distinction between individual and institutional thinking. When thinking about responsibility, the important question is, What are we responsible to? Ourselves? Or to the various groups to which we belong? Nation? Family? Or here are a couple of old possibilities that might appear extremely novel: History? Our forebears? What responsibility do I have towards George Washington and his men on that bleak winter night?