Sometimes a word just sticks to me. Does that happen to you? You hear a word, and you start thinking about what it means, how it is used and if somehow the concept has lost its importance? Sounds crazy. But anyone who knows me knows that sometimes a word sticks to me and I just can’t stop thinking about it. That is where I am at right now with the word obligation, and I think it is significant to the conservation work we do.
The word came to mind back in November after I interviewed ILF Farmer Partner Mike Paustian for a virtual field day on the blind tile inlet he was installing on his property as part of a research project (watch the recording of the Modified Blind Inlets Virtual Field Day to learn more). Mike said that his kids would be the seventh generation to work the farm and that his biggest job was to make certain that the farm was in better shape for his children if they wanted to farm than it was when he inherited it.
It was clear that Mike felt a huge responsibility to farm in ways that made sense both environmentally and economically and he knew that the long-term success of the farm rests in connecting these two goals. In other words, Mike felt an obligation even though he didn’t use that word.
You don’t hear the word obligation used much anymore. When it is used, it is often seen as something that is less desirable. Obligation feels like we must do something rather than we want to do something. What are we missing about the concept of obligation?
The word obligation traces its roots all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European word *leyǵ- which means to bind, tie. This becomes the Latin word obligātiō, which also means to bind. Today, the word obligation has come to be understood as “binding oneself by a social, legal or moral tie to someone else” (Wikipedia) or “something one is bound to do, a duty or a responsibility” (Merriam Webster).
The anthropologist in me figures that the concept of obligation arose as humans started to form more permanent settlements. Small nomadic tribes had no need for institutional ties because they were all bonded to a common goal: survival. As humans started to form larger groups that weren’t necessarily bonded via genetics or marriage, they had to find other ways to bind themselves to each other for the good of society. Somewhere in our development, humans also began to feel obligations toward things not human (dogs and other animals, water, the overall environment, etc.).
Right now, it feels like we have conflicts between the obligations we feel toward economic issues, values and the obligations we have to the natural world. How do we decide how to act when one obligation conflicts with another obligation? (If this is something that interests you, check out this excellent article, The moral psychology of obligation, by Michael Tomasello.)
The philosopher Harry Frankfort asserts that our behavior is shaped not so much by our obligations but by our attitudes toward our obligations – i.e. how much we care about our obligations and how important it is for us to act on them.
It seems it is a part of what makes us human to act out of obligation and to come up with unique ways to tie ourselves to others (human and nonhuman). Obligation goes well beyond feeling like you owe someone something. Americans seem very resistant to this idea. We like to think that we make our own opportunities and drive our own successes. We don’t like to think we owe anyone anything. So, I can see why in American culture, the idea of obligation has gone out of fashion.
However, it feels like we are at a juncture in human existence where we need to more fully restore our sense of obligation to each other and to the world if we hope to leave a habitable planet, not just to our children and grandchildren but to seven generations after that.
As Wendell Berry writes: “The old have an obligation to be exemplary, if they can—and since nobody can be completely exemplary, they also have an obligation to be intelligent about their failings. They’re going to be remembered in one way or another, so they have an obligation to see that they’re remembered not as a liability or a great burden, but as a help. And of course the young, the inheritors, have an obligation to remember these people and live up to them—be worthy of them. So it’s an obligation that goes both ways, and it’s inescapable. Once you become involved in this sequence of lives, there is no way to escape the responsibility. You inherit, and in turn you bequeath an inheritance of some kind.”
Listening to Mike Paustian made me think of this Berry quote. It is clear that he not only feels an obligation to his children, but perhaps to the thought of seven more generations of his family farming the land. As Mike said in his interview, “We are always tweaking things and trying to get better…whether we are talking about soil and water conservation, whether we are talking about crop production, whether we are talking about our hogs, it is always about what we can do to get better every year. We are trying to do things every year to make those incremental steps forward.”
It is my hope that not only Mike’s children and grandchildren will model their behavior after his example but so will others in the state. You can’t help but listen to Mike and ponder how you can take some incremental step today that will make the world a better place tomorrow. That is the kind of obligation we all have to the world.
Citations for those that would like to dig deeper:
- Frankfurt, H. G. (1982) The importance of what we care about. Synthese 53:257–90 (reprinted in Frankfurt 1988, pp. 80–94).
- Frankfurt, H. G. (1988) The importance of what we care about. Cambridge University Press.
- Fisher-Smith, Jordon (1993) Field Observations: An Interview with Wendell Berry. Orion Autumn.
- Tomasello, M. (2020) The moral psychology of obligation. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, E56 1-58. Doi:10.1017/S0140525X19001742.
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