Anonymity – Sunday, March 06, 1949
Sometimes people want to do things that they don’t want to seem to be personally responsible for. They want the result without the responsibility. And so they resort to various devices by which they attempt to impersonalize their actions. Sometimes, for example, when people want to say something that they hesitate to say in person, they resort to the questionable practice of writing an anonymous letter.
An anonymous letter is a kind of cowardly thing. It is something that a man hides behind when he hasn’t the courage to be identified with his own convictions. He may want to say something critical or unkind or damaging or derogatory, but he doesn’t want to have his own ideas traced back to him. Of course, opinions from people who don’t want to be responsible for their opinions aren’t worth much.
Another technique of attempting to impersonalize personal responsibility is to use the name of a group—and so, in the minds of many, the whole group may appear to be responsible for one man’s unauthorized viewpoint. Or a man may impose his opinion on an organization with which he has some influence—and then disclaim any personal responsibility for the action instigated. Thus unfair treatment is frequently made to seem to come from a crowd, whereas it may actually emanate from only one person or from only a small part of the crowd. Also, there are many places in the world where men have acquired the technique of making their opinions seem to come from the people who are actually being imposed upon. Thus duped or coerced minorities are often made to sound as if they were voicing the opinion of the people.
But regardless of the result, and regardless of the method or the means, this we should know as to actual responsibility. We can’t impersonalize anything in which we ourselves willingly or knowingly participate or anything to which we give consent. We can’t relieve ourselves of our own actions by hiding behind anonymity. We are responsible for the ideas and acts that we set on their way or that we give assent to. And actually and ultimately, there is no way to impersonalize our personal responsibility.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, March 6, 1949, 11:30 to 12:00 noon, EST Copyright, 1949.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
March 06, 1949
Broadcast Number 1,020