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October 2, 2008
Yasuhiko Genku Kimura
Founder and Chairman, Vision-In-Action
in a lively conversation
Creating a Culture of
Responsibility
Principle and Practice of Responsibility as Applied to Personal Life and Business
Yasuhiko Genku Kimura is a Buddhist philosopher-scholar who incorporates Objectivist/libertarian philosophy in his
political philosophy and business consulting.
In public discourse, he says, we hear more about the violation of individual rights than about the abdication of individual responsibility.
Yet, he claims, it is the abdication of individual responsibility that leads to the violation of individual rights, for it is intrinsic in the nature of responsibility that responsible individuals respect and honor the rights of self and others.
Today, according to Kimura, we live amid a pandemic of irresponsibility --
irresponsibility within governments, business, education, the media, the arts, academe and other sectors.
In this culture of rampant irresponsibility, he says, responsibility as such has become almost a forgotten ethical value and moral virtue.
It's the responsible action that alone carries with it the requisite integrity that brings about real change.
Therefore, on his view, unless we can transform the present culture of irresponsibility into a culture of responsibility, social movement of any kind will bear only bitter fruit, if any.
Yasuhiko Genku Kimura is founder and chairman of Vision-In-Action. He's also the president and creative director of the Vision-In-Action Leadership Institute.
He's a philosopher, Buddhist priest and scholar, corporate leadership consultant and social entrepreneur.
Since 1998 he's written three books, contributed to fourth and written over 50 essays in the fields of philosophies of ethics, science and business. He's lectured and given seminars widely in the U.S., Europe and Asia. On his
website, you can read his essay "Higher
Individualism" (PDF), which deals with individualism from a spiritual, in contradistinction to secular,
perspective.
Some of his signature essays are online. For
more information on this Junto event, including time,
location, and other features of the meeting see the October
Junto page.
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