The Western Framework

Understanding the focus on individual responsibility

Definition of Scope

This project utilizes Karl Jaspers' framework—a method of analysis developed within the lineage of Western existentialism and moral philosophy.

We do not claim this framework is universal. Most moral systems that claim universality are simply localized traditions with broader marketing. We utilize this specific lens because its emphasis on individual liability, state authorization, and internal conscience is effective for examining the machinery of complicity within Western-style democracies and global capitalism.

Characteristics of the Tradition

Analytical Focus

The Western philosophical tradition prioritizes the individual as the primary unit of moral accountability. This provides a sharp focus for examining personal participation in state-level harm.

Core Features:

Individual agency: Accountability is centered on the person rather than the collective.
Rational analysis: Systemic failures are treated as a series of individual choices and institutional malfunctions.
Conceptual clarity: Complex moral crises are broken down into distinct, manageable categories of responsibility.
Documentary evidence: Reliance on written history, law, and established protocols.

Significance for this Audit:

Allows for a detailed examination of individual choice under state pressure.
Identifies the gap between private virtue and public complicity.
Effectively maps the role of the citizen as a shareholder in state actions.

Limitations and Intentional Focus

Excluded Frameworks

By prioritizing the individual, this framework does not incorporate:

Communal responsibility models where identity is inseparable from the group.
Indigenous understandings of relationship to land and ancestry.
Spiritual or non-secular concepts of liability (e.g., karma).

Rationale

The individual-agency model is used here because it is the most direct way to examine participation in the systems being audited. It utilizes the same logic as the institutions it examines. To use a communal framework to audit an individual voter in a nuclear-armed state is often a tactical retreat into self-deception.