Trains vs. Taxis - Responsibility as a Foundational Value Structure

When it comes to how individuals perceive their responsibility for the events of their lives, the range is vast. Some people operate with zero ownership, blaming external forces for everything. Others go to the opposite extreme, shouldering absolute responsibility—to the point of feeling overwhelmed, even for circumstances beyond their control.

In this article, we explore the foundation of responsibility conceptualization: what it means to actually "own" your reality, and why this is a hard but necessary step toward masculine maturity.

This is a difficult topic—not because it lacks relevance, but because it's deeply idiosyncratic and resistant to traditional measurement. Most of what we know about someone’s relationship with responsibility comes from self-reporting, which is often riddled with bias, self-deception, and wishful thinking.

People say they take full responsibility. But the true test is not verbal—it’s behavioral.

Responsibility, in the real world, reveals itself through action:

• Do you follow through despite resistance?

• Do you recalibrate instead of blaming others?

• Do you accept unintended consequences as part of your path, not just as unfair punishment?

This is why responsibility must be inferred retroactively from a person’s behavioral patterns—not their stated beliefs.

In the sections that follow, we’ll introduce a powerful metaphor—trains vs. taxis—to explain how different internal value structures manifest in radically different life strategies. One is linear, directional, and mission-bound. The other is reactive, client-serving, and easily re-routed by external requests.

Understanding where you fall between these two metaphors might explain why your life is working—or not.

The inevitable totality of responsibility

Many men today carry a weak, emotion-driven approach to responsibility, failing to fully conceptualize the limits—or lack thereof—of ownership in their lives.

A fundamental question lies at the core of this issue:Is responsibility quantifiable—can it be sliced into neat percentages?

Most people instinctively believe so. You’ll hear statements like,

• “I’m 50% responsible.”

• “It was mostly her fault, I only take 25%.”

• “We both share responsibility equally.”
  
  

This might feel reasonable in day-to-day conversations, but philosophically—and practically—it is nonsense. The moment we try to divide responsibility into discrete portions, we’ve already misunderstood its true nature.

Responsibility is not math — it’s metaphysics

To fully grasp the implications, we need to link the concept of responsibility to how a person understands reality itself. Specifically:

• Do they believe in free will, or do they subscribe to determinism?

• Do they see themselves as agents in a causal universe, or as passengers?

If the answer is determinism—where all actions are pre-determined by cosmic forces, ancestral trauma, or divine will—then responsibility becomes meaningless. You are not responsible because you are not the cause. This is the logic behind many mystical and pseudo-spiritual worldviews (neo-Taoism, Westernized Buddhism, ego-dissolution frameworks): suffering is minimized by letting go of the illusion of control.

But for most men, that feels too radical—too nihilistic. So they attempt a middle ground. They say:


“Some of it is under my control, some of it isn’t.”

But here lies the absurdity:
Can you draw the line—precisely—where your influence ends and the universe takes over?

If you lie to your child, where does that ripple stop?
Does it end at the lie itself?
Or does it echo in the child’s psyche, shape their future relationships, and eventually reflect back into your own aging soul in ways you can’t foresee?

The moment you attempt to draw this limit, you’re claiming God-like powers—omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. And unless you possess those divine traits, you cannot claim partial responsibility in any logically coherent way.

The binary choice: abdicate or embody

That leaves only two options:

1. Determinism – You believe you have no real agency. The universe is in charge. You are a spectator. All suffering is justified. Responsibility is irrelevant.
   
   

2. Total responsibility – You accept 100% ownership of your life. Every action, every inaction, every thought, every lie, every decision ripples forward. Nothing is neutral. Everything you touch is shaped by your being.
   
   

There is no middle ground.

And for the man seeking to master his life, build a legacy, or become unshakable—only one path remains:

Take full, absolute, non-negotiable responsibility for everything in your life. Even what you did not cause—because your response still belongs to you.

This mindset is not guilt—it is sovereignty. It is not perfectionism—it is purpose. The man who understands this becomes both unbreakable and irreplaceable.

The relationship with the father as the source of the concept of responsibility

In popular psychology and relational theory, male behavior in romantic relationships is often interpreted through the lens of his relationship with his mother—how he treats women, his emotional availability, and his ability to provide. But this perspective, while occasionally useful, is ultimately insufficient and misleading.

When it comes to a man's ability to take ownership, lead a family, establish limits, hold the frame, and raise children, the true source of that structure is not maternal—it is paternal.
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A man’s understanding of responsibility is a direct derivative of his father’s relationship to responsibility—what was modeled, what was rewarded, and what was enforced.

In the context of Axiomatology, masculine responsibility is not just a behavior—it is an integration of three foundational pillars:

1. Personality traits

2. Behavioral example

3. Normative structure (moral absolutes)

Let’s explore each.

1. Personality trait disposition

Some men are born with personality traits that lean toward higher agreeableness, greater emotionality, and lower assertiveness. These traits, often labeled as “beta,” are not inherently weak—but they are more common in women due to biological politeness, compassion circuitry, and social harmony orientation (as seen in Big Five trait models; Costa & McCrae, 1992).

Such men may score higher in:

• Volatility and withdrawal (subcomponents of neuroticism)

• Emotion-based decision making

• Conflict avoidance
  
  

While these traits may make masculine boundary-setting more difficult, they do not disqualify a man from becoming a great father. They simply place him further down the developmental road. With discipline, clarity, and alignment to a value hierarchy, even a highly agreeable man can become a strong leader and frame-holder—though the transformation requires greater intentionality.

However, if the man’s own father modeled these same traits—emotional reactivity, avoidance, relativism—then the burden becomes even greater. The son may feel the need to overcompensate, develop more rigid standards, or reinvent the paternal blueprint entirely.

2. Behavioral example

This is where most men fail. Talking about values is easy. Living them is not.

Fathers often speak of “doing the right thing,” “working hard,” or “avoiding addiction”—yet fail to embody any of it. And in such cases, the result is not neutral—it’s corrosive. A father who talks about principles but behaves in contradiction to them is not just setting a poor example—he is perceived as a liar.

A weak or absent father who says nothing is often less damaging than one who moralizes while visibly betraying his own words.

For example:

• A father who speaks about self-control but spirals into substance addiction

• A father who preaches frugality but parties and gambles

• A father who demands discipline from his children but offers none in himself
  
  

These contradictions destroy the credibility of the masculine role. Worse, they turn the concept of "father" into a hypocrisy—a shell without integrity. The child internalizes not only the bad behavior but the cognitive dissonance that comes with it.

The masculine role is not about perfection. It is about consistency of values and behavior under pressure.

3. Normative structure: The moral absolutes of fatherhood

The third pillar is often the most neglected in modern parenting: alignment to a clear and absolute moral framework. A father cannot build boundaries for his children—or for himself—if his own moral system is undefined or relativistic.

If he believes in “creating his own values,” or if he follows moral relativism (e.g., lying only when convenient, breaking promises when tired), he cannot serve as a compass. He becomes a wanderer, and his children wander with him.

In contrast, a father who builds his life on normative absolutes—truth-telling, promise-keeping, covenantal responsibility, and self-honesty—gives his child the most critical gift of all: a metaphysical anchor.


Without that anchor, the child drifts. With it, the child can build a self.

These moral absolutes are not about religion—they are about structure. They are about modeling that a man’s word means something, that there is such a thing as truth, and that self-respect is tied to action, not emotion.

A man who grew up under a father with:

• Weak traits

• Inconsistent behavior

• No moral compass
  
  ...may need to rebuild himself from scratch. But once he integrates all three Axiomatological components, he becomes unshakable—not only as a father, but as a man.

Practical manifestations of responsibility

The practical consequences of total responsibility go far deeper than most men realize. Without full ownership of one’s life, even the most basic masculine functions—such as building a personal frame—become unsustainable.

After all, a frame must stand on something solid. And if the man is unwilling to take responsibility for his life, values, and choices, what exactly is his frame built on? Air?

It becomes comical—even absurd—for a man to enforce principles in a relationship that he doesn’t live by himself:

• He demands honesty, but lies when it's convenient.

• He expects respect, but lacks self-respect.

• He calls for discipline in others, while indulging in personal chaos.

A man cannot demand what he cannot demonstrate.

True authority doesn’t come from volume or charisma. It comes from alignment: when a man’s actions and values are one and the same. This is the core of masculine integrity. Without it, a man can only perform masculinity—not embody it.

Responsibility as the foundation of sovereignty

Men who take full responsibility for everything that occurs in their lives—without excuses, outsourcing, or spiritual bypassing—become sovereign individuals. They begin to build a life:

• Governed by their own behavior

• Supported by their own efforts

• Grounded in principles inherited from moral exemplars (like their father), or developed through Structured Internal Value Hierarchies (SIVHs)

In this framework, there is no space for blame-shifting, victimhood, or soft exits. Hardship is faced head-on. Solutions are created, not requested. And suffering is no longer avoided—it is voluntarily embraced when it serves a higher goal.

Responsibility thus becomes the bridge between internal values and external behavior.

SIVHs and the transcendent structure of the masculine mission

When a man has clear SIVHs—Structured Internal Value Hierarchies—his entire orientation to life changes. He no longer lives reactively or emotionally. Instead, he becomes a vessel of value embodiment.

His actions are no longer determined by feelings, but by alignment. He knows:

• What he stands for

• What he is willing to suffer for

• What he will never tolerate

This gives him something rare: certainty without aggression. He no longer needs to "win arguments" or engage in emotional power plays. His boundaries are not fragile—they are natural extensions of his identity.

And in this clarity, he becomes immovable.

His demands of himself exceed those he places on others.
He does not chase women. He walks his path.
She may join him—but it is her decision, not his dependency.

This is not dominance through force. It is dominance through responsibility. And it is the most attractive and respected form of masculinity available to any man—regardless of his background.

In conclusion

A man’s relationship with responsibility can only take two forms: it is either vague, floating, and avoidant, or it is total, absolute, and embodied.

Within the framework of Axiomatology, we have demonstrated that if a person believes in free will—in his ability to influence his life—then total responsibility becomes axiomatically necessary.

You cannot claim agency without also claiming responsibility for everything that agency touches.

The capacity to adopt such a worldview—where responsibility is absolute and indivisible—is primarily shaped by the relationship with one’s father, not with one’s mother. It is the father who introduces the son to the structure of masculine responsibility.

A fatherhood that successfully transmits this structure rests on three foundations:

1. Personality traits – The more assertive, stable, and masculine the temperament, the stronger the template.

2. Behavioral example – Words without action are corrosive. Action without consistency is noise.

3. Normative value framework – A system built on moral absolutes, not relativistic improvisation.

If any of these three are missing, the son is left with confusion, contradiction, and fragmentation. And if the father moralizes without living those morals, he is not only a failed example—he is seen as a liar.

The train vs. the taxi: The essence of masculine responsibility

A man who adopts total responsibility ceases to be a taxi—a vehicle waiting for external instruction—and becomes a train.

The train moves on fixed rails: rails formed by his foundational principles, value hierarchy, and moral absolutes. He has:

• A clear direction

• A known schedule

• A destination defined not by whims, but by mission

A woman may inspect the compartments, check the arrival times, understand the route—and choose to board. Or not. But she does not determine the course.

In contrast, the weak man is a taxi. He waits passively. A woman steps in and tells him where to go. He obeys. If he later tries to change direction, she reacts with confusion and frustration—just as a train passenger would if the train suddenly left the tracks.

To live as a train is to embody masculine responsibility.
To live as a taxi is to abdicate masculine direction and invite chaos.

The man of integrity moves on rails of principle, not potholes of emotion. He does not ask, “Where do you want me to go?” He says, “This is where I’m headed. You are welcome to come aboard.”

This is not control. It is clarity.
This is not ego. It is alignment.
This is not rigidity. It is responsibility—at its highest and most transformative level.