How humans succeed at being inhuman: blame others for everything that goes wrong. Isn’t that the way of most people? If things go right, I am great; if things go wrong, it’s your fault.
This is that same mechanism that infects modern economic behavior: privatize the gains, socialize the losses. Many corporate behaviors want to profit when things go well, but if things turn our poorly, have the government or the taxpayers (namely, anyone other than themselves) pick up the tab.
This is the same as the emotional/psychological commonality of It’s Always Someone Else’s Fault, where when success appears we tend to aggrandize ourselves, when failure appears we blame others.
There are no self-reflections in this kind of world, there is only a cascade of fun-house mirrors.
We see this clearly in politics. I don’t need to give examples. If I did, we’d be here all day and all night and then some. Enough said.
But in the personal realm, it is just about everywhere as well. The underlying message from others in just about all places in life is a variant of: If you only did what I wanted, then I and everything else would be OK.
Where did we learn this behavior? Where did we internalize this attitude?
Maybe it started at the beginning: I tempted you, you fell for it you idiot, now get out!*
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*Garden of Eden.
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Well, regardless of where and when it started, it is our life. And I won’t even say “it is our modern life” because it is as old as humanity. Even non-modern cultures see the world this way.
Who among us understands that it is not other peoples’ fault, but all of us, including our own?
Who is willing to stand up and say that the strife and enmity the exists in the world and grows daily is not due to the faults of the enemy, but ours as well?
How rare and unusual for a person, a group, a culture, a country to stand up and say: **It is our responsibility. It is us. It is our responsibility.**
For the individual who dares to say “Yes, it is us. We are at fault, we are the cause,“ how much **hatred and animosity** will such a person suffer from their own group?
At the country level, we tend to criticize other countries, as in “they never took responsibility for what they did.” But have we? No country is immune, no country is blameless, no country is always good. Don’t make up excuses for what our country has done, and continues to do. Don’t tell me “it saves [insert our country’s name here] lives,” because that is just an attempt to excuse destructive behavior.
It does seem that the hardest choice one can make is to accept responsiblity even if down to mundane things like credit cards. Hence, any and all dodges to avoid it are used, including the enormously hostile reaction to someone in a group who dares to accept responsibility for the group’s behavior.
The truth is we are all responsible for the state of the world. All of us, individually and collectively. We are not separate from the world. We are the entire world. So therefore we are responsible to it and for it.
We are shirking our humanity if we say “Oh, that problem is over there, not here, it has nothing to do with me,” because it is not somewhere else, it is here, it is everywhere.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
The illustration of a Willow Tree is from “Shidare yanagi” (“The Trailing Willow Tree”), 1702, Japan. From the Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library.
The Map Of Matrimony is from “The State of Matrimony, A Map: According to the Surveys by Civil Engineer Cupid, whose familiarity with this and adjoining States entitles him to be considered a great expert,” by George Edward Moray. 1909.
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