Blame And Responsibility

"Round and round in the usual old game... and it's all your fault!" The ever-popular blame-game... see it on any street corner, in any queue, in any office or boardroom or works canteen, any time you like...

Blame and responsibility seem to go hand in hand: "who is responsible for this mess?" yells an irate school-teacher, as he surveys the aftermath of a few minutes'-worth of over-exuberance from his students. Which is odd, though, because in many ways they're opposites: responsibility is, literally, 'response-ability', the ability to respond in the present; whereas blame is mostly concerned with the avoidance of responsibility - assigning it to someone else or somewhen else.

Without responsibility, we have no power; without power, we have no choice. It's as simple as that. So the more we try to avoid responsibility by blaming, the less power, and less choice, we have; the more we allow others to offload their responsibilities onto us by blaming us, the less power, and less choice, that we all have available to share. So we need to separate responsibility and blame, and distinguish clearly between them: but that's not quite as simple as it sounds...

Blaming the world

A simple question to start with: why does it always seem so much easier to blame - blame anyone, or anything - than to accept responsibility? It's weird...


Life seems so much easier, being a victim: it's always someone else's fault, and it's always someone else's responsibility to fix it. Being a victim, we can blame others in the past in order to avoid responsibility in the present: "if only they hadn't done that to me, I'd be able to..." The catch with 'playing victim' is that we then need someone else to play the Parent and do the fixing for us: and if everyone's busily playing victim - locked into 'a culture of complaint', to use Robert Hughes' term - then nothing is ever going to get fixed...

A victim is literally 'a conquered one': it's an accurate enough label for someone who's in shock, or actively recovering from some traumatic incident, but most of the time, bluntly, self-styled 'victims' are more likely to be playing the blame-game for all it's worth - if only to gain "that special attention which is the prerogative of the miserable". What they rarely seem able to see is that the only way out of the situation about which they're so loudly complaining is to acknowledge their own responsibility in the affair: but since that's what they - we - are usually most avoiding, there tends to be an awful lot of 'round and round the garden' before any change starts to happen...


No-one is immune from the blame-game; everyone does it to varying degrees at varying stages of their life. Ultimately, no one - no one individual - is ever to blame, because everyone is to blame: the threads of wyrd pass through us all, and we're all shirking some part of our responsibilities somewhere in there. It's not exactly comforting to face that, but at least it's honest - which blame rarely is.

The whole purpose of the blame-game is to 'export' responsibility to others: that way, we hope we'll be able to avoid the work that being 'response-able' always involves. But Reality Department rarely lets us get away with it - although sometimes the ways with which it works back to us can be more than a little weird... One form of the blame-game begins when we 'project' onto others what we're feeling, but don't want to admit to, or are too embarrassed or too frightened to admit to: "what's wrong with you? why are you angry?", I ask, when it's obvious that the only one who's angry is me, but I don't want to admit it. Another form of the game starts by assigning responsibility to others for what are our actions, our choices: "you made me love you! you can't leave me!", I wail, carefully avoiding the possibility that my clingy dependence is not something anyone would want as part of their 'We'...


Running away from responsibility, it always seems easiest to blame someone. If we run out of others to blame, well, we can always blame ourselves... But that's no solution either: since the threads of wyrd pass through everyone, blaming others is, in a weird sense, blaming ourselves, and blaming ourselves is also a way of blaming others. The real problem is not who to blame, but blame itself.

Blaming ourselves

One of the traps when we first recognise the dangers of blaming others is that we'll switch over to blaming ourselves instead - and we'll have plenty of 'encouragement' to do so... "See! You admit it! It isn't all my fault, is it? So it must be all your fault - go on, go on, admit it!" And perhaps the most popular tactic in the blame-game is the old 'all-or-nothing' trick: if you're willing to accept responsibility for anything at all, you must be willing to accept the blame for everything. It's a massive disincentive against honesty: but it does mean that once we do start to be a bit more honest with ourselves, it's all too easy to take on far more responsibility - and certainly far more blame - than is actually appropriate.


Another word for self-blame is guilt: and trying to take on the guilt of others - trying to emulate "the one who died to take away the sins of the world" - is rarely wise, not least because those others rarely notice anyway... So self-scapegoating is a problem; but there are other kinds of self-blame which are rather less honest. Sometimes it takes the form of 'playing victim' to oneself, and blame our own choices in the past in order to avoid responsibility in the present: "if only I hadn't done that to me, I'd be able to..." Another form is a variant of that old game of trying to gain "that special attention which is the prerogative of the miserable": if no-one else will blame me, so that I can complain about how unfair all this blaming is, I can probably get the same attention by blaming myself... "Oh, woe is me! Oh, I have been so foolish! Look at what I have done wrong now!" says Chris, in over-dramatic voice...


Blame helps no-one. Once we start to look more closely at our own involvement in each interaction with others, it slowly becomes obvious that we can't blame others: as the wyrd will often show us with startling clarity, 'they' are just people, doing what people do, and making mistakes just like everyone does. But it's then essential to remember that exactly the same applies to us: we're human too, we make mistakes too, just like everyone else - and blaming ourselves helps no-one either.

What does help is taking responsibility - the appropriate degree of 'response-ability'. Not too little - running away from responsibility - but also not too much: especially as some common ways of appearing to be helpful or over-responsible - such as the 'gatekeeper' and the 'judge' - are really little more than a subtler version of the blame-game.

The gatekeeper and the judge

A while back, we looked at how we sometimes shirk our responsibility through 'faked incompetence', pretending that we're not capable of doing some task - such as the boring household chores, or tackling the frustrations of a new computer system. But it is true that everyone starts out incompetent at those tasks: and we can't do better than that unless we're genuinely encouraged to find our own power and responsibility within them - which we certainly won't be able to do unless we're allowed to learn. What happens instead, in yet another version of the blame-game, is that someone demands that we 'should' or 'ought' or 'must' do some task or learn some new skill - and then acts as 'gatekeeper', preventing us from learning how to do the task whilst at the same time complaining at us, or blaming us, for having supposedly refused to do it. Because the gatekeeper holds back essential information, we can't do the task properly - or even at all - and hence often give up in frustration: which is then taken as 'proof' that we've faked incompetence, and ducked our responsibility. The gatekeeper probably feels equally frustrated - "dammit, it's quicker to do it myself!" - but often finds it easier to blame others than to notice their own involvement in the situation...


The 'judge' is another variant of this: like the gatekeeper, it blames others for failing to do what it in effect prevents them from doing - but masks the dishonesty of the blame with a great deal of righteous indignation.


There's a weird twist to this. Most people's idea of a judge seems to be that of someone in authority, with the right to have power over us: but the problem is exactly that, namely 'power-over'. In a more practical sense, 'judgement' is about the development of skills and awareness - appropriacy, rather than abstract 'truth' - so the functional röle of a 'judge' is not to judge as such, but to help others develop their own judgement: power-with, not power-over. So the more authority we gain, the more responsibility is placed on us to mediate with others, and the less right we have to judge others - which is not quite how most people in 'authority' positions tend to see it... Yet successful leaders, and successful relationships, depend on awareness of that twist.

I remember, a few years back, watching a classic example of how not to do it - playing at 'judge', rather than being that röe. It was at a kind of conference, somewhat political, but there were also schools delegates there - even some from primary schools - so part of a formal agreement signed by each delegate was a commitment not to use 'offensive language'. Unfortunately, one of the organisers - taking an overly subject-centred attitude, as tends to happen at such events - decided that 'offensive language' included any comment which in any way disagreed with his own personal politics: so he felt that he was not only within his rights, but righteously correct, to publicly eject from the conference anyone whose words - or presence - he disliked. A few people questioned his behaviour: this too was deemed 'offensive language', and he demanded their instant removal too. Quite soon the discussions became quite heated - some of it using a great deal of offensive language! - but eventually the organiser's 'judge'-game was brought to a halt: especially as the event's main theme was supposed to be 'freedom of speech'...


Maintaining true freedom of speech is always going to be difficult. The political-correctness movement, for example, started with the laudable aim of creating 'non-offensive language', to reduce habitual disparagement of minorities. But it soon fell into that trap of playing The Judge, issuing ever-more-tortuous tirades of blame, and demanding increasingly harsh 'anti-vilification' laws to vilify 'offenders', until eventually it became it became clear that its tactics were, in reality, even more oppressive than the original supposed 'offensive language', and the whole movement collapsed into self-parody, where it remains to this day. A single thread of wyrd, complete with the weird twist - its geas - through which it comes to its end... The aim of the movement was right, and responsible; where it went wrong - the choice which was never faced, and which led to its end - was in its dependence on blame.

Dancing with responsibility

Responsibility is not something which can be dumped on others, but is a dance with ourselves - a dance with our own choices, and our own 'mis-takes'. One shift in perspective that's important to make is to recognise that responsibility is about our responses - and no-one else's. If I take offence at something you've said, it's my response to your comments - not something you've done 'to' me - so I need to understand that the 'response-ability' to act on that response lies with me, not you. Anything else is blame, which doesn't work: all it does is build more walls.

The aim here is to move from 'you-statements' - "you insulted me!" - to 'I-statements' - "I feel offended by what you've just said". That shift in perspective usually feels weird at first - 'I-statements' can sound pompous and stilted, and can seem much more difficult to say, mainly because we're accepting that the responsibility is on us rather than on 'the Other'. Weird though it may feel, it does work: a 'you-statement' builds walls of projection and blame, but an 'I-statement' opens a doorway, and creates a space for negotiation. I still don't like what you've said: but you're not an object, so I can't force you to 'take back your words'; and you're not my subject, so I can't demand that you change yourself to suit my whims. You're you; I'm me; 'We' has a disagreement; let's talk about it...


What we're doing here is working with projection and export - both our own and that of others. The purpose of the shift to 'I-statements', weird though they feel, is partly to provide enough awareness of our own self to enable us to identify the degree of our responsibility - and hence our appropriate 'response-ability' - and also to prevent us from responding in kind when others blame us. With that awareness, we watch the feedback: both directly from those others, and also from the more tortuous twists by which we get feedback from the wyrd.

Projection and export depend on blame - in many ways are blame - and also depend on playing dishonest games with boundaries. The first part of the game is a switch to a subject-centred view, to dissolve genuine boundaries and drag in some 'other': "it wasn't me that broke the plate - it was my hand", says a friend's small son. The 'other' - whatever or whoever it may be - is then assigned the entire blame for the incident: "it was my hand that did it!", exclaims the boy. And the export is completed by switching back to an object-centred view, slamming the boundary shut by making the other 'Other' again: the boy looks down at his hand, and slaps it, saying "naughty hand! - you musn't never do that again!" - so it's now the hand's responsibility, not his...


There are a few tricks that can make this shift to 'response-ability' easier - even though, in the usual weird way, they actually demand more from us. One of the most useful - though often most challenging - is to assume that people's intentions are good, even where their actions seem to be otherwise. For example, since everyone had agreed not to use 'offensive language', back at that political conference, it would have been useful to assume that if they then used 'offensive language', it was by mistake - a 'mis-take' - rather than by intention. If I take offence at what's said, that's my response, not something they've done to me; and it's up to me to say so, and accept the feedback that I get.

Even where they're nominally 'wrong' - such as by breaking an agreement about not using 'offensive language' - my only 'right' is to negotiate, not blame. Once is happenstance: however well-intentioned we may be, 'mis-takes' do happen. Twice is coincidence: sometimes we do have to repeat our objections before they're heard - and it's up to us to ensure that they are heard. So it's useful to assume that it's only when it gets to be three or more times that it's likely to be intentional - at which point we may indeed need to suspect a possible 'enemy action'...

Even then, it's wise to be wary about thinking in terms of 'punishment': it's true that some people, and some situations, can be abusive, but it's not going to help anyone if we just add to the abuse with an over-zealous 'mis-take' of our own. Uncomfortable though it may be, it's time we looked more closely at the problem of abuse - and our own 'response-ability' within it.