I have
always felt sorry for children with no siblings. Before you curl your lip at my
naivety, take a moment to look beyond the obvious quantitative advantages, such
as x (if x = parents' disposable income) divided by 1 = lots more stuff for me,
and consider the single biggest qualitative disadvantage suffered by solo
offspring: there is no one to blame - or even share the blame - when one's
dastardly deeds come home to roost. Even that age-old solace of lonely kids,
the imaginary friend, cannot come to the rescue when parents are asking
pressing questions since pointing the finger at an invisible person tends, at
best, to irritate already-ticked-off people and, at worst, to plant the seed
that they had better start saving for your board and lodging at the local Home
for the Incurably Nervous. This leaves erring single children with one of two
choices: a) to admit culpability and accept the consequences (yeah, right!) or
b) pick a plausible person who could have MADE them do it. I mention that the
most popular candidate for adults exercising option b) is also invisible merely as an interesting aside...
From
the politics of the playground to the playground of politics, blame has been
the name of the game since the first cave-man arrived home to find the woman he
had claimed with his club warding off the winter chill with the help of his
hunting partner under the matrimonial mammoth-skin. (I am persuaded that the words 'The woman
made me do it' would have featured somewhere in the ensuing conversation but perhaps
I am being unduly sexist.)
This
default-setting, to save our own skin at the expense of someone - anyone! -
else, that kicks in when we are caught in a misdemeanour appears to be peculiar to
humans - we who pride ourselves on being the most highly-developed of the
sentient beings! I have never heard of a lion, discovered with blood on his
muzzle at the scene of another pride's kill, finagling his way out of the hot
seat by passing the buck (if you'll pardon the pun). Whether he stands his
ground to fight over the spoils or opts for a rapid retreat, the guilty party
accepts the consequences for his actions. And that, of course, is the crux of
the matter. We try to evade responsibility for our misdeeds because we wish to
avoid unpleasant consequences for, to paraphrase an elementary scientific
principle, every action has a consequence. And the ugly truth is that if we
can't stop the consequences, we'll do whatever it takes to ensure that they are
visited on anyone other than us.
This
is the blame game in its basic form, played by individuals, communities, and
corporations and perfected by politicians. There is another version of the game, however,
that, while perhaps easier to rationalise, is equally damaging. Often, when we
are struggling to come to terms with a tragedy or unpalatable event, we look
for someone to blame in an effort to make sense of what seems senseless... a
scapegoat to bear the brunt of our grief and anger, even if it destroys an
innocent party in the process.
The
thing is, there are no winners in the blame game - just players. And while the
obvious victim might suffer 'the slings and arrows'[1]
of public disapprobation for a time there is always the chance that he might be
exonerated; the perpetrator, however, even if he is never found out, will bear
a self-inflicted corrosive stain on his psyche that, if left untended, will
ultimately consume his soul.
The real
danger of the blame game, however, is
that until we accept responsibility for both our mistakes and our misdeeds we are
powerless to change and will never reach our true potential - as individuals,
as communities, and as a nation. It's a question of ownership. Residents of a
dilapidated tenement building have neither the incentive nor the authority to
improve what does not belong to them - they can complain or leave but most
often they have no choice but to remain living in a dangerous dump.
In her
address at the second Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture on 3rd October
2012, Graรงa Machel spoke sorrowfully of our fractured society and predicted
that it will take decades to heal our nation. But that will require each of us
to stop wasting our time and energy on the blame game and to accept
responsibility for our past, take ownership of the present, and 'be the change
we want to see'[2] in
our future. Otherwise we condemn ourselves to remaining dissatisfied residents in
an increasingly dilapidated democracy.
And
that would be a shame.
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