I really like the way the Rosling book Factfulness leans into our tendency to want to assign blame whenever anything goes wrong. Hans Rosling tells the story this way:
“I was lecturing at Karolinska Institute [a Swedish medical university], explaining that the big pharmaceutical companies do hardly any research on malaria and nothing at all on sleeping sickness or other illnesses that affect only the poorest.
A student sitting at the front said, ‘Let’s punch them in the face.’”
(A lengthy chain of “blame” ensued, arriving finally at the many retirees whose investments in pharmaceutical companies help them maintain a stable retirement income because the price of pharmaceutical stocks has tended not to fluctuate as much as most other stocks, and their dividends are fairly well assured.) So, Rosling concluded:
“…This weekend, go visit your grandma and punch her in the face. If you feel you need someone to blame and punish, it’s the seniors and their greedy need for stable stocks.”
The desire to find someone or something to blame when events don’t go as we’d like is probably universal. For those of us brought up on Bible stories, it all started in the Garden of Eden, with Adam, Eve, and the snake—Adam blaming Eve, Eve blaming the snake (and God not accepting any of their blame or excuses.)
The problem with blame is that blame does little or nothing to resolve a problem. Many of us have heard the axiom that in order to point your finger in blame at someone else, you must retract your other fingers, in essence pointing them at yourself. Neither blaming others nor blaming ourselves does anyone much good.
Many years ago, a tale widely shared in the business community was the “three envelopes story”: placed in a difficult management role, the new manager inherits from his predecessor three sealed envelopes with time-tested advice, to be opened and used sequentially and sparingly, only in cases of extreme need:
1) blame your predecessor
2) reorganize
3) prepare three envelopes
Very rarely is there a single person or factor who deserves either blame or credit for a particular outcome. More often, there are sets of interlocking factors in a complex system, making it quite difficult to determine which factor(s) can be adjusted to produce a better outcome.
Roslings’ prescriptions: Look for causes, not villains; look for systems, not heroes.
It’s easier to fall into the trap of using blame when we divorce ourselves from the natural world. That’s one reason a short Robert Frost poem, “Something Like a Star,” with an imaginary conversation with a reclusive star, helps reground me against blaming:
…Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed. …
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.
Jinny's Occasional Poems 