Samiul Bashar Samin
One of the most destructive human pastimes is playing the blame game. It has been responsible for mass casualties of war, regrettable acts of road rage, and on a broad interpersonal level (social, familial and work-related), a considerable amount of human frustration and unhappiness. The blame game consists of blaming another person for an event or state of affairs thought to be undesirable, and persisting in it instead of proactively making changes that ameliorate the situation. The drive shaft of this game is a series of four irrational beliefs:
-If something has gone wrong (or is not the way it should be), then someone other than myself must be identified and blamed for causing the situation.
-This person’s malfeasance diminishes the respect he/she deserves as a person.
-So, it is permissible (and only fitting) to treat this person in ways he/she deserves to be treated such as ignoring, name-calling, and in extreme cases, physical assault.
-I must not accept any significant degree of responsibility for the situation inasmuch as to do so would be to admit that I am myself also diminished as a person, and therefore deserving of the same disapprobation and negative treatment.
We see these four beliefs play out quite routinely in the mainstream of life. Someone is late to the family, holiday dinner and is treated by the host as a persona non grata for the remainder of the night—given the cold shoulder, given dirty looks, or even reprimanded before the other guests. A motorist goes down the wrong way in a parking lot and receives the middle finger from another motorist. A student fails an exam and subsequently becomes belligerent toward the teacher and makes nasty comments to other students about the teacher. A teacher consistently gets poor student evaluations and blames the students for being incompetent and too stupid to evaluate him. A man beats up his wife and blames the victim for not “understanding” him. A woman cheats on her husband and blames him for working too much. A manager does not get the promotion she wanted and blames her boss for being a “male chauvinist pig.”
Clearly, there are cases in which a person is blameworthy for a wrongdoing and acknowledging blame does not involve playing the blame game. In such cases there is a constructive way of settling a dispute as in assigning legal responsibility in a civil matter. Such assignment of blame is conducted according to objective standards and does not involve disrespectful treatment of others as does playing the blame game.
But what is really flawed is this unrealistic demand for perfection. While people are not perfect they can learn from their mistakes—but only if they admit them and change their behavior in the future. Unfortunately, the blame game looks outside oneself to cast blame. It is never me in any significant way; it is rather the other guy who is to blame. Blame me? Hell no! No flies on me!