342. Casting Blame

When something goes wrong, one of the first things we do is figure out who is to blame. We do this to hold people accountable, so that they’ll take responsibility for what they’ve done and work towards improving their conduct. But often what we’re also doing when we cast blame is redirecting attention away from ourselves.

We do this because we want to feel absolved of responsibility. We want to feel certain there wasn’t anything we could have done to prevent the wrong from happening. We want to affirm our own righteousness over the wrongdoers who are not like us. We want to assert that we could never do anything so terrible.

But in truth, we’re always responsible. We might not have directly caused these particular wrongs, but we are still responsible. We are responsible because wrongdoing ultimately happens because of suffering, and everyone is responsible for all of the suffering that exists.

In the absence of meaningful suffering, our needs would be adequately met and there would be no motivation to harm others. Harmful actions are taken in reaction to suffering whenever awareness is lacking. As long as suffering exists, wrongdoing will also exist.

As we become more aware of ourselves and our world, we discover that all suffering is shared. We learn that the suffering others experience is no different from our own suffering and we begin to feel it as our own. We learn that the distinctions between individuals are not meaningful when it comes to the cycle of suffering that drags us all down.

When suffering is endless, responsibility is also endless. To try to discard it would be to wrongly assert that we are better than those who do wrong, when in reality every wrongdoer is also us. To cast blame as a way of absolving ourselves only enhances our complicity in perpetuating suffering.

With greater awareness, we come to see blame as narrow and limited, its purpose being only to assert the immediate connections between motivation, action, and outcome. It is these connections that we must see more clearly and broadly in order to begin to address our shared suffering and the harmful consequences it produces.