‘It wasn’t MY fault!’

The comments I received from Connie on my previous post about the subjectivity of our world encouraged me to write once again on this topic and treat yet another aspect of what I believe is our subjectivity. It concerns the way we try to make up for our shortcomings and mistakes.

It is a habit most unwholesome and yet very welcome when we tend to blame others for what are in reality our own faults. It is always much easier and more appealing to point the finger at someone else. I am not saying that everything we do or whatever happens to us is a direct result of our own actions and that we are to be blamed for everything that goes wrong. What I’m pointing at here is how we make scapegoats of everything and everyone else to avoid admitting our own responsibility in the matter. A common example is not managing to arrive on time and excuses vary from ‘traffic jams’ to ‘bad weather’ for what in fact might have been our own lack of time management. The list is endless and books could be – and might have been – written about all the cover ups we use to make up for our problems. And they have penetrated into our lives so much that a lot of the time we come to believe in our own make-believe stories and substitute a subjective view of the world for a fair and true one.

This is even true of governments and politics. They always have someone or something to blame for their own shortcomings. On a larger scale, the West blames the East and the East blames the West. This habit of passing the blame has become so common and useful (!) that sometimes I wonder if we would have been able to manage our lives had there been no East, no West or no evil to be punished ... I really do wonder!