Are You Playing The Blame Game?
Your world is your responsibility, whether you’re to blame for it or not
Thanks to David Milgrim for inspiring this post.
There are two defining responses to something going wrong:
Solving the problem.
Figuring out who to blame.
The first is significantly more important than the second.
And the second gets in the way of the first.
The Blame Economy
Blaming others is something of a national sport where I currently live. And the proportion of infrastructure that sits in visible disrepair is far higher than in any other place I’ve called home.
Of course, there are important economic factors in why things sit abandoned and crumbling, but the failure to fix the problems contributes to the economic environment that perpetuates them.
Finding who to blame doesn’t actually solve the problem, and so expending resources on that instead of on fixing the problem means wasting resources and wasting time not being productive with whatever had the problem.
Leaving the problem unfixed reduces economic capacity and output and leads to the creation of new problems.
Problems beget problems, and problems left unfixed beget a lifetime of problems.
The Blame Game
The offensive and defensive rules of the blame game are as follows:
Offensive:
Identify the problem
Identify who’s to blame for the problem
Demand that the blame-worthy fix the problem
While the problem still exists, continue to assign blame
Defensive:
Only fix problems that you can accept blame for
Never accept blame for any problems
Find someone else to blame, preferably the person blaming you
How good is the blame game at solving problems?
Terrible.
Finding someone to blame doesn’t ensure the problem gets fixed.
That’s because no one likes to take blame for things and the assignment of blame doesn’t guarantee action.
Demanding that the blame-worthy do the fixing also does nothing to ensure that the problem gets fixed.
Because if the problem will only get fixed once someone accepts blame for it, and, again, no one wants to accept blame for it, then the problem will never get fixed.
That’s why the blame game is very easy to play and why it’s such an attractive game:
It’s just so much easier to blame other people for your problems.
Never accepting blame allows you to maintain your reputational façade.
And if everyone is playing the blame game then they’ll expect the person you’ve blamed to fix the problem and so you don’t have to lift a finger.
Of course, the blame game isn’t a good way to solve problems because that’s not the point of the game. It just gets conflated with solving problems because it’s also a response to them.
In fact, it doubly disincentivises us to fix problems because if fixing a problem is the sole responsibility of the person we’ve blamed it on, then voluntarily fixing something becomes an apparent admission of guilt.
The problem is if everyone is playing the blame game, then no one is playing the fix-the-problem game, and, unsurprisingly, problems never get fixed.
The Fix-The-Problem Game
Here’s a new game:
Accept responsibility for the problems you can fix.
Do what you can to reduce the immediate impact of the problem.
Identify the cause of the problem.
Fix the problem.
Get on with your life.
The reality is that the current physical state of the world and your environment (and the potentially better state that they could be in) have nothing to do with who’s to blame and they won’t get any better by figuring that out.
Sure, sometimes it makes sense to figure out who caused a problem, but that’s not so you can blame them; it’s so you can find the source of the problem and fix it.
The identification of causation shouldn’t be confused with the allocation of blame.
But if I’m constantly fixing problems that other people caused, then aren’t I giving them a free ride? Do I not become a sucker?
Well, so be it.
Not doing so — being someone who doesn’t fix problems because you believe such problems should be left for the causer to solve — only encourages the culture of leaving problems for someone else to solve.
Every time you fail to create the culture of solving problems, you’re encouraging the culture of making them.
There will always be free-riders and trouble-makers. But there will be less of them in a culture where solving problems — regardless of who’s to blame for them — is a valued trait.
This isn’t about taking the blame or responsibility for other people’s problems — as in problems that other people have — it’s just about taking the responsibility for your own problems and for the problems that affect you and for those you can do something about, regardless of whether other people have caused them.
That’s pretty unfair, no?
Well, life is not fair.
You have to get over the petty requirement that life be fair before you’ll participate in it.
A life with fewer problems is better than one without. Fairness is irrelevant to that calculation.
I’m willing to solve the problem, but it is the official responsibility of another person or organisation.
Sure, sometimes it’s not possible to take direct responsibility for a problem, even if you’re willing to. But that doesn’t change the fact that you can take indirect responsibility for it.
You can contact that person and notify them that a problem needs solving. You can offer to help them solve it, or ask them to help you solve it, or for permission to solve it yourself.
But most problems you can just solve, and you do not need permission.
Because You Don’t Want To Live In A Trash Heap
You don’t need permission to pick up trash from the beach, for example (thanks Ryan Holiday for doing your bit).
If you live near the beach and like to walk along that beach you might hate the fact that there’s always trash littering it.
And you could curse all the filthy, inconsiderate people in your neighbourhood or community or city who leave it there, or the incompetent sanitation workers who don’t do their job of picking it up.
Or, you could just pick it up.
You could realise that it’s your beach and you want it to be clean and that you are perfectly able to pick up trash and that doing so makes the beach you visit slightly less trashy, and that it makes the community and environment and world you live in also less trashy.
Sure, it’s not your trash, but it is your beach, or your street, or your neighbourhood, or your city, or your country, or your planet.
And you don’t want to live in a trash heap.
It’s your responsibility to make the world you want to live in, regardless of who’s to blame for the current one.
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