To a soundtrack of “Blame”, by ABC (https://genius.com/Abc-blame-lyrics), the conversation was stimulated further by readings from Genesis relating to the fall, and Isaiah, and a thought provoking poem “Friday Morning” by Sydney Carter (1915-2004). Accompanying images of newspaper headlines, collectively, identified a role played by the media in influencing and/or reflecting the social popularity of blame. And this was further reflected on in our conversation.
We began with a snippet heard on Radio 4 earlier in the day, where the interviewee asserted that what was happening in Gaza, as reported in the programme, was just propaganda. Local instances of “blame” were shared from the recent fire behind the Mint Methodist church which had stimulated local commentary as to whose fault it was – to a handrail coming loose which caused the oblique blame of “somebody should have done something about that”.
Comment was offered that sometimes things just happen – they are accidents, unforeseen. And yet, in our experiences, there seemed to be a human trait to prefer to apportion blame. The stimuli from Genesis would suggest a blame culture isn’t new – it was Eve, it was the snake! – somehow blame is part of the human condition. One person’s experiences from teaching reminded some of us of seeing the difficulties in children of “owning up” as witnessed when a child does something unkind, is seen doing it and yet when confronted about it denies all knowledge or deflects the blame, “it wasn’t me, it was someone else”. Blaming is easy and as adults we can become quite skilful at avoiding blame!
We considered the need to be big enough to own up and mature enough to consider situations from another point of view. We talked about the original idea of a scapegoat – suffering for taking the blame for that which wasn’t anything to do with the goat! Concern was expressed through the recognition that so often societally it is the vulnerable who get the blame – harming them and upholding power imbalances in the process. At national level, individuals and institutions can be blamed without recognition of the destructive power blaming has on them.
Our thought-provoking conversation ended with an observation that blaming and punishing doesn’t help the situation because blame avoided taking responsibility for making a situation better. We were beaten somewhat by time – ending on thoughts of restorative justice – a whole other conversation perhaps!
Many thanks to Nick and Chris for making us think!
Sarah