The Blame Game: Quien Tiene la Culpa?

Blame is such a heavy topic.

Merriam Webster Definition:


"transitive verb

1

: to find fault with : censure <the right to praise or blame a literary work>

2

a : to hold responsible <they blame me for everything> b : to place responsibility for <blames it on me>

— blam·er noun

— to blame

: at fault : responsible <says he's not to blame for the accident>"

In other words, a necessary evil. Evil exists, therefore, there must be a cause for Evil. Thus is born blame. I believe blame is actually born of intense fear. As rational human beings, we need a source in order to calculate potential outcomes. We need an X=1 in order to even have an equation. We place blame out of this necessity to have someone be responsible as well as act as this central point from which we can determine further effect. Otherwise we are totally in the dark. 

I have a very personal experience with blame as I have an older sister. A lot of blame occurred in my household growing up. If something went missing someone had to be to blame. I remember once, in our cellar, we had a huge metal shelf stocked with wines and things. One day I came home and the shelf had fallen and all the bottles were smashed. My mom was furious. "Which one of you did this!" I knew it wasn't me, apparently it was not my mom and I asked my sister frankly if it had been her and she told me honestly, the way sisters do, that it wasn't her. I tried to tell my mom through her rage, "Maybe no one did it. Maybe it just fell." She did not accept that answer. Someone had to be to blame. Because there is danger in not knowing, it leaves to much open ended. If it wasn't one of us, then how? Did someone break in? Was there a large shake? What if it was a ghost? Can we feel safe? I becomes very complicated when no one is to blame. Humans are complicated, which is why we try and simplify. 

In Mary Douglas's essay, Risk and Blame, she writes,

"Danger is defined to protect the public good and the
incidence of blame is a by-product of arrangements for persuading
fellow members to contribute to it " (7).

So in other words, a community defines for its members when something is detrimental therefore invoking blame when said detrimental thing occurs. The way she puts it in the essay however, I feel as though she makes a negative distinction on the side of primitive cultures against technologically advances civilization. How sometimes blame goes to all people for crimes against the laws of god or nature. But it is as if somehow, that is not an adequate explanation for blame. Like with my mother, anything beyond the physical cannot be to blame. In reality, it does not want to be acknowledged because that would require much more complicated questions and answers. Is blame towards a politician any less ridiculous. While again, you could say in hindsight that it was there fault based on poor decision making, but they cannot be held responsible for everyone else's decisions that may have culminated in forming such an outcome.

Blame is the loophole that stops us from always coming back to those big questions about what we are and were we came from. In grounds us in moving forward with our everyday lives. As Mary Douglas also points out, the only community thus far observed as blameless may be the Sangha community of monks. How do we rid ourselves of blame? Become enlightened, know the answers to the big questions and blame will no longer need to ground us in reality, it will be obsolete. Similarly, the world of virtual technology may just offer the same thing. Two very different ends of the spectrum with blame at the center.