Who Do You Blame?

So during the debt ceiling fiasco and even afterwards, do you know what I found as the common theme? Blame. The Republicans blamed the Democrats, the Democrats blamed the Republicans and everyone blamed the Tea Party. So in the end it took months of blaming to get us a debt ceiling that created what...more blame.

Have we ever thought that with everyone blaming everyone in this country for their problems or the problems of the country that we actually are distracted from what the true problems are? Then if we are distracted are we not being stopped from solving the real problems?

When did we stop taking responsibility for the things that happen in our lives or maybe we have never taken responsibility. Maybe it is our nature to always assign blame because to look within ourselves would mean maybe going to a dark place. Then we might actually realize that life does not revolve around ourselves and other people have feelings and opinions.

So here are examples of what I see as assigning blame:

When two kids walk into a school and start shooting each other, we blame the guns, the parents, the music and the movies. We don't think about the people themselves, that they made the choice to kill another person. We assume that it had to be a movie that pushed them to kill, not thinking it might have been being rejected multiple times when trying to find love. We might think that this is crazy but how do we know because we are too busy blaming to find out the real answer. Do we really believe that if you take away the guns, the movies, the music that killing would stop? If so where did we assign blame for killing in the old days before these things existed?

German citizen's were told that the Jews were to blame for all of their problems and while they embraced this delusion, the Nazi party came to power and people were ripped from their homes and killed.

When Pearl Harbor happened we imprisioned Japanese American citizen's and did we as citizen's stop this, no, we looked the other way because we blamed them for hurting us. How else can we explain accepting dropping nuclear weapons on innocent people?

We buy $300K houses while making $50K per year and then when we lose our jobs or the financial crisis hits, our finanical life changes. So do we get upset with ourselves for living beyond our means, no, we blame the banks and the country for creating this crisis. Is it their fault that we live under the delusion of being able to afford more than we can?


What about going to a Mexican restaurant on Cinco De Mayo and people being upset with the service because there were only 1 waiter for every 10 tables. Did we think that no one would call in sick on these days? I guess we think everything should be there for us when we want it and if we do not get it then it has to be someone's fault. Does that not sound like we think we are entitled?


Being in the workplace, I see the blame game going on every day. I have seen people actually making blatent mistakes and still blame it on someone or something else. I have seen meetings go on forever because most of it is people fighting with each other about who is to blame for the problem when the issue could have been discussed and solved in ten minutes.


I give an example recently where I could have blamed someone and I did not. I was wondering why I had an NSF fee on my bank and I was ready to go down and yell at them for it. Then I realized that in doing online payment for one of my credit cards, I clicked on the Pay Full Amount instead of a normal payment that I do. Well, obviosuly that was more than I had in the bank so it was returned. After $100 in fees from both the bank and the credit card company, I could have blamed both for not letting me know or could have cried to try to get the fees reversed. I just called myself an idiot, paid the right amount and lived with it because there was no one to blame for this except for me.

So the next time things happen, ask yourself if you take responsilbity for it or do you blame someone else? If you balme someone else, does it make the situation better or worse? Then ask yourself what things occured that you could have taken care of while you were busy blaming someone else.