It's never nice to feel guilt, or have to take responsibility. Instinct tells us this, so from childhood it's always the cat or the wind that broke the vase. We shift the blame but avoidance only anesthetizes us to the pain of guilt it doesn't solve anything.
Heaven help you then if you're a celebrity these days; 'a', 'b', 'c' even the 'd' grade celebs have more cameras pointed at them than a British high-street. So when Chrissie Swan snuck a cigarette the other day she was happy snapped by an obliging paparazzo. The really story wasn't Swan or the cigarette, it was her pregnant body that apparently belongs to the world at large to probe, prod and criticise.
Smoking while pregnant is bad (just in case you weren't aware). A quick Google search or even a vox pop of those around you reveals shocked indignation and horror scenarios. Swan wasn't ignorant of this, and we learned as much when she was all but forced to make a public mea culpa on her battle to bag the fag.
What did the public hope to gain by taking to Twitter to shame Chrissie Swan? If helping her was the aim, then the vitriol seems counter productive. Perhaps this was a public awareness campaign against smoking; but then why did it had to wait for a celebrity to get caught in the act? I think Chrissie Swan has been made into the cat that broke the vase, taking the hit for all our little health indiscretions. We need these celebrity mistakes, they're the 'bad influence' that we blame when our own willpower gets weak.
It's not just weak willed people that need to shift the blame though. Three weeks ago I wrote about Jonathan Moylan, the stock crashing, hoaxer living in the bush. Moylan's protest against the proliferation of new mines in Australia exposed (yet again) vulnerabilities in the Australian Stock Exchange. Basically a bunch of people reacted to an unverified news report and sold their shares at a loss. Now instead of blaming the media insiders that allowed the report without verifying it, or even the individuals that panic traded their shares, Moylan is being held solely culpable.
When we shift responsibility we create the illusion that the world's problems might never exist but for the 'bogeyman' being blamed. Private, public and political we have 'bogeymen' surrounding us; disempowering us as we become increasing reliant on a saviour to purge our demons.
We have developed a culture of scapegoating to avoid taking personal responsibility for our actions, as if blame somehow mitigates the damage. This is disturbing at the level of the individual because it perpetuates the cycle; blame fast food and you don't have to look at your personal habits or diet, blame the addictive nature of the pokies and you don't have to consider what drove you to them in the first place. Blame and scapegoating passes responsibility, but there is no one waiting to pick it up.
At the institutional level this culture of 'blame and run' hurts more than just individuals as the moral torpor marginalizes those who stand outside the majority. This is never worse than in the area of political compromise. The most common scenario seems to be a distorted Catch-22, as the humanitarian treatment of asylum seekers becomes equated with soft border protection, and refugees become the scapegoats. Or the question of equal marriage rights for gay people is made synonymous with a disintegration of values and gay men and women are the scapegoats.
The woes of the world have successfully been transferred. There's no need confess or face the truth and this is really bad for us, because the focus is on the problem not on the solution. As we move toward an election this year will we also be interested in blame?
Listen to your local candidates as they campaign for your vote; are they telling you what the other guy is doing wrong, or what they plan to do right? When they tell you someone is to blame they are playing a negative political game and want you to believe that eliminating the problem is the same as a solution. But locking up asylum seekers does not stop more arriving because it does address why they seek refuge in the first place. Preventing gay people from marrying does not strengthen family ties it just prevents good people from making them. Demonizing a tax does not mean there are no meaningful ways for the polis to address climate change.
We must therefore move to address change with a view to judging our flaws meaningfully, not shifting them onto somebody else...
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