The man answered, “The woman you put here with me gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”- Genesis 3:12

Whenever you find yourself in a situation where you might look stupid, wrong, flawed or generally bad, you always have the option to blame. 

Blame is like a big red button that’s always available to press. When you press this button, it shoots out a red lightning bolt at somebody or something to blame. 

It feels a bit like dumping rubbish into a bin. It’s mostly habitual and automatic. When we open the lid, it stinks, but once it’s closed, we wipe our hands clean. The trash is going somewhere else and isn’t our problem anymore.

Man has been blaming things since Adam threw Eve under the bus. No one person, institution or ideology can escape a pointed finger or resist pointing too.

And although it doesn’t feel nice to be blamed, there’s always a good, noble, righteous reason why someone ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be blamed for something.

The Nuts and Bolts of Blame

Neuroscientist Jill-Bolte Taylor links blame to the left hemisphere, where she suffered a massive stroke, described in A Stroke of Insight and Whole Brain Living.

“As my left brain became stronger, it seemed natural for me to want to “blame” other people or external events for my feelings or circumstances.”

Recovered from her stroke, she gained a rare objectivity, and wrote clearly about how it feels when anxiety, shame, guilt, anger or blame overwhelm and possess her consciousness.

“highly focused as my head feels like it is in a deep cloud …heavy, burdened, or desperate, just as though doomsday has perilously arrived… prickly in my body and tense in my throat… like a pressure cooker that is ready to explode with vehement hostility and blame.”

These “old pattered responses” become habitual over time and “perfected in …attempts to fend off threats”, but may also get triggered if we have a strong need to hide something, like shame. 

This is the focus of the book Healing the Shame That Binds You, where author John Bradshaw admits that shame “ruled me like an addiction. I acted it out; I covered it up in subtle and not so subtle ways; I transferred it to my family, my clients and the people I taught.”

Blame can also be used to strike out against anything we find strange or unpleasant in our environment.

This dynamic is called projection, described by analyst Joseph Lee as a sort of “magnetic attraction between you and (certain unacknowledged) qualities(s) out in your environment.” Rather than accept these disowned parts of ourselves, we defend against them with criticism and blame.

Beyond Blame

This is one of the paradoxes of our life, that familiarity is stronger than comfort – Virginia Satir

Post-stroke, Jill Bolte Taylor sounded like Marcus Aurelius when she writes “nothing external to me had the power to take away my peace of heart and mind.” Not easy for us mere mortals, but this is the promise of blaming less.

Without blame, we could go easier on ourselves and others. We could accept responsibility, and stay comfortable with uncertainty and not-knowing. We could learn to speak the truth and say what we want to say, without holding our tongue or venting and complaining. And we could reel in our projections, admit our mistakes and become a more realistic, imperfect human being, warts and all. 

A world without blame is deeply uncomfortable and painful. But it’s possible, and gives us the chance to see life clearly, as it truly is.