My Fault? No Siree!

It starts early. A broken plate. The last biscuit from the tin. A homework not done.

“It wasn’t my fault. It was my sister/my brother/the dog!”

Blame.

And so it goes for the rest of our lives. Learning to blame becomes a central part of our lives. Late for a meeting? Traffic. Too much to drink? It was Jimmy, you know what he’s like. The bins weren’t left out. It was your turn. Caught speeding? I had to be somewhere urgently. (I once told a policeman that I was in a hurry to get to the petrol station as the car was running out of fuel. At least he got the joke)

Our health, so often is blame too. Not our fault that we eat too much, smoke, don’t bother taking exercise, drink a lot. Sure everyone does. It is everyone who is to blame.

We are trained to blame, to pass the buck, to shift responsibility. At the heart of it all is to deny that we have any cause and effect for our own actions. We want to excuse ourselves, and to pin the blame on others. It is so ingrained that blaming becomes a natural reaction, so much so that we don’t even attempt to think it through and admit that we have some control over the outcomes in our own lives and society.

When we come to Northern Ireland and politics we drown in a blame culture. One side blaming the other.

Nationalists blame Unionists, Unionists blame Nationalists. Neither set of people seem to have the capacity to take a step back and think through that they may have some responsibility for the levels of hatred and sectariansim that still stalk our land.

Blame the 800 years of British control of Ireland. Blame the Catholic church. Blame the Unionist discrimintation. Blame the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Blame the IRA. Blame the UVF. Blame the government. Blame the system. Blame blame blame.

We blame events and people that are long gone, as if they are still affecting us when their only impact is to create more blame. A march to commemorate a battle or a celebration of a dead person only serve to accentuate the notion of blame.

Central to blame is the absolute conviction that “I am right”. We actually fool ourselves so well that the blame we are quick to allocate becomes the truth. It was the traffic that made me late, not that I didn’t set out in time. It was Jimmy saying have another drink rather than me not saying no. I wasn’t looking where I was putting the plate when it dropped and broke.

The Troubles. It was them. Not a bit of them and a bit of us. Them.

With no attempt to understand. No attempt to think that I/we might just have something to do with it. That the language we use is an ingredient. That the things we were taught by our parents and teach our children might have a lifelong impact.

Maybe the next time we allocate blame we should think it through. Is the twenty year old Nationalist responsible for the IRA violence of 25 years ago? Is the young Unionist really to blame for 800 yours of British misrule. Is the Plantation reverseable? Is the increase in the Nationalist population stoppable? Or is it that we haven’t a clue how to think beyond these mental boundaries of blame?

It is time to park blame. To take some responsibility and not think in simplistic terms “I’m right – they are wrong!” To stop answering every question with ideas that were started with blame. In other words, to grow up and not keep acting like children.

“Mum, It wasn’t me! It was her!”