Sunday Afternoon Reflections - The Blame Game

Vintage BLAME GAME pointing fingers print
by ExLibrisJournals

I'm a bit weary - not physically tired actually, more emotionally weary of reading yet another article and hearing more reports about how all of everyone's problems are President Obama's fault, or the Democrats' fault, or the Republicans' fault... Planned Parenthood is wrong...the right is wrong, the left is wrong, the rich are responsible, the poor are responsible. Illegal aliens are (ir)responsible, religion is responsible, celebrities are (ir)responsible, restaurants are responsible for our health problems, and you'd better not even say a kid is even remotely responsible for anything, or you'll have everyone breathing down your neck. Seriously, people... have you thought about it logically or are you led, like so many others, by the media, by the politicians, by the fanatics who will say anything to promote their cause?

This is the reality... 

"We are not innocent children victimized by a big bad world; if our world is big and bad, we made it that way. This is what the Buddha taught. The “other” is the child's bogeyman, the projection of our own fears onto a terrifying object of our imagination, which in turn terrorizes us. Our ignorance is not seeing that we are the other. We cannot afford to confuse innocence with this ignorance. Violence is not a permanent, immutable, fixed object. It is a state of mind, an expression of ignorance, with no more solid substance than a cloud. We cannot make a frontal attack on violence. Even protecting ourselves from it fuels its bogeyman existence. But the Buddha taught that we can change. This was his good news: that there is a way to alleviate suffering by freeing our minds from greed, anger, and ignorance. Yet until we apprehend the ways in which we are Oklahoma City, the bombs and the baby bears, the victims and the violators, we will continue to blame “them,” all the while proclaiming our innocence and evading our responsibilities." ~Helen Tworkov

When are we going to start accepting responsibility for the state of the world, of our societies, of our religious organizations, of our families, of our individual lives?  I've been accused many times of being too idealistic and decidedly unrealistic when it comes to human behavior, but the fact of the matter is that none of what is going on in the world happened overnight and all of it is directly the result of our acceptance of such behavior. Does that mean that it can never get better though?  I surely hope not. 


What happened to doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do? Must our motivations always be self-serving? Will greed, hunger for power, fear, futility, and lack of mindfulness continue to be the driving forces behind our actions? Ignorance has become bliss - how many of you have looked the other way simply because you didn't want to "get involved?" Apathy is more prevalent than just about any other emotion. What's happened to our sense of community? Why has taking advantage of the system become something to be admired, and "getting away with things" a skill that pervades every aspect of life? Doing unto others is no longer part of the golden rule (in fact, I would venture a guess that most kids under the age of 10 have never even heard of the golden rule), unless of course someone is trying to figure out how to do unto them before they do unto you - and it's rarely a positive thing.


We need to get back that sense of doing the right thing simply because it's the right thing to do. We need to be the change we want to see in the world. The time for finger pointing is long gone and continuing to do so will get us nowhere. This isn't a time to be timid, nor is it a time to be aggressive. We must simply learn to live the right way - to consider the effects of our decisions on all of society, and not just for the moment, but for the future. It needs to be a time of action and yes, possibly sacrifice and downright discomfort. We need to empower parents and schools to take back control of our youth, we need to respect the experience of our aged, and we need to stop blaming everyone else for the cumulative negative effect of the small poor decisions we make every day of our lives. Honesty, morality, mindfulness and compassion are the tools we need to fix society... and every day in every small way, we need to act responsibly. We need to channel the energy we waste on our finger pointing and blaming others into positive energy that will produce positive effects. Stop whining and belly-aching and start doing what you can to better the world, in whatever way you can. Stop dwelling on what's wrong with the world and set an example to show what can be right with the world. Start now... in your words... in your beliefs...and most importantly, in your actions.

xo,