Responsibility, Blame and the mediated disempowering of the people

Apportioning responsibility, rather than blame, empowers healing AND effective resistance to oppression.... 

Blame is the tool of the oppressor, for it entangles and disguises the various layers of responsibility and is used to confuse those who are in distress... such is the nature of our society that blame and it's partner guilt is more common in law than responsibility or remorse.

As David Smail points out in his Essay "The Moral Tyranny of Therapy" when a person who is in distress present themselves for help, what is left out of the picture is the ways in which Societal Power Relationships mediate in all our lives. What this means is that ALL the responsibility for the distress causes are heaped upon the person seeking help, instead of allocating it where it belongs.

There are powerful Institutions who directly profit from and impose conditions upon people whose effects they know about and routinely disguise, lie and cheat about, and about which Education and National Health Care Services DO NOT examine or reveal in any great detail and consequently those forces are NEVER mentioned AS PART OF THE PICTURE.

If on the other hand, someone in distress hears the following "Well, given the nature of the society into which you were born, the rampant conditioning and violence which characterises it, AND your personal experiences, all of which are at variance to your natural expectations and healthful needs, it's no surprise that you feel as you do. Let's talk about this, shall we?" then the person in distress will immediately heave a sigh of relief and get to work on the issues they face, disentangling those aspects that they themselves are genuinely responsible for or to and begin handing the others back to where they rightfully belong.

This of course is being studiously avoided by mainstream psychiatry, psychotherapy and their various mouth pieces, as much as by the mass media, the Governments, the churches etc etc..... and by MOST official mainstream Charities......

A potent example of this is the phrase oft used "Look at what YOU made me do!"

I KNOW that program because I too used it AGAINST those I bullied or hit out at in irrational anger to justify my behaviour.

As an example of what I am writing about, I can tell you that I suffered from fear and self-loathing for much of my life. This manifested in self-sabotage, depression, irrational anger and other symptoms of distress.

I blamed myself for all those symptoms and others around me did the same, including many 'therapists' and officials.

Only when I was able to discern that it was the conditioning and abuse to which I was exposed to that inculcated that self loathing, as a survival strategy of a small child, (to accept that the adults brutality was justified is a survival strategy) that I was able to address the way I thought and felt about myself and finally release the suppressed pain of the wounding’s that gave rise to those feelings. That was me taking my responsibility, my ability to respond, as my own.

I was then able to apportion responsibility to those who harmed me for such a long time, and then to those Institutions that crafted such conditioning that those people became part of.

And so I no longer ever use that phrase "Look at what you made me do!" as a get out clause or for any other reason.

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Kindest regards 


Corneilius 


Do what you love, it's your gift to universe