Blame the other guy
Some human beings are incapable of suspecting a flaw in their own makeup. They blame their misfortune on others and ascribe all criticism of their performance to malice or prejudice. They’re not invariably wrong, but they’re wrong often enough to cancel out the times they’re right.
It’s really a form of mild, sub-clinical paranoia. It can affect nations or, indeed, entire epochs, as well as individuals. No country is immune, but as I’m writing this, the country affected by it most acutely is Greece. The cradle of Western civilization appears resolved to spend it into its grave.
Be they people or peoples, blaming others for their own flaws seems a necessary defence mechanism for the fragile. It rarely prevents them from functioning; it merely removes any danger of them having to face reality. Needless to say, what is a defence mechanism for the fragile often looks like a character defect to their neighbours. But whether a character defect or just a personality trait, this type of mental block is tailor-made for certain socio-political movements. Activists can shape, channel and structure it until it’s elevated to the profound insight: “It’s their fault, not mine!”
I remember a lifestyle columnist from many years ago complaining in a Toronto glossy about the public’s attitude toward women, extrapolating from her experience as a driver.
“When my husband is driving the car, we usually get to our destination without incident,” she explained, “but when I’m driving, at least one driver will honk, yell or shake his fist at us.”
The writer was convinced that this showed how prejudiced people were against women. It never occurred to her that if she can’t drive from point A to point B without somebody yelling and honking at her, not in Saudi Arabia but in Canada, the problem may be with her driving.
Blaming others as a cast of mind is available to both men and women, but men received little institutional support for it over the last 40 years. Women did and still do, from newsrooms to lecture halls to legislatures. Feminism is by no means the only movement that has elevated defensive paranoia to a central creed, but feminists have honed it to a fine art. They aren’t alone; ethnic and religious minorities, and even some majorities, have managed to ascribe all expressions of disapproval to the prejudice of others. Comforting as such an attitude is, it can turn both individuals and groups into creatures of self-righteous menace.
A driver who thinks she’s yelled and honked at only because she’s a woman, won’t see it as her task to improve her driving. Her task, as she sees it, will be to raise the consciousness of others until they stop yelling and honking at her. Better still, until they accept her driving as the norm.
Here’s the good news: even in an age such as ours that puts a premium on victimhood, many people retain a different outlook on life. The difference may be illustrated by the contrasting approaches of a psychotherapist and a flight instructor. The first wants to increase his patient’s self-confidence; the second wants to teach his student something to feel confident about.
David Frid, a pilot friend, now retired as a training captain from a major airline, gave me flying lessons some years ago. He taught me how to move the controls, but also something equally important. It happened during the first months of my training when another aircraft tried to occupy a piece of sky we were occupying at the time. It wasn’t exactly a close call, but we had to take some evasive action.
“What’s wrong with those guys?” I asked. We were in controlled airspace, but heard nothing on our radio frequency to warn us about a possible conflict. “We’ ll see about those guys in a minute,” my friend replied. “First, let’s figure out if we did anything wrong.”
We had done nothing wrong on that occasion, as it turned out, but later, David outlined the principle.
“Worry about your mistakes, not the other guy’s,” he said. “The other guy is here today, gone tomorrow, but your mistakes ride in the cockpit with you all the time.”
I remember David’s remark and quote it from time to time, because it’s so wonderfully old fashioned. You don’t hear such advice from activists or shrinks. For them, blaming the other guy is the standard.
A flight instructor’s concern is different from a psychotherapist’s, of course. Your flight instructor wants to feel good about you; your psychotherapist wants you to feel good about yourself.
A therapist wants to raise your self-esteem, while a flight instructor wants you to lower yourself to the runway in one piece. Perhaps today’s world is such a mess because we’re taking our cues from our therapists rather than from our flight instructors.
Whether a character defect or just a personality trait, blaming one’s misfortunes on others is a mental block that’s tailor made for certain socio-political movements