Blame Culture

23rd June 2003

There are many cycles of behaviour people can get involved in that need to change, destructive cycles that do not lead to happy lives. Bullying is one of these, violence is another. I watched a programme on teenage gangs in Britain recently with gang members talking about stabbings, fights, drinking etc. Watching the programme and thinking about the possible causes and the various groups involved, i.e. the police, the family, the government I think the one thing I took from it was the lack of responsibility in the kids involved, the ‘blame culture’ they lived in.

Kids being interviewed on camera beside burnt out cars in run down council estates stating that they do what they do because they don’t have anything else, because they have nothing else to do. It all comes down to each person taking responsibility for their own actions. The kids were blaming others, stating that it wasn’t their fault that they mugged people, were involved in drugs and petty crime. They were effectively saying it was someone else’s fault as if they had made them do it. It’s a reflection of the blame society we live in. Everything is always someone else’s fault, especially when it comes to violence, ‘he made me do it’, ‘she drove me to it’ are common excuses. It got me thinking how sad it is that people are so quick to use violence to ‘resolve’ situations. How quickly people are to dislike one another, to put each other down, to resort to words like ‘hate’, to casually use threatening language in conversation.’I’m gonna kick so and so’s head in, cave his face in’. It saddens me to hear people saying things like this; so casually and often they’re empty, groundless threats that they have no intention of carrying out. It’s just for ego, to keep face but still very sad.

The lack of education and the ignorance is the most frightening thing to me, to live lives where this violence is considered normal and desirable, to sit happy to blame everyone else for your problems and just carry on the cycle of negative actions is to make you impotent. To spit out words that blame others and just carry on is to be powerless. You become powerless when you say you’re violent because there’s nothing else to do, you become impotent and leave the transition to a happier way of life in the hands of others. The responsibility for the life you live, the things you do and don’t do, the words you say, and the thoughts you think, the people you hang around with. It all starts with one person; it comes down to one thing. YOU.

I think today people are quick to blame because it is easy, it requires no effort. You pass the responsibility onto someone else and carry on in ignorance. You carry on the cycle of violence, the cycle of crime, the cycle of bullying. And I think it’s because people are weak. It takes a strong person to take responsibility for themselves and that’s sadly what so many people lack. It’s hard to tread your own path, to follow your own instincts. It’s easy to give in to peer pressure, it’s easy to stand around on street corners drinking cheap lager, causing trouble, and getting into fights. That’s easy. Anyone can do that; it takes no strength to follow the crowd, to be a sheep.

It takes strength to follow your own path, to lead yourself, to take responsibility for your actions and that’s what growing up is all about. I didn’t have a great childhood, far from it, my life at school and at home was for a long, long time a living hell. But the one good thing I had was the intelligence to follow my own path. I never gave in to peer pressure over drinking, over drugs, over fighting. I always followed myself; never the crowd and that kept me out of trouble and helped me avoid the negative behaviour that a lot of people I knew ended up involved in.

I’m not a perfect person but I do know from experience that life is too good an experience to waste being stuck in a cycle of violence, of anger, frustration, boredom, of bullying and being bullied. My rapidly growing experience tells me that you can do anything you want to do if you learn from the mistakes you inevitably make. Anything is possible if you strive to be a good person and have good intentions. You can do anything if you have enough strength to follow yourself and not the crowd, if you have enough intelligence to realise that everything you do has a consequence, that even if you’re involved in bullying and violence and crime and think you’re getting away with it you’re not for the simple reason that you’re involved in those things in the first place.

Lead yourself; follow your own orders and instincts, not those of others. To live in ignorance, to continue doing the same thing again and again and blaming everyone but yourself makes no sense at all.