The foundation for understanding the psychology of blame is not with the action of blaming but rather the nature of fallibility (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/).
The real challenge is not to focus on the action of blame but rather Everyday Social Resilience (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/) in the journey in fallibility.
In human being and living, there is no ‘drift into failure’. Humans are permanently mortal and fallible, there is no movement from perfection into failure. This is the Augustinian myth. The key then is, how do we live in fallibility with the failings of mortality? How do we understand Everyday Social Resilience when risk goes wrong? What is our orientation to persons and our ethic of personhood in the face of the inevitable outcomes of fallibility? What is our language we use when risk goes wrong?
The beginning to understanding how and why things go wrong and why things go right is not rocket science. The first step is the articulation of an ethic of personhood. Unless one understands one’s ontology, then whatever flows out of that foundation determines the actions one takes towards persons. Most actions of blame emerge from an attitude that points one finger at someone whilst three other fingers point back at them.
The pointing finger is the common metaphor/semiotic for safety.
There is no great ‘sin’ in blame, just as there is no sainthood in elevating success. Focussing only on things that go right is not a recipe for learning.
Understanding the psychology of shame and the dynamics of blame are foundational for learning to work with others when risk goes wrong. Shame and blame need not destroy people if they are anchored in an understanding of Everyday Social Resilience. Blame and shame need not be the end of relationships indeed, when attached to Everyday Social Resilience, they become the normalised flow in the resilience wave (https://safetyrisk.net/everyday-social-resilience-the-semiotic-wave/).
St Paul’s famous call to repentance in 1 Cor 3: 18-23 is not about some individualised groaning in guilt or agonising about failure in confession. For Paul, repentance is about reconnecting with one’s own fallibility. As Ellul reminds us in his wonderful book Ethics of Freedom , repentance is about disconnectedness and alienation from one’s own sense of personhood. Repentance is about reconnecting with one’s own fallibility in being.
Ellul argues that alienation means:
… being possessed externally by another and belonging to them. It also means being self-alienated, other than oneself, transformed into another. (Ellul, 1976, p. 24)
Ellul argues (Ellul, 1976, p. 29) that there are four aspects of the alienation experience. These are:
(1) the experience of the powerlessness of each of us in face of the world, of the society in which we are but which we can neither modify nor escape
(2) the experience of the absurd, of seeing that the events we have to live through have no meaning or value, so that we cannot find our way in them
(3) the experience of abandonment, of knowing that no help is to be expected, that neither others nor society will grant any support, the idea of dereliction which is so dear to existentialism; and finally
(4) the culminating experience of indifference to one-self, in which man is so outside himself that his destiny is no longer of interest to him and he has neither desire nor zest for life.
For Paul, repentance is about tackling this nature of alienation NOT some tokenistic idea associated with blame, confession, shame or the metaphor of restoration. Resilience is not about ‘bouncing back’ but moving forward. Repentance is coming to your senses about your own fallibility. Most of the time, it is the masking of fallibility that is the problem for how humans deal with blame and shame. Of course, this is why the language of fallibility is taboo in the safety world. So, what can we do?
The key to tackling personhood is having open and transparent methods for ALL in an organisation that creates a culture for empathy and alignment. In SPoR, such a culture is created through the use of SPoR Methods (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/spor-and-semiotics/ ) such as iCue Engagement. iCue is a visual/verbal method of engagement that creates openness and transparency.
Actions such as confession, repentance and forgiveness are meaningless without an ethic of personhood. I discussed this in The Social Psychology of Risk Handbook (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/the-social-psychology-of-risk-handbook/) Chapter 2.
Some critical questions are: how are you oriented towards persons? What is your disposition towards other fallible people? How do you understand and speak about your own fallibility? What is your language and Discourse associated with authority and power in the face of fallibility? How do leaders wrestle with their own fallibility in the light of risk? How is fallibility spoken about in the organisation?
It is from these questions and one’s orientation/disposition that one makes sense of blame and what to do when risk goes wrong.
If you are interested in an ethic of personhood, you are welcome to join the SPoR conference to be held in Canberra 13-17 May (https://spor.com.au/canberra-convention/). The conference tackles two critical issues in risk: an ethic of personhood and, Everyday Social Resilience. Email rob@spor.com.au for your early bird discount.
Dr Rob Long
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