On those who fail, but criticise the problems, not their solutions (series: notes to myself)

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I have met many people unable to accept, let alone admit, that they were ever wrong or might have made a mistake. The fault is always something else's or someone else's. Others were wrong: they failed to comply; they mismanaged something or misunderstood something else; they were late, or delayed them; they did not get it, or did not understand; they did not write or did not reply, did not receive it or did not send it. They, not themselves.

I call them hetero-blamers, with an inverted reference to Kant's heteronomy of reason. For the hetero-blamers of the world, it is always circumstances or people that did not work. When their solution fails, it is the problem's fault.

Some people are naturally born hetero-blamers. They use the same, simple, counterfactual mechanism we all deploy, at least occasionally, to protect our skins from our failures: "I could have, ... I would have ... if only...". But they apply it not just to what they fail to achieve - as we all do, at least sometimes - but to what they manage to screw up. That is brilliant.

They are not aware of their trick, but it must be reassuring to know that one is never a sinner, never at fault, never a fool who should and could have known better. 

What remorse can you feel, if the mistake is in the end inevitably someone else's?

Never blaming oneself. Never having to admit one's own errors. 

Of course, they are unable to learn from their mistakes, because there are none to study in the first place. But there must be some enviable peace of mind in such oblivious stupidity.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash



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