Rufus Laggren wrote: On reading through this thread, it appears that two words are being used, w/out turn signals sorta speak, for 5 different concepts and situations. Maybe that should be one word.
r ranson wrote: In English, the action is related to the person. "He spilt the milk". Whereas in other languages, it's more common to say "the milk spilt" or "the milk spilt itself"
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I think you are quite right, the blame thing is part of the culture. It is kind of like in present day China (the last place where English is unlikely to become dominant any time soon) where you can be rewarded for turning someone else in, or accusing someone. That's the extreme version of it, but it exists in our culture too. I'm sure that that has been present in other cultures on the planet at other times... East Germany comes to mind in relatively recent years... Not English, but English has a Germanic base!-ha, maybe it's a german thing... the Nazi's were German, Right? But then Stalinist Russia comes to mind. It is generally a dictator's thing... methinks. A warlord thing. A thing based, as mentioned, on conquest, on dominance. By taking this way of communicating, we gain some reward, however sick and twisted it is, by putting the blame on someone else, or something else, but not accepting the blame or responisibility ourselves, by getting the eyes off of us. I think there is something deeply inherent in this culture that brings that out of us, and we hold onto this part of ourselves as somehow important, however small and on many levels. By placing blame, we make someone own it, but not us. It's a cruel world in this way, and we do need to consider it, and we do need to act better based on better thinking, deeper thinking, so that this can be removed in any form that seems like it's going to be harmful in our interpersonal relationship and to us as a society.We seem to be conditioned as a society to 1) feel that everything bad must be blamed on a person and 2) get scared that that blame will fall on us so we need to be aggressive before this happens in hopes this will deflect the blame.
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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."-Margaret Mead "The only thing worse than being blind, is having sight but no vision."-Helen Keller
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."-Margaret Mead "The only thing worse than being blind, is having sight but no vision."-Helen Keller
Jan White wrote:
Are there really that many people who when hearing, "Hey, can we try putting the milk in this other spot? It keeps tipping over when we put it here." will get defensive about being blamed? I guess I understand that some people might feel blamed if someone says, "hey, you keep spilling the milk when you open the fridge." A simple tweak in wording like above would be enough for almost everyone, I would think. Maybe I don't get it.
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r ranson wrote:Story time.
I once lived with a person's who's entire world view was based on one axiom: If something happens, someone has to be to blame. It's raining, the weatherman is to blame for hating us. If the sun shines, the weatherman is to blame. If the milk is spilt, someone didn't put it in the fridge properly and that individual must be sought out and punished for their crime.
I wondered about this. Why does every action have to have blame associated with it?
Then I remembered something a teacher said. In English, the action is related to the person. "He spilt the milk". Whereas in other languages, it's more common to say "the milk spilt" or "the milk spilt itself"
This is the trouble I have. Why must we blame someone for split milk? If the milk spilt because it wasn't sitting in the fridge door securely, I want to talk with others about how do we fix the problem so the milk remains unspilt tomorrow?
What they hear is "you didn't put the milk away properly."
What I'm saying is "the milk spilt because something is wrong with the design. Do we need to move the lemon juice so that the milk can fit in there easier or maybe the milk is shifting as the door opens? Maybe if we changed where the milk lives, then the future will have less spilt milk."
And what they hear is "you are a horrible person because you dropped the milk bottle."
We seem to be conditioned as a society to 1) feel that everything bad must be blamed on a person and 2) get scared that that blame will fall on us so we need to be aggressive before this happens in hopes this will deflect the blame.
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