We judge because we're scared
A little bit of housekeeping: I will most likely be moving this newsletter to a different platform in the New Year, but ideally that move will be seamless for everybody involved except me and Devin the Moderator. If you suddenly notice these emails coming from a different place, that’s why. Now back to your regularly scheduled musings on art and life.
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It’s human nature, and it’s kind of horrible.
Anybody who has endured a health crisis or a personal tragedy knows too well that in addition to the condolences, there will inevitably be a certain number of people who respond either with a list of things one could have done better (or differently), or a search for the reasons why a bad thing happened, with the implication that one could have done something better (or differently). It’s about the most disheartening and hurtful thing in the world to receive a cancer diagnosis, say, and get hit with a barrage of well-meaning friends who want to dissect why you got cancer.
Cosmic rays, baby. It’s anyone’s guess. Why do some people smoke their whole lives and live to be 100?
The thing is, when a bad thing happens, we want somebody to blame. And we want somebody to blame to reassure ourselves that it won’t happen to us. We want somebody to blame, we want things to have happened for a reason, because if they happened for a reason then we might be able to stop them from happening to us.
And mostly things do happen for a reason, but it might not be a reason that’s under your control—a driver runs a red light; a genetic anomaly works out not to your advantage—and all you can do it deal with the aftermath.
The thing is, often good things happen for completely arbitrary reasons too. You happen to miss your bus, and the lost love of your life is huddling from the rain in the bus shelter. You get a lucky break going viral on social media, and your book hits the NYT list. But nobody wants to blame you for those. Instead, we want to somehow reproduce it… and of course if it were that easy, everybody would be doing it.
I’m not saying there’s a problem with a culture of accountability, but there is a problem with a cult of it. Sometimes—often—outcomes are predicated on luck as much as care or persistence. The problem is that you can’t get the good outcomes without care or persistence, unless you are extraordinarily lucky.
And we all want to feel safe, don’t we?
Anyway, I have been trying to bear this in mind—that we all want somebody to blame because we want to feel safe—for the past ten years or so, since I realized it. And it’s let me be a lot kinder to myself and others.
Worthwhile experiment, if—like most things—it’s more of a daily practice than a thing you do once and then it’s done forever.
As with most things in this life, it’s the maintenance that’s a bitch.