Accepting the world as it is now not how it should have been, without assigning blame, and looking for ways to steer it toward a better future is a very useful way to live. It is also anything but easy. Regrets, grudges, self-blame are all too common, and there is something both biological and cultural in needing those. I like your idea of having a short catchy way to express this future looking approach, whether hwa takes off or not.
Thoroughly agreed that it’s worth doing and also really hard.
Based on several years of experience of trying (and succeeding, to a large extent) to live without blame, in a context where others are doing the same, my read is that blame isn’t a biological imperative. I would say something like… “meaning is a biological imperative (for humans)” and then “many of our main cultural meaning narratives are blame-based”. But post-blame meaning is way better. Whether “meaning” is the thing or not, I’m inclined to say that blame as such is just pica for whatever the underlying biological need is.
Hmm… I guess there’s a few dimensions to it. A necessary aspect of meaning is concepts like responsibility, accountability, etc. You can get rid of blame without getting rid of these (and since they’re necessary, you need to keep non-blamey versions in order to be able to let go of blame.)
I haven’t yet made a good write-up on exactly why one might want to let go of blame, but if you’re familiar with “Should” Considered Harmful, it’s basically the same line of reasoning.
Accepting the world as it is now not how it should have been, without assigning blame, and looking for ways to steer it toward a better future is a very useful way to live. It is also anything but easy. Regrets, grudges, self-blame are all too common, and there is something both biological and cultural in needing those. I like your idea of having a short catchy way to express this future looking approach, whether hwa takes off or not.
Thoroughly agreed that it’s worth doing and also really hard.
Based on several years of experience of trying (and succeeding, to a large extent) to live without blame, in a context where others are doing the same, my read is that blame isn’t a biological imperative. I would say something like… “meaning is a biological imperative (for humans)” and then “many of our main cultural meaning narratives are blame-based”. But post-blame meaning is way better. Whether “meaning” is the thing or not, I’m inclined to say that blame as such is just pica for whatever the underlying biological need is.
Hmm… I guess there’s a few dimensions to it. A necessary aspect of meaning is concepts like responsibility, accountability, etc. You can get rid of blame without getting rid of these (and since they’re necessary, you need to keep non-blamey versions in order to be able to let go of blame.)
I haven’t yet made a good write-up on exactly why one might want to let go of blame, but if you’re familiar with “Should” Considered Harmful, it’s basically the same line of reasoning.