© Roger M Tagg 2009 revised 2023
It has increasingly become the fashion, when things don’t go right, for people to avoid any thought that the failure had anything to with their own actions or responsibility. An Australian sportsman who punched his girlfriend recently excused himself on the grounds that he was drunk. News about road accidents in New Zealand in the 1990s used to say “his car failed to take a bend”, rather than leave any implication that the driver might have avoided the accident, e.g. by drinking less, going slower, keeping his car properly maintained etc. As a university lecturer, I often got students who failed and then didn’t accept that passing might mainly be up to them – as if it was my duty to give them a pass regardless of their mark, because their fees had been paid.
The first thoughts of many people who have hit a problem are to find excuses and to shift the blame.
Offering excuses is something we learn in early childhood – “he hit me first” is an example. Another tactic is to plead incapacity, e.g. “I felt ill”, “I didn’t understand what he said to me”, “I had too much to drink” or “I was really upset”. It’s also easy to implicate a third party, e.g. “I was forced by threats”.
When I worked in the Middle East, I used to get excuses from people who said they had to attend to a sick or dying relative. I was usually sympathetic, but I would draw the line if someone’s third grandmother had died.
One general tactic of excuse artists is to de-individualise (see Guerin). Examples are: “Everyone was doing it” (e.g. speeding), “I followed the crowd, or my mates”. This could also be extended to referring to the authority under which one claims to be acting, e.g. “I was only following orders”, “I followed the book, the religion, or the priest”, “That’s the way we do things in my culture” (e.g. “honour” killings in Pakistan, female circumcision in Africa).
It is also common to find someone else (or an organisation) to blame for the failure. “If at first you don’t succeed, find somebody to sue” seems a motto of many. This attitude has probably had a big effect in the enormous rise in insurance premiums for organisations that run any service where people might act carelessly or stupidly and then start a lawsuit.
Management in organisations and government ministers spend a lot of effort shifting blame.
I came across this phenomenon in my days living in Tehran, Iran. Certain people would stand on the side of the street, armed with what looked like a carpenter’s saw. If they spotted some wealthy looking car, especially driven by an expatriate, they would jump out in front and ensure they fell on the saw and produced a lot of blood. A crowd would gather and blame the driver, who would have to pay a large sum in compensation (probably via his insurance policy), which would no doubt pay for the chosen victim’s hospital bill and leave a tidy sum to be shared with his mates.
I think it’s much the best for a successful life if we do take personal responsibility more seriously. Sure, we may not want to let everyone else know the real reason for our misfortune. Also, we have to guard against taking too much of the responsibility for what someone else did. But it seems only sensible to learn from our mistakes and try to get it nearer right the next time.
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This version updated on 18th July 2023