The Confusion of Causes and Cures

There’s a problem in the way that we’re framing discussions about just about everything right now, and what it is finally occurred to me this morning and seemed too simple to have not been pointed out before...and yet, I can’t remember having seen anybody talk about it, so I thought I would: we’re confusing causes and cures.  Sometimes knowing how you got from B to A can help you get from back to B, or even forward to C, but knowing you’re at B doesn’t necessarily tell you a damned thing about how you got there in the first place, so assuming that the path back to A is fixed can get you into serious trouble.

For example, if you’re in a financial bind, there’s no doubt that hard work, and lots of it, will be required to get you out of it.  This doesn’t necessarily imply, however, that laziness is what made you broke in the first place.  Also if you’re in a financial bind, there’s no doubt that being very careful with what money you have will be necessary to get you out of it.  This doesn’t necessarily imply, however, that spending like a drunken sailor is what got you there in the first place.

And yet it feels like most of the time our discussions of economic hardship center on how broke people are lazy, stupid, or both.

We do the same thing with health, which is even more disturbing because it’s even less under our control than our financial situations are.

We’ve lost respect for the random factors that take the best-made decisions and turn them into disasters.

I’m all about personal responsibility.  But I’m really tired of the politics that confuses the need for people to be responsible with the need to blame them for their problems.  It’s possible to work hard and still get laid off, and it’s possible to eat right, exercise, and still get sick.  Do you need to get a new job?  Yep.  Does that mean that you screwed up the old one?  Not at all.

I’ve said before that God has been replaced in our culture with a free-floating secular anxiety akin to superstition, and this is yet another manifestation.  If people go broke because they’re lazy and stupid, then people like us don’t have to worry, right?  If people die young because they’re lazy and stupid, then people like us will be in good health for a very long time, yes?  This attitude, this confusing of the need for people to take responsibility for fixing things with whether or not they caused the issue in the first place, is a warding-off.  It’s a modern ritual incantation against the randomness of the universe.  It’s profoundly religious, even as it contradicts what we think of as religion.

And it’s going to drive me nuts, because I’m both unhealthy and broke and really, really tired of hearing about what a lousy person I must be to have gotten that way.

1. BINGO Deb! I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.

   Usually, when something screws up - personally or professionally - my response is let’s figure out WHAT happened and HOW to fix it.  Blame? Save it for another day.  If we understand the WHAT and just do our best to avoid it in the future, that’s all that matters.

   Blame? Yeah, wasted energy in my book......

   Posted by Tammi  on  08/01  at  11:13 AM  from  Illinois
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