The Side Effect of the Blame in the Learning Process
How the blame culture could be a strong blocker for our society to evolve.
I was raised to believe that there is a clear definition of wrong and right. If I do this, that’s wrong. If I do that, that’s right. That’s it. Also, if you do wrong you should be punished, like a natural trigger for pushing the wrong switch. The blame and guilt, a powerful and memorable feeling. That happened in several layers of my childhood, from home to my catholic school. And I guess that’s pretty normal. Seems to be a quite natural way (worldwide from what I realised later on) to educate a person to distinguish the socially acceptable actions from those who are not.
As I grew older (luckily) I was able to discover other religions and cultures living in different cities and countries. I came to realize several aspects that made me question and reflect how valuable this learning method is (if you could call this a method in the first place). But many people didn’t have the same opportunity as I to be exposed to different situations and environments and be able to question and reshape concepts or perceptions in the mind-process of making decisions. Those are my thoughts regarding the possible consequences on setting inflexible right and wrong rules and blaming the subject for not following them.
Simpleton rules, simpleton mindset
The imposition of rules, based on religion or culture are not necessarily wrong, in some level they help to keep some order on a specific society. But the side effect is developing a narrow mindset that is probably not very helpful to adapt and become a protagonist in making valuable changes in an ever-changing world. There is probably no book of rules available in the world that could provide a recipe on how to prevent crises or guide us to a future of harmony in the world. Why? My two cents are:
Things are not only incredibly complex but also they change fast, opportunities and problems are constantly changing.
For instance a rule that solves something a hundred years ago is probably not effective anymore. You can cry about it. Complain. Don’t let go. It will do any good. What would do? An open mind to reflect and creativity to propose new things that are more efficient. A simpleton mindset will do no good in this aspect.
No dialogue, no reflection
Why dad? Because I said so. Why teacher? Because those are the rules. You led to believe that trusting the grown-ups is the right thing to do as they seem to know what they’re doing. Guess what? They’re not. You don’t need to be a genius to realize that some things are going very wrong in the world right now. Lots of new problems were shaped by generations and generations of grown-ups, some of them, probably “taught” us that children should just listen and trust that adults always know what they are doing.
Instead of just imposing old-time rules, a dialogue would make us able to reflect and realize what are the parameters that are working and those who are not. That is the starting point on the thought process on considering ways to change and improve things around us.
Blame and Guilt
The constant punishment derived from rules that that the subject don’t fully understand (due to lack of dialogue) could make one a scared person. Afraid of trying, making errors and changing something. The punishment trigger and the guilt of making errors or failing will forever compromise bold thinking and decisions. And maybe even worse, blaming others too for their mistakes. Reproducing the same rule-mistake-blaming process taught through the learning experience. This could potentially lead to a way of thinking in a environment that focus on who to blame for what instead of working collaborative together on a shared solution or goal.
Nowadays we have more access of information and ways to do more things much more than ever before, but seems to be an invisible “dark force” that prevents us to go further. That blocks us to deconstruct and construct something more meaningful. The systematic cyclic rules imposition, through blame an guilt, generation to generation seems to be a huge blocker for our society to evolve as fast as it should.