No innocents killed?

Al Qaeda “doesn’t kill innocents” according to it’s second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri. He made his remarks in response to questions solicited on a Web site close to al Qaeda.  Typical.

Typical Self-Protectors

Typical Self-Protectors blame their victims for their behaviors.  A Self-Protector believes the person they are attacking is to blame for their misery. They cannot see the person they are attacking as innocent.  They fail to see any other perspective, they twist reality to suit their own survival needs. 

Bullies do that, too, don’t they? They convince themselves that the miserable little person they are beating up on has more power than they do. They pick on the person they perceive as smarter, more able than they in some way. Bullies decide that the person they are attacking deserves what they do to them.

Attacking and blame

When we find ourselves in a position of attacking someone else, we have lost our perspective on what is really taking place. Blame does that, it throws us into  a distorted view of ourselves and our world.

When we blame and attack we lose sight of the other person entirely, we only see the world through our own, egocentric, position.  We are hurting so we look for someone to blame for our hurt.

Look at the circumstances

When we fail to look at the circumstances that lead to the wound we are experiencing we loose contact with reality.  But our brain response is that it doesn’t matter, we just need someone to lay the blame on so that we can protect ourselves. 

Understanding that a man beating his wife feels a desperate need to get control can help us prevent it from happening in the future. Blaming him for his helplessness and throwing him into jail or paying fines doesn’t help us discover the underlying cause of his misery and subsequent reaction to that misery.  Yes, of course, he is responsible for his behavior, but simply viewing his behavior absent understanding of the context shortchanges everyone, including the victim. How many times do victims return to their abuser? If we unravel the tangled web of what each party is experiencing and move into a different paradigm for understanding the patters, it changes everything.

What the world needs

This is what we need to do on a world scale, as well as a personal one. When we fail to uncover the intricacies of what is really happening when someone is attacking another, we fail to respond in a way that can prevent future conflict.

Is understanding the cause of something the same as blame?

What do you think? When we look for a reason something occurred, as reasonable people will do, is this the same as blame? Or is blame something else? Let me know what you think, comment below.