Blame

Groups often choose the easy way when deciding who's guilty

Photo by Jerry Zhang on Unsplash

Social relations can be rather complex, but there seems to be some simple rules that often apply.

One of these is: blame the one who cannot defend himself, rather than the one who’s guilty. The stronger, more powerful, often get free of charges when someone else is blamed instead.

I have experienced this many times in my life, and seen it around as well. I suppose we all have. We all understand how unfair people can treat each other, simply because it is the easiest.

Three stories

These are true stories from my life. As always, when talking about “truth”, everybody involved will make up their own. This is partly due to having experienced different things, thereby not knowing all the same details, but it is also by choice: the preferred truth is selected and remembered.

1. Play with fire

I was visiting my classmate from school, Michael. We were not very old, maybe 10 years, and he lived in the same town but in the other end, more or less, so I went there by bicycle.

Well, he was home alone, almost — his mother was there but was about to leave. Michael had been playing at the kitchen table with some modelling wax, and it was lying there in bigger and smaller pieces. I suppose it was winter, since there was a candlelight on the table as well, which would be a natural thing during the dark time of the year. The mother left but reminded us to not forget to blow out the candle if we would go anywhere.

We were sitting there, at the kitchen table, and Michael decided to put a match into the fire, burning the match this way. For a 10-year-old, this is presumed to be fun, so I also did that. He did another one, and I thought that I would expand the game a bit, so I took a small piece of modelling wax and held it over the flame.

I had thought it would burn, but it didn’t, there were just some drops of melted wax dripping down on the candle, which probably made Michael think about what his mother would say when she saw it, or maybe he was afraid that we would somehow end up ruining the table, so he said that we should go out in the garden and continue there. He took the candle and went out, and I followed.

We had put a couple of other small things on top of the candle and were already getting tired of that game, but then came a couple of other schoolmates, Frank and Flemming. They found us in the garden, saw the candle, and then they also wanted to play with it. I think we told them that we were about to stop, but especially Flemming wasn’t a boy you could tell such things. He could be quite brutal and would in general get his will, so it continued. I had lost interest and stepped away a few steps, and Frank also looked nervous — Frank was in general easy to scare and maybe not as developed as the rest of us, mentally, so he would often stay a few steps away from everything.

Suddenly, Flemming went into a macho-mood of some kind and said to Michael that “I certainly dare to stand next to the candle while you pour ethanol over it”.

Michael was himself a rather tough guy, so he eventually took the “challenge”, even though he hesitated a bit. I tried, on the other hand, to talk them out of it, told them that it was stupid and too dangerous, but that just seemed to inspire both of them to move on with it, so Michael went into the house to get a bottle of ethanol.¹

Frank was scared to death, almost, started crying and ran to the furthest corner of that yard we we were in. The garden was arranged like that, rather small and with the house on two sides, an adjacent house on the third, and a tall fence on the fourth. As the door into the house was effectively blocked by Michael and Flemming, another door was locked, Frank couldn’t run away completely, otherwise he would have done so. I stepped even further away but felt that I had to try to convince them not to proceed with the madness, which, of course, they didn’t listen to — after all, Michael and Flemming were the tough ones, those who not long ago had threatened me with a gun to do shoplifting for them.²

Michael came back with the inflammable liquid, took off the lid of the bottle and held the bottle a bit tilted over the candle, which stood in its candle stick holder, placed on the ground. Michael tried to make it look somewhat ceremonial, while Flemming looked like he was the toughest boy on Earth. I again said “don’t do it”, and they told me to shut up. Frank was crying loud, trying to become one with the remote corner he was hiding in.

Suddenly, some drops spilled out of the bottle, causing big flames to flare and hit Michael’s hand — his reflections worked fast, causing him to drop the bottle and retract the hand, which then caused the bottle to tilt over and a lot of ethanol pouring out of it — out over Flemming’s leg. Standing next to the flames meant that Flemming then started burning.

We were all shocked, but Flemming was then also in pain, and before any of us could do anything to help him, he started running around in the yard, screaming. I don’t remember for how long he ran around, and how we managed to stop the fire, but I do remember how he was squatting next to the wall, looking very scared, and crying. He was in great pain but also completely shocked.

Frank was not present in this world, being as frightened as any child can be, just squeezing himself against his corner, but Michael and I tried to find some calm and reason and wanted to call Flemming’s father. This was what we children did, when something was out of our control — we involved someone’s parents. Flemming lived in a big house, alone with his father. It was indeed a very big house, much more fancy than any of the rest of us lived in, and I guess his father was a successful businessman. There was no mother, so maybe they were divorced.

But Flemming went very angry and threatened us with all kinds of bad things if we would tell his father. In fact, we were not to tell nobody what had happened, or else…

Then Flemming left on his bicycle, still crying, on his way to the after-school centre, where he was expected to be already.

Frank also disappeared, and it was again Michael and me there, in the garden. As far as I remember, we removed the candle and then I went home.

Next day, in school, our teacher wanted to talk to us. Not friendly at all, she was going to tell us how terrible we were. Michael and me, that was. I don’t think that Frank was yelled at, but Michael and I definitely were. When Flemming had arrived at the after-school centre, they had immediately sent him to the emergency room with an ambulance, and he had apparently explained a version of the story that made Michael and I the bad guys.

The teacher didn’t care at all what we had to say, and when I tried to explain that I had tried to stop it, so it wasn’t me who was guilty of anything, I was just told to shut up.

It took several months, as far as I remember, before Flemming was more or less back to normal, but he had got a severe wound from the fire, all over the lower part of one leg. Flemming’s father called my parents to tell that I was not allowed to play with Flemming any more.

So, somehow, both our teacher and Flemming’s father had found comfort in blaming me for the mess. Michael was probably also blamed, but he was already considered a bad guy (for obvious reasons, I would say, considering the story with the gun). Frank somehow was considered too weak to be guilty in anything. Fair enough, as he definitely wasn’t guilty, but neither was I.

2. Helping our teacher

I was in high school (upper secondary school), and even though I was on the mathematical nature science line, I was required to also study a foreign language. The school was rather small and could offer only French, so, I was in the French class.

Our teacher was somewhat fragile. A woman in her midlife, clearly nervous for speaking to a group, which of course was problematic for a teacher, but she also had some more serious problems. It was clear to me, and other students saw the same thing. I tried to speak kindly to her, making her feel that at least I was not an enemy, no matter how she may look at life.

We behaved in general nicely towards her, but life was definitely tough for her to go through, and one day, she broke down in the middle of a lesson, just sitting there at her desk, crying.

We students were 16–17 years old, she was supposed to be the adult one who could fix all problems, so we didn’t do anything on the spot to help her. As far as I remember, she then left the room, and we stayed until the scheduled time had passed, without knowing if she would come back.

Some of us, though, got together and talked about what to do. She clearly needed help, we found, but we had no idea about what and how, so we went to the school master to talk to him. He was an old man, seemingly wise and friendly; such one who liked to tell us stories about how he became a teacher, and how he started the school, etc., and we trusted him to know enough about life to be able to help with this. Also, she was his employee, so he had a natural duty to do something, we thought.

He was surprisingly cold. He couldn’t do anything, he said, unless we wrote him a letter with all our signatures on it, telling him that our teacher had a problem, and we wanted him to do something about it.

So we did. Disappointed that he wouldn’t take the task on him immediately, but we were eager to help our teacher, so we wrote such a letter, went around to all the students of the class for their signatures, and we were happy to give it to the school master later that day.

Next day, the door to our class room was abruptly opened, and there, in the doorway, stood our French-teacher with a wild expression in her face. “What have you done?”, she shouted. “ This letter…!”, and she was waving with our letter. And then she looked directly at me with what looked like hatred in her eyes: “And you too?!”

She left, and we never saw her again. We never got an explanation from the school master either, even though we went to him to hear what had been going on. But, obviously, he had fired her, and he had used us as a vehicle to make that happen.

I have never heard from her since, but I can still feel those hateful eyes blaming me for having her fired. And all I wanted to do was to help her.

3. The car fun

At the end of the high school years, we were a group of students who were partying, and along the way were going from one place to another, and we were passing a parking lot — where our biology teacher’s car was parked. It was Michael (another one, not the one from my childhood) who knew that this was his car, and Michael was somewhat drunk, so it was apparently easy for him to decide that we should make some fun with it.

This was in Denmark, and there beer came in glass bottles; these were again put in some rather solid plastic crates. Michael decided that we should lift up the car and place it on such beer crates, because, as Michael imagined, then the teacher would get into the car, start it, and become surprised that it wasn’t going anywhere (as the wheels wouldn’t be touching the ground).

Rational me, who wasn’t drunk, tried to explain to Michael that it was a stupid idea for many reasons, but mostly because it wouldn’t work. First of all, such a beer crate may be strong, but a car would weigh, how much, a ton? It would squeeze the crate flat, rather than be lifted by it. And even if that wouldn’t happen, the teacher would definitely notice that the car was a foot higher than normal, so he wouldn’t try to start it, wouldn’t get surprised, just annoyed and angry.

The logic didn’t catch, and a flock of others joined Michael in the activity. I stood nearby, trying again to talk them out of it, but having no luck in that direction.

What happened was, of course quite predictable. A car is heavy, and these maybe five people couldn’t lift it, however, they managed to tilt it a bit and squeeze in the crate, but when the lowered the car, the crate was indeed squeezed flat, as I had predicted, but someone also got something stuck (an arm or a leg, I don’t remember), so I stepped in, helping to lift the car a bit, this way trying to rescue my fellow student.

The arm or leg was rescued, the crate came out again, and then we saw it: a big dent in the car. Apparently, Michael had been so eager to push and lift, that he had pressed his full body weight against the car, which its thin steel couldn’t survive.

Next day, there was no way out of going to the teacher to explain what had happened, and to arrange whatever would be needed to have his car fixed.

We all went there, both those who had done it, and those who had just been in the flock. It made sense, because young people believe that a flock is a flock is a flock. We were in this together, somehow, and we would stand up for each other, bidding in with all we had seen, all we knew, to have this settled well.

What happend was then that the biology teacher saw me, for whatever reason, looked with a hatefull view in his eyes at me and said: “And you also took part in this?!”

Obviously that was somehow either confirming or surprising to him, and my attempt to explain that I was there but I didn’t do it, wasn’t listened to. I never got any kind look from that guy again, as he had apparently decided that it was me who had ruined his car.

Lessons learned

These are not the only stories from my life where people who were supposed to know better, who had some kind of power over me and others, failed in seeing the situation with open eyes. They decided which truth they wanted to believe in, and they didn’t give the accused any fair chance to defend himself.

Some of my schoolmates and fellow students would never be blamed for anything, as this would only cause trouble. Being a simple school teacher didn’t allow for putting oneself up against one of the rich people’s children, and if these people where strong and successful, their children would in any case automatically be free of all charges — the teacher probably honestly believed that such a rich boy couldn’t be guilty in anything, so it had to be someone else, and the usual suspects were then blamed.

Actually, it happened at school also once where I and a couple of other boys hadn’t even been in the class at the time where some trouble had been happening there. At that occasion, a lot of yelling was done at us, a lot of blaming, etc., as usual, but somehow, as a rare exception, I managed to tell that we had not even been there, so it definitely wasn’t us. And what happened then? They kept yelling, because, as the head master said: “But it would have been you, if you had been there”.

This was too easy. Instead of moving on in their investigations, or even beginning to doubt what some others had told them, they just decided to blame those who were the easiest to blame.

The two teachers at highschool both decided something out of their view on the world situation, and they didn’t bother to check if they were right. They didn’t give an opening for explanation. As for my French-teacher, she is excused, as she was in a terrible situation, and I can only feel sorry for her. But maybe, if it hadn’t been customary to simple move to conclusions, maybe she would, even in that situation, have been able to get to an understanding that she didn’t look at a bunch of enemies when opening the door to our classroom, but rather to a group of friends who had attempted to help her.

Social relations are often in the way of reason. We do not approach each other in a way that makes sense, if we see differences in status or experience. We also do not expect others to have more thoughts than we assume must have been behind what we see in the act. As we cannot know what others think, we often assume that they don’t think at all.

But there is so much we don’t know about each other. Always. So much we could talk about to become wiser. So much we could learn from each other that would strengthen our bonds rather than breaking them.

There is a lot of blaming in this world. It is often wrong, often the wrong people being blamed, and often wrong in general to blame anyone, because much of what happens isn’t really anyones fault, it just happens as a result of the circumstances.

Much better than blaming is dialogue, with the purpose of finding solutions.

1. Ethanol was common to have at home at that time, used for various cleaning purposes.

2. The gun was a toy gun but containing steel balls as bullets, and it could hurt quite badly where it hit. It’s still a mystery to me how it could be allowed to sell such a thing to children. What they forced me to steal for them was more bullets for the gun, and they did it by holding the gun to my head, telling me that they would shoot me if I didn’t. As we were bound to see each other in school each day, I couldn’t escape it — had I run away, they would just have shot me the next time they saw me. Nice friends…