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Seeing Things as They Are
The uncomfortable, but necessary, process of facing reality
I don’t need to read the latest poll numbers to know that large numbers of people believe that things are getting worse in the US, and in the rest of the world.
While there may be disagreement among people about why things are getting worse, most people acknowledge that fires, floods, and record-breaking temperatures are on the rise, that service in shops and restaurants is not quite what it used to be, and that inflated prices of housing, medicine, food, gas, and electricity are causing many more of us to live in poverty.
Yet, rather than joining together to work towards healing the wounds that our toxic society inflicts upon all of us, many of us instead turn towards finding someone to blame. “It’s not my fault, it’s __________ fault. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
The instinctive, immediate response to our own fear is assigning blame to its presumed source. Blame is probably an adaptive response to situations of immediate physical jeopardy in which there is no time for reflection. Even in situations where there is no immediate peril, directing…
