Define ouselves by whom we are not?

 This is my reply to
  http://chronicle.com/article/Why-I-Resigned-the-Paterno/134944/

(Michael Bérubé has just become the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University, where he is also director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities. He is president of the Modern Language Association.)


My stuff follows:

Too often, humans in groups under stress, define themselves, not by what they are, or do, or wish for, but by whom they are not. And so, when their self-image breaks, they seek a scapegoat, some One, to blame. Yet seldom, in large scale misfortunes, does an impartial investigation find a single individual at fault. Always or nearly always, the fault is complex, multi-formed, an unfortunate conjunction of many strands of causation, impossible to trace to a single source. The" black swan" phenomenon, the " rogue wave".

For those alumni and teachers proud of their University, maybe they'd best follow the Buddha, be non-attached. Let not your self image be dependent on any but but yourself. My school, or any group I belong to,  may indeed become a scapegoat for other's anger at their life circumstances. Especially in this media-ocene era of advertising using false news to pursue the advertiser's self interest. I refuse to be judged by someone who blames me, who am not at fault, for their idea of my group’s fault. Nor will I debate with them, unless they first discuss with me, their experience of me personally, and of my group.



other notes:

I can’t predict the most mundane outcomes of any action. And likewise I can’t assign a cause to any but the most mundane result. So in seeking to make healthy an individual, plant or person, or a group, I’d best look to the health of the environment, the ecosystem, and let the individuals care for themselves in that. Who am I  to declare that what I call illness should be eradicated, its “cause” rooted out, and destroyed? Perhaps, likely, this supposed illness is but a message of  some imbalance in the state of being of the ecosystem,  which requires co-operative remediation, not detached surgery.

We need  a new kind of  languaging in our reporting of the news of events. We need to refer to imbalances, not individual causes, not individual failures . We as humans are entering an era of the worst environmental, and media mediated lifestyle stress, we have been under since the last ice age. We will not do our best to survive, unless we find a different way of communicating and deciding action, than seeking individual causes, and blaming others for our plight.