Abstract things that annoy me, #3 in a series

[simont]

People conflating practical fixability with blame. Suppose something bad happens, and the person who is morally speaking most blameworthy is someone who it is practically speaking impossible to induce to modify their behaviour, stop doing it, fix the problem, whatever. In that situation you might regretfully have to approach somebody else involved in the problem, whose fault it either isn't at all or is significantly less, explain why the problem can't be solved in the ideal way, and ask them nicely to modify their behaviour instead. What you do not do is to go to that person and rant and rave at them self-righteously as if all the moral fault from the original situation is theirs!

Comments

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid this kind of reasoning has infected modern politics - anyone with power or "privilege" is assumed to be responsible for everything.

[simont]

Wow. One of the best things about these abstract-annoyance posts is that people occasionally come up with perfectly good examples of my abstract pattern which are completely different from any of the instances I was thinking of myself!

[cjwatson]

The habit of blaming Minister-in-charge for everything (usually accompanied with attacks approaching the ad-hominem in style) irritates me. I know that the Minister is accountable, but that doesn't mean it's their fault. Excessively personal attacks simply make the arguments sound like they're accompanied by a series of very rapid jerks of the knee.

This in turn infects modern business. I'm not sure of the cause and effect.