Blameless

If you think the world is unfair, just imagine how much more rotten it would be if you had no one to blame.

Blaming brings us consolation in the midst of chaos, the consolation of pretending that someone is really in control. Blaming feels good because it assures us that there must be a few bad guys up in a sky scraper smoking cigars and oppressing us. If we could just string them from the lamp posts, the shattered crystal of our perfectly imagined world would magically recompose itself with the ping of a marvelous chime.

Blame is fantasy. We grew up and abandoned our imaginary friends, but we never stopped imagining scape goats. The real division between us is not money, religion, class or politics, but blame.

No one is to blame. Blame is an illusory link of causation formed out of ignorance through maya. Blame solves no problems

Our ultimate defense against impending chaos is the infantile fantasy that somebody is doing it to us. But what if no one is doing it, and things are just out of control, and the fat cat up in the sky scraper has no more power over the chaos than a white-bearded God in the clouds?

What if the world just runs down the old thermodynamic slope, and all of us, rich or poor, Tea Party Republican or Wall Street Occupier, share exactly the same fate: to commingle and shmooze in the glutinous broth of entropy?

Maybe bankers and stock brokers are just average dudes who happened to find those jobs because they were too dumb to get into medical school. Maybe they have no more actual power than the angry 99% camped out on the sidewalk below, eating other people's bread and using other people's plumbing. Maybe we're all freeloading off this planet, and none of us have any idea how to thank her for her bounty or restore what we have wasted.

What if it's not Obama's fault? What if it's not Mitt Romney's fault? What if its not the fault of the Federal Reserve or the Pentagon? What if those guys are just as confused about what's going on as you and I? What if the folks in the White House and Congress and Wall Street are all just winging it, without any conspiracy?

Maybe we're not totally screwed because liberals have kicked God out of schools, or because gay people get married, or because George Bush was an idiot. Maybe we're just screwed, and its nobody's fault.

Are Muslims to blame? Or Pagans? Or the Caterpillar Corporation? Nope. Not their fault. Is TV to blame for making our children stupid? Nope. Our children are just naturally stupid, but its not their fault.

And don't blame Adderall or Prozac. They just re-arrange a few atoms in an already doomed brain-full of Cocoa Puffs and Spaghetti-O's. Atoms are over-rated. Chemicals are blind. You can't blame all this on a few molecules.

Don't blame Dick Cheney either. He's just following his nature. Blame nature then? No, global warming is not to blame. CO2 is not to blame. And humans? Humans are part of nature, which means that whatever we do is natural. So how can you say humans are to blame? Then who in hell are you going to blame, the devil?

The real problem is that fundamentalist Christian lobbyists team up with Israeli infiltrators to pervert the Constitution and launch World War III against Iran... Right. That's just blame on steroids. The folks in Congress, Israel, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir are just like you and me: husks of chaff driven by a fickle wind of indiscriminate chance, blameless.

The devil is not to blame. Sin is not to blame. You are not to blame. I am not to blame. Jesus gave too little too late, but he is not to blame. At least he tried.


There is no one left to blame. Are you OK with that?

So now that we've exhausted our blame, can we open our arms? Wider. After all, there's no one to reject any more. Hug everything.

With sad, sweet purposeless compassion, certain that we save no one, not even ourselves, weeping a gift of tears for the run-down universe just as it is, hug everything. Breathe in the whole pain, blameless, unblaming.

And then, please, consider the possibility that we might survive. A few more years anyway. Or a few thousand. Whatever. Especially if we give up this bitterness, this blame, just as Jesus did when he spread his arms and embraced the world, whispering, "Forgive them, father, they are total idiots. They have no idea what they're doing."

Yeah, we survive. There might even be time for laughter.