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Blame is not a percentage game

Blame is not a percentage game, and neither is credit, in most situations.  When I roll out a new application at work, I should not attempt to take 100% of the credit.  Tommy probably did the better part of the coding (meaning both more time and higher quality), the docs and nurses gave the input I needed, the technicians made the database and network connectivity possible, the insurance companies paid for the kids to get their hearts worked on (which paid my salary), etc.  That does mean that I shouldn't "take" or "get" credit -- it means that it isn't a simple computation where the amount I get should decrease the amount someone else gets.

And if the applications fails, that doesn't mean that it shifts from being credit to blame, or that I should in turn get all the blame.  (Though I think, there, as a team leader, I should strive to take as much as I can ... but that's for a whole different reason.)

When my daughters were younger and they would fight, normally I would separate them, then speak to them singly. The conversation with Merit would talk about what Merit had done that led to the altercation, and why more effort on her part would have led to her not being as mad with Caitlin as she was; the conversation with Caitlin would be the reverse.  At the beginning, almost invariably Mer would say it was all Cait's fault, and Cait would say it was all Mer's fault; normally, by the end, the goal was to move beyond that and to see what they had done to contribute to the problem.

Blame just doesn't work the way that we want it to, as kids (and often as adults).  If I'm to blame, that doesn't mean that someone else isn't just as blameworthy.  That's why the way we normally argue is usually senseless -- that fact that I can prove that the person I'm arguing with is wrong has little bearing on whether I am wrong.  The wrongness just keeps adding up.

Luckily, the rightness can do the same.  A well-timed compliment, a helping hand, a comforting shoulder ... these can be exchanged between friends (or even just fellow humans) over and over and over again.  Reciprocating doesn't make you "even" ....  That's not the goal.  Actions stand on their own.  They just keep adding up, piling rightness on top of rightness.

Another failed sort of math is that you can somehow cancel either something good or something ill by performing the opposite sort of action.  Indulgences are both theologically and ethically illogical.  If I come home and clean the house for my wife, then make her dinner and massage her feet, that doesn't mean that it's okay (or even excusable) for me then to insult her.  Or, if I insult her, the fact that I do those positive things afterwards does not cancel out the insult.  The piles of good things and bad things just keep getting bigger as we get older.

(That shouldn't be taken to an extreme, and bad things are gifts that keep on giving, so I'm not suggesting that attempting to right them is a fool's errand -- it just doesn't zero them out.)

Blame and credit are not percentage games.  Trying to make them as such leads to mini arms races, with people believing it is right not to apologize or validate unless the other side "makes up for" something.  So ... stop it.

PS  No, Dee and I are not fighting.  :-)
PPS  ... but if we were it would be her fault.  :-P

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