To justify yourself, to blame others

Man – is human being constantly telling yourself and others a large variety of different stories, stories about everything. The purpose of these stories is to combine our experiences to some integral figure. We need to explain our behavior so that it would blend in with the overall logic of our lives. A man who cannot logically explain his actions is valued as crazy. And this opinion has a reason.

Probably all of us have seen, and maybe remember from our childhood, when parents furiously asking their still quite small offspring, “Why you have done this?” And the child cannot explain, because he is too small, he even missing the words, and child even can’t understand his own behavior. But the child will grow and learn to create stories which answer the questions why. And some of the stories will be very inventive, but always seeking a single goal: to preserve own image. We need such stories, which protect ourselves from shame and guilt, and saves the illusory sense of that we are good for other people’s eyes.

Of all the stories that people come up with in order to give meaning to their lives, behavior, feelings and events, the most inventive is for situations in which the participants experiencing real pain. In these excuse stories we explain ourselves and others, who is perpetrator of unfairness and who is a victims of position. And of course, good ones always are we. Since time immemorial, people wrote their stories, which make it clear that we – the good ones, and the other one is bad.

To recognize your mistakes or dark sides is difficult for two reasons. First, it hit through our positive self-evaluation, which is based on the mistaken idea that good people do not do bad things. But in the reality almost all people are doing a lot of nasty things to both themselves and towards others, but create a lot of stories to justify their behavior, that just do not feel shame and guilt, which is not so easy to survive.

Secondly, we are social beings, and feel shame and the fault when we are cast away because of our actions, errors or faults, and when people are turning away from us and no longer want to deal with us.

Picture by Pixabay.com