Graham W Price's Blog

Many are shocked by the selfish actions of the BA strikers. Selfish their behaviour may be as they seek to satisfy their own self-interest at just about everyone else’s expense. But climb inside their heads and we’d no doubt find they consider their actions fully justified. Selfish behaviour is always justified by the perpetrator no matter how distorted that justification may be.

Such distortions are eased by pack mentality. The strikers are no doubt reasonable individuals. Most people are. But reasonableness can quickly disappear in favour of self-interest when we’re part of a group with shared motives. Pack mentality brings out the baser instincts of otherwise reasonable people, for the BA strikers a self-interested belief in their right to maintain generous pay and conditions despite their employer struggling to compete in an increasingly competitive market. And packs are all too easy to manipulate by power-motivated individuals who understand how to bring out those base instincts. All this is part of the ‘determined’ world in which we live. The strikers believe they’re right and are unquestionably doing the only thing they could be doing with the awareness they have right now  … an awareness at least partly determined by the influences I’ve mentioned. So there’s no point thinking they should have acted differently, if we’re using ‘should’ in a blaming way. They quite simply couldn’t have acted differently.But they’re still responsible for their actions. And in a harsh world, responsibility takes little account of our actions being fully determined by our awareness at the time.  Blame is pointless as it thinks the past and present should have been different when it couldn’t have been. Responsibility is about the future. Society will hold the strikers responsible and accountable for their actions and they’ll no doubt suffer for it.

Many years ago I drove into a petrol station in Hammersmith that had no prices displayed on the leader board. I foolishly filled up without checking the price at the pump and then discovered it was 3p a litre above competition. I paid with no animosity as I knew they’d acted in the only way they could with the awareness they had at the time. But I held them accountable for their deception. I’ve driven past that station hundreds of times since and have never ventured onto the forecourt. They made £2.00 extra profit from me all those years ago and have since lost thousands of pounds worth of my business as a result.I’ll never employ a BA striker. Many will probably eventually be made redundant by a contracting BA, damaged by their actions. They’ll receive no job from me. No doubt thousands of other employers will think the same. And they’re likely to be ostracised by many for years to come. They may try to hide their history. It won’t be that easy. Genuinely selfish behaviour has its consequences which can be ruthless and inescapable. And in a determined world, none of it could be otherwise.

The strikers will probably come to regret their actions. They don’t need to. They should know they acted in the only way they could with the awareness they had at the time. But they’ll hopefully in time come to acknowledge responsibility for their actions. And part of that responsibility will need to be to accept the consequences, including any retribution their employer and society may vent on them.  www.abicord.com/what-is-is

The Children’s Commissioner is saying Venables and Thompson, James Bulger’s killers, should not have been prosecuted for murder. She says a child of 10 is too young to know the difference between right and wrong, so they should have received therapy to teach them that difference. “Reparation, not punishment”, she says, “is the fairer treatment for children”.

As a psychologist with experience of child crime issues, I have to disagree. Any parent will know that if they ask their 10 year old child whether it’s right or wrong to torture and kill a 2 year old, they’d know. And in my view that the interests of James Bulger’s parents and of a society horrified by the murder are just as important, and probably more so, than the best interests of the killers.

An argument that reparation, not punishment, is fairer for the perpetrators of crime could be applied to any criminal. Both children and adults do at each moment only what their awareness allows them to do.

For those who haven’t read my earlier posts … we all do only what our awareness allows us to do at any moment. In this context ‘awareness’ means our ways of thinking, our attitudes, beliefs, values, abilities, knowledge, subconscious programming and any other characteristics that make up who we are at any moment.  We make choices of course, but the choices we make are determined by our awareness at the time.

Anyone committing a crime is acting from their awareness at the time. That awareness may well be unproductive, selfish or dysfunctional but our awareness is what it is and at any moment it’s simply a product of our life history up to that moment.

Anyone who commits murder will justify their actions to themselves at the time. Misguided though that justification might be, it’s still a product of their awareness at the time. So it could always be argued that the fairest treatment for murderers is reparation not punishment.

Two points are worth making. First, while our actions at any moment are always determined by our awareness at the time, we’re still responsible for our actions. That responsibility is at least partly reflected in the consequences we bear for our actions, including any punishment.

Second, the perpetrators of crime are not the only people who matter. Victims matter too. In my view they matter more. To me the best interests of James and his parents matter more than the best interests of his killers. That’s the reason I believe it was wrong to release his killers after only seven years in prison. It took too little account of the interests of the most important people involved at the time, James’s parents. And that’s why it would have been wrong not to have punished James’s killers for their appalling actions.   www.abicord.com/what-is-is

I’ve been asked why it isn’t a cop-out for Tiger and Tony, and the rest of us, to understand that everything we’ve ever done is the best we could have done, indeed the only thing we could have done, given our awareness at the time?  It’s not a cop-out because we’re still responsible.

So what’s the difference between blame, in this case self-blame, and responsibility? Blame is always focused on the past. It involves wanting the past to be different, which is crazy because the past can never be different, or thinking the past ‘should’ have been different, which is just as crazy because the past couldn’t have been different. All the choices we’ve ever made were the only choices we could have made, given our awareness at the time.

Blame, including self-blame, is both futile and a nonsense.  Responsibility on the other hand only impacts the future. Sure it involves recognising we’re responsible for our past actions … nobody else can be … even though it was the best we could have done, indeed the only thing we could have done, given our awareness at the time. Responsibility only impacts the future because it involves considering whether there’s anything we can or should do now or in the future to make up for what we’ve done … apology, recompense, etc … and whether there’s anything we need to change in our behaviour now or in the future to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Blame is about the past. Responsibility is about the future. If we use our understanding of the ‘determined’ nature of life to eliminate self-blame, but don’t take responsibility where appropriate, such as when we’ve wrongly hurt others, then to me that is a cop-out.

We know Tony missed an opportunity by not apologising, or at least expressing some sadness, to the families of Iraq victims, both British and Iraqi. No doubt he knows it too. He probably blames himself for the oversight, though likely not as much as he blames himself for the aftermath of the war. He needs to know that neither were avoidable. In both cases he did the only thing he could have done with the awareness he had at the time. And that awareness at each moment was simply the product of his life history up to that moment. But if he wants to follow Tiger’s lead and take responsibility now, it’s never too late.

I let go of regret, guilt and self-blame many years ago, replacing it with responsibility. I’ve had an easier, more satisfying and more productive life for it. Letting go of blaming others and replacing blame with responsibility is just as powerful, but that’s another story.  www.abicord.com/what-is-is