Comment by SoftwareMaven | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SoftwareMaven | Hacker News Reader

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The real world is somewhere in the middle. Many people do excuse their own weaknesses by becoming the victim of everybody else's evil. It is important to recognize when you really are a contributing factor. Sometimes, you really are at fault.

On the other hand, I read this part and realized the OP had jumped the shark:

Someone was rude to me today? My fault. I could have lightened their mood beforehand.

It's your fault if you aren't psychic? It's your fault if others can't have common decency? No, at that point, you are looking for a way to say that you control the entire world. I completely agree with my parent's choice of wording: solipsism.

Spend time meditating and introspecting. Talk with objective third parties. It is important for you to learn when you screwed up and how to not screw up in the future.

But don't forget that people are agents unto themselves. Sometimes they do stupid, mean, and ignorant things. If you don't learn to forgive those actions, you will either carry a lot of guilt (How could I let my friend be mugged because I didn't catch an earlier flight home? It's my fault!) or a lot of anger (All muggers must die!). There is a peaceful middle ground that enables you to work on solving the systemic problems without idealizing away the smaller percentage of outright bad actors.

So, no, it's not your fault.

I think interpreting these posts in the literal manner that you and the grandparent are doing is a bit misleading. If you read what the OP wrote in the most literal manner, he sounds like a nutjob. You're right - there's no way to say that it's his fault that everything happens. What if a stranger had a bad day for his own reasons, and decided to use that as an excuse to be rude to the OP? Or someone broke into his house and stole something? There's plenty of scenarios where logically it cannot be his fault that something happened. ("Global warming! It's all my fault!")

But that's not what he means, and not really what he's writing about. The way I read this, he's proposing a shift in world view. People are difficult and unpredictable creatures, but, if I were smart enough, I would understand how they work. I could have been smart enough or empathetic enough to realize this stranger had a bad day, and say something nice to him to cheer him up. I could have been smart enough to get a better security system for my house. If I really cared about global warming, I could try to become a U.S. senator (or some other powerful politician) and try to change it.

By saying, "It's my fault", what the OP means is, "If I really cared about this, and was smart/strong/etc enough, I could have worked to fix/prevent this". This isn't about "[controlling] the entire world". It's about believing that you have control over your life, and about realizing that blaming others (whether in an angry or forgiving sense) is entirely useless in terms of practicality. If you blame others for anything, you're saying that there's nothing you could've done, and letting others determine your life.

I understand that in some regards, this is a bit silly. It's not my fault that someone had a bad day, and it's not my fault that I don't know them well enough to make them feel better. It's not my fault they were rude to me. But I'd rather pretend it's my fault and think about ways that I could handle the situation better in the future than just blame it on external forces and allow myself to repeat the same mistakes.

Andrew/π² - Right on. That's what I meant. Thanks much for explaining it better than I did.

I used to feel and act exactly like Derek: let's just pretend everything is my fault because that's how I will learn to be better regardless of whether other people could have been better too.

What I've started noticing, though, is that after doing this for a couple of years, when it's become automatic, it gets difficult to differentiate between "for the sake of learning, let's assume this is my fault" and "this is actually my fault". And at that point, it's hard not to get depressed in the face of adversity... after all, it's all your fault.

I've started blaming other people more – mind you, from a baseline of never doing so – and it has done wonders for my well-being and self-esteem.

So, yeah, it's a good trick, but do your very best to keep in mind it's only a trick.

Also, it's interesting to compare Sivers' heuristic with that of Martin Seligman ("Learned Optimism") who recommends that while you shouldn't necessarily avoid taking blame, you should try to compartmentalize it as much as possible and never assume your failings are due to some fundamental flaw in your character.

I think it comes down to "failure" vs. "feedback." I don't look at a negative encounter as a failure. It's just feedback.

I ask myself, in a non-judging way, "what could I have done differently?" Sometimes the answer is "nothing" - you just caught someone on a bad day. But sometimes there are some things I can change about my behavior. If so, I try to incorporate that and go forward.

Whatever happened has already happened. You can't go back and change it, so there's no point in ruminating on it. But you can change how you behave in the future, and that's what a lesson is for.

This was my reaction as well. My default behavior for years has been to assume everything as my fault. The big turn for me occurred a few months after my ex cheated and I ended the relationship. I kept thinking, "What did I do that made her want to cheat?" But that's a very misguided question. Her behavior was completely outside my control. Eventually I was able to simply accept that it wasn't my fault, and it significantly improved my emotional health.

I get that OP isn't being completely literal or universal. But there is a whole class of neurotic self-blamers out there that could stand to learn the opposite lesson: some things are not your fault.

I actually would have read it exactly like you did, if he hadn't included the examples. I was shaken by the girlfriend example. It is certainly possible it was all Derek's fault, but few relationships ever end solely because of one person alone and I think you limit what you can learn if you don't recognize that. How do you learn what we're negative reactions to your negative actions things you really did wrong) versus negative reactions to your positive actions (the things that, if you change, will turn you into a co-dependent person)?

However, the "rude to me" example put it over the edge. At that point, it really doesn't read as "really introspect and figure out what I did wrong". Instead, it reads as "literally everything is my fault". And nothing in the article softened that view.

Derek commented elsewhere he agrees with you, so I'm not here second-guessing how he feels. I do think, however, that somebody coming in and taking this as advice for how to live could wind up in a world of hurt.

I buy "A whole lot of the crap that happens to me is my fault (much more than I give credit to)", but "It's all my fault" is wrong and dangerous.

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