The Trouble with Blame: Victims, Perpetrators, and Responsibility,

It's about time someone held the guilt and shame avoidance of our culture up to the light; an avoidance that leads to excusing irresponsible behavior on the one hand and taking on responsibilities that are not rightfully one's own on the other. The subject has been written about at length elsewhere concerning: the irresponsible alcoholic and their overly responsible spouse, the criminals who get off with the flimsiest of excuses based in third-rate science (recall the Twinkie defense), the abusive spouse and the battered wife who will not leave him, the poorly behaved child and his ineffective parents, etc., etc. But no one has gotten a handle on these issues to the degree Sharon Lamb has. Lamb is dealing with the same issue that Deborah Tannen has taken on in her latest book The Argument Culture : Moving from Debate to Dialogue. Tannen points out that we polarize everything believing that the truth can come out only if we represent opposing views. Making dialog! ue into a win/lose debating contest. Thus a well thought out, balanced view might be opposed by a partisan view which will acknowledge no value in the balanced view and seek only to defeat it. The unwillingness of the partisan to recognize or understand the view of the other and to deliberately distort the meaning and motivations of the other just in order to win is similar to what perpetrators do to rob victims of their point of view and credibility. Perhaps the most important insight (one among many) offered here is that we must stop requiring total innocence on the part of victims before we can hold perpetrators accountable. James Hillman, in Pan and the Nightmare, characterized rape as the overwhelming of the higher by the lower. In this sense rape is epidemic in our day. One cannot help but feel that our culture is out order, perhaps becoming a sick culture, out of touch with what it is to be human. Lamb's book is a powerful statement that human is more than we r! ecognize in our court rooms or psychiatric clinics. This b! ook should be read by anyone concerned with the state of our society.