Ask HN: How do you deal with the human ability to never take responsibility

We're in a state of a maximum denialism though. It reminds me of working in a casino for several hours, walking outside, and only then realizing just how much second hand smoke I was immersed within the casino. Those first few breaths of 'fresher air' would have a tint of second hand smoke, still, and of course my clothes would stink. (I work a mask at the time and it helped, a little. I'd go home and take a very long shower.) Society is so immersed in denialism and "second-hand" denialism that it doesn't even realize how bad it is, yet.

Everyone. This is literally the first chapter of 'how to win friends and influence people.'

The fundamental rule being taught is to never criticism or condemn someone. How do you deal with it? By not. When someone does something good, you reward and acknowledge.

>The mental gymnastics we play to deflect.

Only in a defensive state. When you criticise you get here but if you never experience criticism, you are actually able to grow.

>Just about everyone plays this game. Elon just did this recently and wrecked havoc on the Twitter staff.

Twitter made some serious mistakes which led into Elon buying. The blame does NOT lay at the feet of Elon. The political activist who banned the ny post and the hunter biden laptop story is the one who ought to be condemned. But there's no point, they know what they did. They'll never learn anything and will do it again.

The nypost sat on the story for some time to release it at the most damaging time. Twitter's political activists had their hands revealed. The story wasn't even a big deal, biden himself doesn't get to pick his family. The real story was twitter's political activism. After their hand was revealed, they obviously started doing it in public.

>How do we deal with this?

You stay positive. Never criticise or condemn. The big problem of political polarization as we saw during the yellow journalism days; since we have had a return to yellow journalism; it's important to bridge the gap. Dont criticize your political opponents but acknowledge when they have done something good.

The republicans learnt this lesson the hard way. You have democrats like tulsi gabbard who regularly talks at conservative conventions. They acknowledge she's right on point and ultimately there are many democrats who are quite reasonable people. This has shifted MANY independents and democrats into the republican camp.

The red wave was a certainty because they dropped the condemnation. Gavin Newsome even said it was a red wave. It's because republicans opened up the conversation with the democrats. This is what politics should be and by doing this will be decisive.

I leave it to you to explain how the red wave didn't occur. The answer is very bad.

I suppose it depends on the underlying causes and how extreme the end effect. There are psychological issues [1] that are more common in adolescence that most grow out of but some do not. One can not encourage others seek help especially if they are in denial so perhaps the only solution is to distance ones self from them or try to tune them out.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder

That evidently is where everything gets messy. We don't have a way (yet) to determine if it is "within reason".

Transcending this tendency of deflection requires transcending the notion of the self -- the deflection is after all for the sake of the self and for those experts at deflection it may have been an especially crucial ingredient for their success.

The good news is that we already do transcend the self, or at least seek to do so, in many ways. But I think we (meaning modern Western society and allies) aren't able to digest the full implications of this -- something the Buddhists understood very well, which is that you can only get there with total renunciation and not a wishful combination of self-transcendence with tons of material prosperity sustained over long periods of time.

The problem is that we've created a system where political and corporate discourse does not allow these people to rise to the top, and selects for people who deflect and never admit wrongdoing. Given a large enough audience, there is always some vocal minority who will crucify you for any mistake. If you wish to lead an organization or institution with a large stakeholder base, you learn to never admit the mistake, because if you do you will soon not be leading that institution. This is why we can't have nice things.

I think there's a relatively simple fix, but it'll probably never happen because it's contrary to why we have leaders in the first place. If the masses crucified leaders for mistakes they made but didn't admit rather than mistakes they admitted, the incentive would be to avoid making mistakes, not avoid admitting them. But this would require that everyone "trust but verify", and that they do (or at least believe) independent research into the performance of their leaders. The whole reason we have leaders and specialization is so that the masses do not need to perform this time-consuming and intellectually-draining work. This is also why we can't have nice things.

It's not my problem.

I think there are different ways to tackle this. The first one is to accept the inability of people to take responsibility as part of the worlds we live in. Accept the issue as human nature, just like we accept the rain, because nonacceptance really does not change the fact that it periodically occurs. Maybe in a Buddhist kind of way--although disclaimer I do not know a lot about Buddhism. And note that we still protect ourselves against the weather and try to reach safe land. We cannot control certain phenomena, but we can control how we feel about them and how they affect us.

Or you can set out to build a better world. There is no indication that irresponsibility and grift is becoming less prevalent in the world. But it is still a meaningful goal to pursue a world where actions have consequences. And speaking out at the right time can be quite rewarding. Though you will likely have to deal with the fact that on aggregate we still will not responsibility for what we do, other than local instances. And speaking out and holding people responsible will probably not lead to rewards in your career, business, etc.--rather the opposite. We all have to decide what our goals are and what world we want to work toward.

If you have been in that sort of environment too long make sure you are measuring your worth and happiness on internal rather than external markers of success or value. Mindfulness meditation can help here as well.

I don’t know if “we” deal with this, it might be something where you can only practice yourself, and model such behavior for others. At some level, deflection and blame is part of the human nature of fear, but you can reject that within your own sphere at least. The key to getting it to catch on might be to demonstrate the value and personal benefits of this mentality to others, and also to reject blame narratives with a very compassionate and forgiving touch. Being aggressive about telling someone what not to do, e.g. smacking someone else in the head, rarely ever works. The head smack that works is the one that comes from within, and might only stick when surrounded by people you trust.

On the other side, there is a "culture of learning", where we expect sometimes to fail, and we save blame and punishment for people who do not learn from their failures (in practice, this is a lot like repeating the same behavior and expecting a different outcome). Yes, sometimes a mistake is costly, but if the person making the mistake learns not to repeat it, we win. If we find a way to make that mistake impossible in the future, we win. In this environment, honesty can be expected (confessing within reason), and will be the norm. In a culture of learning, iteration becomes a way of life and cross organization coordination is much easier.

In my business life I much prefer a culture of learning or one of blame, and in hiring, especially mid a senior level people, I'm careful to hire people that value learning and like to put problems on trial instead of people.

Most mistakes don’t matter. They cost so little, and the alternative to small mistakes is so much worse, that a mistake is the best outcome systematically if you consider the all-in costs.

You can make “no mistakes” but take forever to get anything done, and that is more costly all in, but you didn’t make a “mistake” that anyone can pin on you. But if your organization can’t account for those costs, or even comprehend them, “no mistakes” becomes the target.

”No mistakes” turns out to be ruinous, because nobody was allowed to make small errors, move fast, and learn along the way.

It’s been a tough slog. We have caught her with vapes, with a bottle of vodka, and likely has used pot though we have no proof. We have explained the risks and legalities of these various activities, how we recognize she’s on the cusp of adulthood but we are still responsible for her wellbeing and we deeply care about her safety and happiness.

Mostly, we try to set a good example by being honest and fessing up about our own many mistakes and shortcomings. She knows people in high school whose parents are split up, whose dads are in prison for heinous crimes, who have suffered abuse, and she admits that she’s fortunate.

I believe humans have an innate sense of justice, but it’s also a muscle that must be exercised and trained. Temptation to take shortcuts will always exist, so the key thing is to give our children the tools to handle every situation as they stumble along the bumpy path of life.

I suspect you really mean "guilt" when you say responsibility. I don't have too much of a problem with guilt because:

- I am willing to change perspectives/actions based on new information. So I might hate something at moment X, but stop when I discover new information in moment X+1. That's OK, you've only failed if you fail to adapt to new information.

- Adults can and should take care of themselves for the most part, so if someone is trying to trap me in codependency, I have to remind myself (and them) that I am not their parent and it is not my job to take care of them.

- You can't save the world, it's too big and you didn't make it in the first place. For any suffering you see, a thousand times more is happening that you don't. But you are not the owner of the world, just yourself. Let the creator of this world run it--who is not asking for your opinion anyway--and you take care of yourself.

This is a core concept for good incident management and really it should extend to our personal lives as well. I fail the deflection test sometimes but it's always reactionary and I've learned to be able to correct for it, on reflection. I'm still working on not failing on the first pass but I've improved over time because I practice what I preach. Because I focus less on blaming others, I find myself able to be more honest about my mistakes.

What's this? One repents, ponders the true course, and corrects course like an errant ship.

There may be attendant apologies, restitution, and relationships to heal.

This is only mysterious if one's rejected that spiritual truth.

Don’t lie to yourself, even if you think you need to lie to others to avoid something bad. Avoid lying to others: it can erode trust, make it difficult to openly be yourself, and you may accidentally lie to yourself in the process.

So what to do? You can start by trying to never lie to yourself, with the knowledge that it will only hold you back. Try to accept things for how they are, and how they may play out. Notice that we are not perfect, but at least we can improve and find ways to mitigate our weaknesses (and each others). Don’t dwell on the past, thinking you’re no good, that’s not healthy either.

It’s okay to be who you are, with your strengths, weaknesses, set backs, problems, desires, irritations, blessings, mistakes, failures and successes. If we live in balance with them, we will find our way to get through life. Understanding is key to finding balance. Honest, quality communication helps to achieve understanding, and ultimately balance with ourselves, each other, and the natural world.

Sometimes humans make mistakes, but mostly all divide to who want and take responsibility, and who don't want and don't take.

Sometimes people fake responsibility, because got something valuable for them, like possibility to use power to abuse others. After some time you will see.