Tuesday, July 22, 2008 Antalan: The blame game By Roger P. Antalan Dateline Igacos
THE deadly Typhoon Frank sunk the MV Princess of the Stars last June 21, 2008 near Sibuyan island. Majority of the 800 crew and passengers died or are still missing. Whose fault was it that allowed the ill-fated ship to sail directly into the destructive path of the typhoon? The Senate is still investigating.
The main focus of the hearings is of course Sulpicio Lines, Inc. But there are also fingers pointed at Pag-asa, the Coast Guard, Marina, and the minor decision-makers down the line.
For good measure, mention was also made of Del Monte as possible culprit for secretly loading tons of toxic fertilizer in the passenger vessel instead of in a cargo ship.
It will not be a surprise if the favorite whipping boy called "Force Majeure," the compelling force of nature, will be added as one of the causes of the disaster. All the elements of a "whodunit" novel are present. And the blame game is still going on.
There is a well-known motivational saying in sports which goes like this: It matters not whether you win or you lose, what matters most is how you play the game. While the winners celebrate, the losers try to find reasons for their defeat.
Sometimes it can turn into a bull session. Thus, this parody of the saying: "It matters not whether you win or you lose, what matters most is whom to blame."
In basketball, our favorite pastime, it is often said that if a team wins it is because the players are great, but if the team losses it is the fault of the coach, or as what happens in the PBA, it is the fault of the referee.
The blame game is played almost everywhere. At home, when an appliance is broken, it's the maid, the boy, or the relatives, or anybody who happens to be there. At school, when a student fails, it is the fault of the teacher, the parents, the barkada, too much TV, or even the school system.
In the community, when something bad happens, blame the mayor, the politicians, the police, the drug addicts, the unconcerned neighborhood. The idea is to pass the blame around. No one will admit responsibility.
The practice of blaming others can go overboard. This story takes the cake. A young man was into drugs and heavy drinking. A kind couple, related to the young man, took him under their care. The young man reformed and he was sent to a good school. Unfortunately his past excesses caught up with him. Suddenly, he died from a fatal heart attack. The siblings blame the couple for their brother's death. If the couple did not adopt him he would not have died!
An anonymous author once said: "It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and forget his own." To explain away this regrettable quality, another writer parodied the famous saying, thus: "To err is human, to blame others is more human."
But Thomas Carlyle has a definitive note on all this: "The greatest of all faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."
This brings us to an interesting narrative entitled "Whose Job is it." This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
The rigodon of passing the buck can be stopped. The Buck Stops Here was the motto on the desk of former US President, Harry S. Truman. But duty and responsibility are for all. Accountability need not reach the highest level. People need to take their responsibility at their own level seriously. They may resist assuming it, but they can't get along without it.
As John D. Rockefeller said: "I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty." And talking of being human, Antoine de Saint-Exupery has this important pronouncement: "To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible."
Part of being responsible is to accept one's fault instead of passing the blame. It has a value to it as Alexander Pope sees it. "A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than yesterday."
Wisest of all, however, is to acquire and develop the virtue of "response-ability" at every level of work, in everything that we do.
In the process, we can stop or at least minimize errors and faults. And there will be lesser blame throwing. As a final note, here's a little formula, or a prayer, for taking charge: "Let me do a thing that ought to be done,/When it ought to be done,/As it ought to be done,/ Whether I like to do it or not."
