Richard Kyte: Let’s put an end to culture of blame | Columnists

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Richard Kyte is director of the DB Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wis., and co-host of “The Ethical Life” podcast.

An overlooked benefit of growing up in a large extended family is that you have many examples of ways to live — or not to live.

One elderly relation in particular liked to complain about things. Going to visit her meant exposure to a litany of things wrong with the world. She didn’t much care for her neighbor, the grocery store clerk, her pastor, the potholes on her street or the hippies rumored to have passed through town.

I thought she must live in a terrible place, and I was glad not to live in a town like hers, where everybody was always lying, and cheating, and trying to find ways to hurt you.

As I got older, I realized things were worse than that. She took the terrible place with her wherever she went.

There are plenty of people like that today, and sometimes I worry I might be turning into one of them. It’s hard not to. There are so many conversations taking place with people blaming one another for things that one is tempted to just give up and join the party — the party of blame.

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The people who belong to that party are the ones who walk around with a black cloud hanging over their heads, cutting off the light and obscuring their own vision. When you try to point out that things are not as bad as they say, they look at you as if you are nuts. Can’t you see how dark things are? It’s self-evident.

Sometimes they all get together in one place and have a celebration of blame. They describe it as a protest to make themselves feel better. In Ottawa they call it the “Freedom Convoy.” In Seattle they called it “Free Capitol Hill” and then “CHAZ.” But to those on the outside, it is clear they are just holding a blame fest.

This is not to say all protests are pointless. Sometimes protests are used to draw public attention to little known or overlooked injustices. Other times they are used to galvanize support for a significant social movement by bringing unity and focus to otherwise diffused efforts for change. But the worst protests do neither of these. They are merely expressions of shared grievance.

Worthwhile protests have a number of features in common:

First, they are based in truth. The protestors have legitimate concerns grounded in a coherent interpretation of events, not based in rumor, exaggeration, misinformation or partial truth.

Second, they have specific, achievable goals. The leaders of the protest are able to articulate exactly what they hope to accomplish by their actions.

Third, there is internal unity. The leaders and followers agree on both the methods of protest and the goals they are trying to achieve.

Fourth, the disruption they cause is balanced by the positive results. The point of the protest cannot be disrupted for its own sake; it must result in significant positive benefit.

Fifth, they gain support through moral persuasion. This is what distinguishes a protest from an insurrection or coup. An insurrection uses coercive power to gain political control over others. But a protest does not seek control over others; it seeks instead to change people’s minds.

The protests we are witnessing today are, for the most part, poorly conceived, planned and executed. They tend to be driven by shared grievances, fueled by misinformation and mistrust. There is little unity between the leaders and followers about methods used or goals to be achieved. Instead of persuading others to join their cause, they alienate outsiders. The longer they go on, the more public opinion turns against them.

It is important to remember that a common grievance is very different from a common goal.

Grievances are fueled by negative emotions like anger and resentment, and although negative emotions can be a powerful force when people come together, their power tends to be short-lived and self-destructive. Anger eventually burns itself out, and the ruin it leaves behind creates opposition where none may have existed before.

People naturally are drawn to support each other out of positive emotions, such as compassion, patience, sincerity and love. They are the only way to generate long-standing commitment. Augustine expressed this when he observed that a community is understood of those who love in common. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the “beloved community” as the overarching goal of the civil rights movement.

We are very far from the beloved community today. We are quickly becoming the blaming community.

When we focus too much on the faults of others, we tend to overlook our own faults. When fault-finding becomes widespread, the inevitable result is that nobody holds themselves accountable for their own conduct and everybody keeps acting worse and worse.

But just because the protests we are witnessing today are short-sighted and self-serving does not mean we can’t learn from them.

Just like my aunt. She wasn’t all bad, and I am a better person today because of her influence. Among other things, she taught me that anyone can be useful. You can always serve as a bad example.

Richard Kyte is director of the DB Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wis., and co-host of “The Ethical Life” podcast.

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