I wanted to add my model of basic anger to the OP, to show its link to blame .

Let us say that I have been hurt and disappointed by someone I care deeply about, and as a result I become angry with them. They now approach me and say “ I know I let you down. I was wrong and I'm sorry“ (regardless of whether I prompted them or not). One could say that the other's sense of their guilt and culpability is the mirror image of my anger. The essence of the anger-culpability binary here is the two parties coping , as victim and perpetrator, with their
perception of an arbitrary lapse in values, a socially catalyzed drift in commitment to the relationship on the part of the one , and the recognition of this caprice by the other.
Let us then suppose that the hurt party believes that the always present possibility of the other's straying, succumbing to, being overcome by alienating valuative motives, is an expression of human motivation in general as dependent on arbitrary bodily and intersocial determinants. This being the case , it would not be unreasonable for the hurt individual to formulate the hopeful notion that the blameful, that is, capricious, behavior of the other can be coaxed back to
something close to its original alignment, so that the relationship's intimacy can be restored. The hopeful quality of the anger, then , is driven by a belief in the random malleability of human motives. I am going to call this hopeful intervention ‘adaptive anger'.
It begins with an experience of invalidation (hurt and disappointment) and ends with the consequent hopeful intervention (adaptive anger).

The conflictual relationship scenario I sketched
above was intended to capture what I believe to be a fundamental tenet of any philosophical or
psychological approach that is founded on the belief in the irreducibility of blame.

Good OP, it was interesting to read something with such importance as how to overcome angry and blame because, I think, these are one of the most humane emotions. Despite we see a lot of branches to overcome both I guess it depends on someone's personality and behaviour.
To be honest, if someone ever hurts me that bad, I do not know if I would be able to overcome it. I am a very apprehensive. Probably all of those branches you have shared with us could help me to just accept it. But I don't see myself overcoming the issue.
Another example: There are couples that, when someone cheat on the other, this one for some reason forgive him/her. It is amazing they are available to do so.

We can go beyond through anger thanks to time and accepting it. This is position. There is a phrase which stands: Time cures everything

There are people who deserve to be shamed, hounded, and made permanently miserable by all, as a matter of civil good. — StreetlightX

I wonder which category of blame this fits into?
It sounds a lot more like Pereboom’s desert blame than his rational deterministic blame.

Pereboom rejects blame as moral responsibility because he claims that “what we do and the way we are is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, whether that be determinism, chance, or luck, and because of this agents are never morally responsible in the sense needed to justify certain kinds of desert-based judgments, attitudes, or treatments—such as resentment, indignation, moral anger, backward-looking blame, and retributive punishment.”

“In the basic form of desert, someone who has done wrong for bad reasons deserves to be blamed and perhaps punished just because he has done wrong for those reasons, and someone who has performed a morally exemplary action for good reasons deserves credit, praise, and perhaps reward just because she has performed that action for those reasons (Feinberg 1970; Pereboom 2001, 2014; Scanlon 2013). This backward-looking sense is closely linked with the reactive attitudes of indignation, moral resentment, and guilt, and on the positive side, with gratitude (Strawson 1962); arguably because these attitudes presuppose that their targets are morally responsible in the basic desert sense.”

I suggest that it is possible to think beyond anger and blame entirely, but we can only do this by getting past the idea that human motives are fundamentally arbitrary and capricious, and subject to conditioning and shaping by irrational social and bodily sources. What do you think? — Joshs

On the contrary, I think it's possible to think beyond anger and blame entirely, but we can only do this by giving up the aims that anger and blame serve, ie. wealth and power.

On the contrary, I think it's possible to think beyond anger and blame entirely, but we can only do this by giving up the aims that anger and blame serve, ie. wealth and power. — baker

Do you mean only the wealthy and powerful have anger and blame, or that the anger and blame the rest of us experience is somehow manipulated by the wealthy and powerful? What do you think motivates power?Is there a drive for power? Does greed motivate wealth?

Is this discussion a one-sided argument against a person who is injured one way or another by another person? i.e. the person who suffered harm could go past the blame phase and see why the harm was done to him?

I'm trying to clarify the completeness of the argument here, because in any moral assessment of a situation, there are always two sides -- the person causing harm and the person who suffered the harm. I've heard of people who forgave their attackers -- that is, they've come to terms with their anger and found closure by talking to their attackers directly and forgiving them (in court or prison of course).

But there's another component of this moral event -- what to do with the attacker. The society has something in place: appropriate punishment. It is this component here that seems to be missing. @Joshs, are you saying that aside from skipping anger, should we also skip punishment or desert to the person who caused harm?

are you saying that aside from skipping anger, should we also skip punishment or desert to the person who caused harm? — L'éléphant

Yes, punishment presupposes blame and anger.
In punishment, the angered wants to teach the guilty party a lesson, remind them, shame them, make them feel
the guilt they inexplicably failed to feel as a result of their regressive actions. Why do we say the criminal should suffer what the victim suffered, get a `taste of their own medicine’? If they really know the ethical rigor of what was lost to us in our disappointed suffering, we think, then they may see the error of their ways and return to what we believe they knew all along. Our hostility
wants to provoke the other’s pain only in order to gain the opportunity to ask "How do YOU like it?" and hear them empathetically link their pain with ours by linking their thinking more intimately with ours.

But since we don’t know why they violated our expectation of them, why and how they failed to
do what our blameful anger tells us they `should have’ according to our prior estimation of their relation to us, this guilt-inducing process is tentative, unsure.

Even if we succeed in getting the blameful other to atone and re-establish their previous intimacy with us, we understand them no better than we did prior to their hostility-generating action, and thus our hostility provides an inadequate solution to our puzzlement and anxiety. All we have learned from the episode is that they other is potentially untrustworthy, unpredictable. The
ineffectiveness of this approach can be seen in the fact that even if contempt succeeds in getting the perpetrator to mend their ways, an adequate understanding of his or her puzzling motives has not been achieved. The very success of the contempt delays the pursuit of a
permeable construction within which the other’s apparently arbitrary disappointing deviation
from what one expected of them can be seen as a necessary, adaptive elaboration of their way of
construing their role in the relationship.

When confronted with behavior of another that is comprehensively different from our own, a mystery to us, and especially when it disturbs us, we need to bridge the gap between ourselves and the other not by attributing the problem to the other’s being at the mercy of capriciously wayward motives which we may hope to re-shape, but by striving to subsume the other’s outlook within a revised version of our own system.

in any moral assessment of a situation, there are always two sides -- the person causing harm and the person who suffered the harm. I've heard of people who forgave their attackers -- that is, they've come to terms with their anger and found closure by talking to their attackers directly and forgiving them (in court or prison of course). — L'éléphant

Here’s my view of forgiveness:

Transcending anger by revising one’s construction of the event means arriving at an explanation that does not require the other’s contrition, which only serves to appease the blameful person rather than enlighten him. Forgiveness and turning the other cheek only make sense in the context of blame, which implies a belief in the potential arbitrariness and capriciousness of human motives. Seeking the other’s atonement does not reflect an effective understanding of the original insult.

If, rather than getting angry or condemning another who wrongs me, I respond with loving forgiveness, my absolution of the other presupposes my anger and blame toward them. I can only forgive the other’s trespass to the extent that I recognize a sign of contrition or confession on their part. Ideals of so-called unconditional forgiveness, of turning the other cheek, loving one's oppressor, could also be understood as conditional in various ways. In the absence of the other's willingness to atone, I may forgive evil when I believe that there are special or extenuating circumstances which will allow me to view the perpetrator as less culpable (the sinner knows not what he does). I can say the other was blinded or deluded, led astray. My offer of grace is then subtly hostile, both an embrace and a slap. I hold forth the carrot of my love as a lure, hoping thereby to uncloud the other's conscience so as to enable them to discover their
culpability. In opening my arms, I hope the prodigal son will return chastised, suddenly aware of a need to be forgiven. Even when there is held little chance that the sinner will openly acknowledge his sin, I may hope that my outrage connects with a seed of regret and contrition
buried deep within the other, as if my `unconditional' forgiveness is an acknowledgment of God's or the subliminal conscience of the other's apologizing in the name of the sinner.

So does your view apply to every moral harm? Rapists? Murderers who murdered an entire family? Torturers of children?
And sins, I didn't know that you were going in that direction -- what if one is an atheist? How does an atheist forgive?

You know that forgiveness does not deter transgressions against people by evil people. The law does. People who commit heinous crimes and crimes of opportunity don't have conscience, and there are plenty of them around. If you remove the punishment by law here, then heaven help us all.

You know that forgiveness does not deter transgressions against people by evil people. The law does. People who commit heinous crimes and crimes of opportunity don't have conscience, and there are plenty of them around. — L'éléphant

So evil and lack of conscience can be understood as a kind of arbitrariness , irrationality or capriciousness at the heart of intention and motivation, right? People are tempted, they stray from the ‘right’ path, but we don’t know why, or we assume there is no reason.
That’s my claim, that this arbitrariness is an assumption we make about ‘evil-doers’. But what if this simply reflects a failure of insight on our part? What if ‘evil-doers’ believe they are just, and their failure isn’t one of moral intent but of insight?

But what if this simply reflects a failure of insight on our part? What if ‘evil-doers’ believe they are just, and their failure isn’t one of moral intent but of insight? — Joshs

Sorry. But I take a harder stance on moral claims -- those that involve suffering of the psychic and physical harm. I won't compromise on this. (Heck, that's why I made a thread here Enforcement of Morality)

The "what-if" failure of insight on our part, as you proposed, has been studied for ages and ages -- backed by scholarly and medical studies. We aren't wrong in limiting the freedom of those who cause us harms. There's no more excuse that we might be short-sighted and not seeing the forest because of the trees.

The "what-if" failure of insight on our part, as you proposed, has been studied for ages and ages -- backed by scholarly and medical studies. We aren't wrong in limiting the freedom of those who cause us harms. There's no more excuse that we might be short-sighted and not seeing the forest because of the trees. — L'éléphant

I’m more interested in the philosophy and psychology of motivation. I understand your stance. What I would like to know is how you articulate the nature of wrong-doing and evil in terms of the capriciousness of straying from the path of righteousness. Tell me more about what makes such straying possible. Is it a kind of randomness? Is it an irrationality?

What I would like to know is how you articulate the nature of wrong-doing and evil in terms of the capriciousness of straying from the path of righteousness. Tell me more about what makes such straying possible. Is it a kind of randomness? — Joshs

The straying, as you also name it, has various causes. There are certainly people born with mental illness whose propensity to harm people is well documented. So, this one is not capricious or random -- it has a root cause.

One cause is the development of a vice. There's a joke that mocks the petty crimes, double life, and white lies as something that could not progress to heinous crimes. Well they do. We know this is true. Self-centered and self-absorbed people can discern right from wrong. That's a fact. But when they make a decision, this decision involves rationalization (in another sense of the word) to make this decision palatable and justifiable. So there's a deliberate attempt at plotting the perfect crime.

You know police investigations would show that rapists make a decision to go out and hunt, depending on the weather. If the weather is not conducive to prowling, they postpone it. So, the weather factors in to their decision to commit a crime. They don't aimlessly wander around separated from their minds and decision-making.

this one is not capricious or random -- it has a root cause. — L'éléphant

But mental illness understood as a pathology is another name for randomness. The cause is arbitrary.

They don't aimlessly wander around separated from their minds and decision-making. — L'éléphant

But you haven’t articulated this decision-making in terms
of how it differs from a morally ‘correct’ decision-making. What cause some to do what is incorrect? Why are some self-centered and self-absorbed but not others? Is it a certain randomness or arbitrariness that lurks within each of us?

But you haven’t articulated this decision-making in terms
of how it differs from a morally ‘correct’ decision-making. — Joshs

I just said, they're found to be able to discern right from wrong. In short, they're not mentally ill. So yes, they are aware of what's morally correct.

But mental illness understood as a pathology is another name for randomness. The cause is arbitrary. — Joshs

I think we need to sit down and sort this thing you call randomness. To me, when an individual is born with mental illness, that's not random. That's their being. And for that, our society provides a treatment.

Why are some self-centered and self-absorbed but not others? Is it a certain randomness or arbitrariness that lurks within each of us? — Joshs

This you might call arbitrariness (God I don't know what country you're in, but no offense, I find these terms not the kind I would use when discussing morality, but well okay.) Because it is a vice they want. And to support this vice, they would rationalize their behavior (while knowing right from wrong) -- this rationalization is their support, in a manner of speaking, to go ahead and act on their vice.

Have you taken information systems, btw? Have you heard of "internal controls" -- it would be a perfect framework for your topic because it involves human behavior but in technology setting. The computers against wayward humans.

If someone treads on my hand accidentally, while trying to help me, the pain may be no less acute than if he treads on it in contemptuous disregard of my existence or with a malevolent wish to injure me. But I shall generally feel in the second case a kind and degree of resentment that I shall not feel in the first. — Strawson, Freedom and Resentment

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwstrawson1.htm

I suggest that it is possible to think beyond anger and blame entirely, but we can only do this by getting past the idea that human motives are fundamentally arbitrary and capricious, and subject to conditioning and shaping by irrational social and bodily sources. — Joshs

For Strawson, the recognition of freedom is the cause and basis of resentment (roughly blame in the sense of the OP). For Joshs the recognition of freedom is the basis of 'thinking beyond' blame. Same observation - opposite conclusions. Something interesting going on here.

For Strawson, the recognition of freedom is the cause and basis of resentment (roughly blame in the sense of the OP). For Joshs the recognition of freedom is the basis of 'thinking beyond' blame. Same observation - opposite conclusions. Something interesting going on here. — Cuthbert

Strawson’s analysis here is too abstract and general to take into account what we already know about the changing blame behaviors and notions of fairness and justice that have taken place over the course of recent cultural history.

To the extent that recent approaches have taken the sting out of blame it is because they have rethought the traditional religious and Enlightenment ideas of freedom of will’. Derk Pereboom’s and Galen Strawson’s rejection of free will desert-based blame in favor of determinism is one example, postmodernism’s social construction of blame is another., and Derrida and Heidegger’s deconstruction of presence is yet another.

Good call on Strawson's quote.

But as you can see above, Joshs's view is this: why don't we stop looking at is as free-will so that we could also stop the blame-desert corollary.

And I reject this view. First of all, I don't use free-will philosophically to argue about why guilt, blame, and punishment is a just view. Humans are psychologically predisposed to recognize these 3 elements. So, I use the psychological framework to make a statement about moral agency.

And I reject this view. First of all, I don't use free-will philosophically to argue about why guilt, blame, and punishment is a just view. Humans are psychologically predisposed to recognize these 3 elements. So, I use the psychological framework to make a statement about moral agency. — L'éléphant

My view on blame is a further development of the approaches of Heidegger and Derrida. Neither of them are determinists, nor are they free-will advocates.
I would simply suggest that the history of blame is directly correlated with a progressive philosophical and psychological understanding. The more fundamentalist the view of human nature, the harsher the blame that is considered justified. Enlightenment free will philosophy, while rejecting religious fundamentalism, shares with religious thinking of its era the assumption of an atomized autonomous subject that controls what it wills. This view doesnt understand the reciprocal interconnection between individual will and the social system in which it is embedded, leading to a profoundly arbitrary view of freedom.

Yes, I think a key attribute of anger and blame is that if can feel so righteous and satisfying and can provide purpose and structure to people's lives - a narrative built around a grievance can bring forth a worldview and one can feel 'blameless' and perhaps even 'sacred' in this process. I also think that for many people an event may be used to activate anger which is already there waiting for an ostensible justification and convenient flare up.

Tom, please do not inject another element into the argument. Josh and I and, I believe, Cuthbert, too, know what's at stake here.

So, let's assume that Josh's view has assurance that the removal of blame is not because it is bound to be abused by "convenient flare up" and "righteousness". Josh, you know this. We are precluding righteousness here.

The blame definition is pure.

Yes, I think a key attribute of anger and blame is that if can feel so righteous and satisfying and can provide purpose and structure to people's lives - a narrative built around a grievance can bring forth a worldview and one can feel 'blameless' and perhaps even 'sacred' in this process. I — Tom Storm

Do you think that anger and blame are also the only way we can think of to improve certain situations where the other acts in ways that appear capricious and ‘wayward’ to us, such that our anger tells us we can ‘ knock some sense’ back into them?

The question , then, is whether there is a way of looking at human motives such that what is good for
each of us when we make a choice is never meant to be in deliberate conflict with the desires of
others( unless of course we feel they need to be punished). I suggest the only way to understand motive
this way is as a form of anticipatory sense making that intrinsically takes others into consideration , given that they are a crucial element of our sense making. We blame when we attribute the ‘waywardness’ to the other’s actions, rather than in our inadequate construction of them.

The idea here is that motive can never be wayward, and therefore blame is always a failure of our own understanding.

I was just making an observation based on Josh's OP feel free to ignore it.

Do you think that anger and blame are also the only way we can think of to improve certain situations where the other acts in ways that appear capricious and ‘wayward’ to us, such that our anger tells us we can ‘ knock some sense’ back into them? — Joshs

I think anger satisfies an emotional need and I believe many of us seethe in hatreds and bigotries already and we are always on the look out for events or cues to activate these emotions. I come to this from work I have undertaken with violent offenders over the years. If this is not relevant please let me know.

I think anger satisfies an emotional need and I believe many of us seethe in hatreds and bigotries already and we are always on the look out for events or cues to activate these emotions. I come to this from work I have undertaken with violent offenders over the years. If this is not relevant please let me know. — Tom Storm

The thing is , people play around with the word anger, because it has a negative connotation of violence , lack of control , irrationality and self-aggrandizement.Nobody want to admit that they get angry a lot.
They tell us we can eliminate anger, control it , suppress it, substitute in its place compassion and forgiveness. But none of these arguments gets to the heart of the matter , which isnt the expression of anger per se but blame.
None of the authors who suggest a substitute for anger
believe we can get rid of blame. In fact, I would argue that their philosophies are absolutely dependent on a notion of blame at their very core.

For instance, Gendlin, a phenomenological psychologist allied with Merleau-Ponty, considers anger to be potentially adaptive. He says that one must attempt to reassess, reinterpret, elaborate the angering experience via felt awareness not in order to eliminate the feeling of anger but so that one's anger becomes “fresh, expansive, active, constructive, and varies with changes in the situation”. “Anger may help handle the situation because it may make the other change or back away. Anger can also help the situation because it may break it entirely and thus give you new circumstances.” “ Anger is healthy, while resentment and hate are detrimental to the organism.”

The social constructionist Ken Gergen writes that anger has a valid role to play in social co- ordination “There are certain times and places in which anger is the most effective move in the dance.”

Merleau-Ponty scholar John Russon(2020) offers:

“Anger can be unjustified, to be sure, and in that case it enacts a fundamentally distorted portrayal of the other. But anger can also be justified, and in that case it can be the only frame of mind in which the vicious and hateful reality of the other is truly recognized.” (The Place of Love).

Robert Solomon (1977), champion of the view that emotions are central to meaning and significance in human life, says that anger can be ‘right'.

“ Anger, for example, is not just a burst of venom, and it is not as such sinful, nor is it necessarily a “negative” emotion. It can be “righteous,” and it can sometimes be right.”

What I am suggesting is that we can get rid of the concept of blame, but only when. we stop thinking of motive and intent as potentially arbitrary , capricious , vulnerable to bodily-emotive and social conditioning and shaping.

I dont know any philosopher or psychologist who follows me here , except perhaps George Kelly , and I may be misreading him. The closest to my position are Derrida, Heidegger and Gendlin.

Anger and blame achieve the establishment of boundaries and rules, in different settings, in social situations. The cause is secondary, it is separate. Even if you got rid of blame, we'd only see a change in tone while the same punishment is being delivered. Sometimes maybe there should be a change of tone, I agree, people shouldn't be blamed for what they are, or for failing to save us from themselves. I think most crime shows impairment in decision making, maybe it's a temporary impairment but from the perspective of a healthy, clear-minded person, crime's reward usually doesn't justify the risk.

I only think anger and blame should at some time expire, that cooler heads can prevail ultimately. If then we determine that a person should be absolved of blame, so be it.

What I am suggesting is that we can get rid of the concept of blame, but only when. we stop thinking of motive and intent as potentially arbitrary , capricious , vulnerable to bodily-emotive and social conditioning and shaping. — Joshs

I'll mull over this. I've never really taken the idea of blame very seriously. Do animals get angry and does blame play a role?

Let me ask you this: do you think you personally can get rid of the ALL of the following feelings in response to the actions of others?

I take expression of blame to include: irritation, annoyance, disapproval, condemnation, feeling insulted, taking umbrage, resentment, exasperation, impatience, hatred, ire, outrage, contempt, righteous or moral indignation, ‘adaptive’ anger, perceiving the other as deliberately thoughtless, lazy, disresectful, cruel, culpable, prideful, perverse, corrupt, tyrannical, inconsiderate, deliberately oppressive, repressive or unfair, a miscreant, insulting, rude, racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, misogynistic, seeing the other as a willful perpetuator of social injustice or injustice in general, as committing a moral wrong, disrespectful, disgraceful, greedy, evil, sinful, criminal, narcissistic.

Anger and blame achieve the establishment of boundaries and rules, in different settings, in social situations. The cause is secondary, it is separate. Even if you got rid of blame, we'd only see a change in tone while the same punishment is being delivered — Judaka

Would we still call it punishment if we believed that the other’s motives were not only in their own interests but in the interest of those they allegedly ‘wronged’? And furthermore, that we agree that given the level
of their understanding at the time they took action, their actions were indeed the best they could
possibly do? In other words, dont we only want to punish when we believe the ‘guilty’ party knew or should have known better?

For instance, this:

The common people, whose convictions are the result of emotional impulse and not rational inquiry, will always be vulnerable to vicious, hateful Demagoguery — Michael Sol

Notice that here we have a combination of irrational emotion and willful evil that form the recipe of righteous anger.

Would you punish a child who locked a nose-bleeding friend in the closet because she was told by another child that a bloody nose is a deadly contagion that can wipe out a whole community?
Or would you teach them what they would like to know anyway?
Do we punish individuals who ostracize deviants because the medicinal folk ways they grew up with i. their very traditional cultures tell them the deviants are
evil? And if we do, isn’t it. asked o. the assumption. they should have known better?

I would argue the cause of blameful rules isnt secondary, it is the primary instigator for the rules and what motivates us recognize that they have been violated. Anger begins with surprise and disappointment. It is a puzzlement. Without this puzzlement and disappointment there is no anger and no blame.

I think most crime shows impairment in decision making, — Judaka

That’s a form of blame, the attribution of irrationality to another. If we believe that one’s motives can be swayed in irrational directions, then our anger tells us we may be able to away them back into the fold. Derk Pereboom’s blame skepticism makes a similar argument, leading to a pared down notion of blame.

. Do animals get angry and does blame play a role? — Tom Storm

I would say yes, the higher mammals can ‘scold’ another they are friendly with for violating an expectation.

Would we still call it punishment if we believed that the other’s motives were not only in their own interests but in the interest of those they allegedly ‘wronged’? And furthermore, that we agree that given the level
of their understanding at the time they took action, their actions were indeed the best they could
possibly do?
Would you punish a child who locked a nose-bleeding friend in the closet because she was told by another child that a bloody nose is a deadly contagion that can wipe out a whole community?
Or would you teach them what they would like to know anyway?
Do we punish individuals who ostracize deviants because the medicinal folk ways they grew up with i. their very traditional cultures tell them the deviants are
evil? — Joshs

That's a useful series of questions. I'm seeing your broader point.

Going back to Gendlin, what is the difference between anger as an emotion or felt meaning and does he provide an account of blame? I am assuming he would see anger as sometimes having a useful role.

a certain conception of blame is at the very heart of both modern and postmodern philosophical foundations. — Joshs

I'd also be interested in a few points on this.

Going back to Gendlin, what is the difference between anger as an emotion or felt meaning and does he provide an account of blame? I am assuming he would see anger as sometimes having a useful role. — Tom Storm

Gendlin says emotions are patterns of behavior in situations ( he recognizes a few which are inherited) that don’t take account of the larger context. They are like feeling with blinders on. That can be adaptive in fighting off predators , but not in dealing with your boss. Felt meaning, on the other hand , takes into account the whole situation , giving one many more options of responding to it appropriately and in a nuanced and intricate way.

a certain conception of blame is at the very heart of both modern and postmodern philosophical foundations.
— Joshs

I'd also be interested in a few points on this. — Tom Storm

I can give you a taste of how postmodern social
constructionist Ken Gergen looks at blame.

“By and large identity politics has depended on a rhetoric of blame, the illocutionary effects of which are designed to chastise the target (for being unjust, prejudiced, inhumane, selfish, oppressive, and/or violent). In western culture we essentially inherit two conversational responses to such forms of chastisement -incorporation or antagonism.”“ if moral deliberation is inherently cultural, then in what sense are we justified in holding individuals responsible for the humane society? Isn't individual blame thus a mystification of our condition of interdependence?”“Blame and responsibility are thus distributed within the community, and indeed the culture.”(Gergen)