Mistaken (for a Change)
Beware Mistakes?
I once saw pinned on a doctor’s surgery noticeboard a poster promoting safety at home, aimed at new parents. The imagery was stark and the words said: “There’s no such thing as an accident.”
That poster promoted in me anxiety about getting blamed for things - it may as well have said PARENTING KILLS. It has stayed with me. Why was it designed and put there? Did it mitigate against the harms adults can do children? (Incidentally, its emphasis was trailing cables, unprotected stairwells, etc, not abuse or mistreatment.)
Here are just a few related thoughts.
Blame first
I don’t think I am alone in already having shouty posters on my internal wall. It is common to feel afraid and cowed by the potential to ‘be bad’. This fear is captivating and easily reinforced – perhaps by upbringing, education, religion, workplaces, relationships …
When someone gets hurt or upset, then, we are almost already seeking a culprit. We might tend to locate that person in ourselves or in someone else – an important difference but the impulse to assign blame is similar. An external shouty poster is a way of reinforcing this message: ‘apportioning blame is the top priority here’.
Does this stance keep anyone safe? Or change things for the better?
Elizabeth Day’s lovely ‘How to Fail’ podcast is about the ways mistakes are inevitable, often painful, but can be fertile ground for creativity, strong relationships and contented lives. For positive change.
Fear and blaming cut off our capacity to get to this.
Are they ever motivators for taking better care of each other?
Can fear of mistakes help?
Survival when vulnerable
In a life-threatening scenario, our biological system acts quickly in the interests of self-preservation. Responses kick in before we can worry about ‘accidents’: we behave efficiently and instinctively in the interests of survival. The warning poster in this scenario is unnecessary.
Survival, for humans, includes finding ways to keep carers close. They will greet some of our behaviours with breaks in love, with distancing. The potential consequences of this are frightening: the child instinctively adapts to protect themselves. They begin to understand these instinctive behaviours as mistakes, accidents, errors …..
This might look like: not caring; perfectionism; self-loathing; always taking responsibility for mistakes; blaming someone else who is even more vulnerable….
The vulnerable person instinctively adjusts to retain connection with a powerful caregiver. The un-noticed and shadowy breaks in love might be the problem but go unexamined. Cultural complicity in cultivating a fear of mistakes or ‘accidents’ doesn’t prevent them or heal anything. It does nurture a strong, perhaps unconscious, desire to escape blame at any cost.
Altruism when powerful
The poster is not aimed at the vulnerable. It is aimed at the caregiver who has power to hurt or neglect.
If anxiety about causing another harm could promote socially-minded behaviour, then the poster-creator’s job would be worth doing.
Humans do routinely fail to provide adequate support and care - particularly for vulnerable groups (like children). It can be very serious. Perhaps we need encouragement or discipline, via striking poster campaigns? Maybe it’s good to fuel anxiety about caring responsibilities, when ‘accidents’ can lead to harm?
I am not convinced posters like this help, though. Maybe the ‘Big Brother’s always watching’ style shame they induce actually makes it harder to seek help with, for example, parenting. Maybe it doesn’t do anything to address pain and harm.
It is powerful people who get to define what is ‘wrong’ and who is worthy of blame. A parent, boss, influencer, president … might get to label mistakes as being such. Or not. And power can blind us to our own errors, make us harder on others’, and make us numb to the ways others are hurt by our actions.
As individuals and societies, we favour systems where accidents can be somebody’s fault because it makes a certain sort of reassuring sense. But blame, like harm, is served out on a very unequal playing field.
If you were designing a poster for a GP surgery, with the aim of promoting safety and wellbeing in the home, what would it look like? What seven words would be on it to replace ‘There’s no such thing as an accident’?
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Do you have “internal shouty posters” ? How are you managing their messages? Therapy might be one thing that could help.
