Here's a koan from the Rinzai Zen tradition. A fellow named George is walking along a riverbank, staring at a ferryboat raft that has just departed on its way to the other shore. George sees a Zen master walking nearby. George has a question for the Zen master: "A lot of little beings were killed by that ferryboat just now, when the pilot pushed his pole into the water and stirred up the river mud. Who is to blame for all those deaths? Was it the pilot? Or those people who hired him to take them across the river on his ferryboat?"
The Zen master answers: "George, it's your fault."
I have disturbed the peace of mind of any number of my students with that koan, and I've heard a lot of fanciful answers back. But only rarely do I hear the proper interpretation of the koan, which is: it's George's fault in the same sense that George is wearing George's shoes and has George's hair and has George's eyes. George came up with the notion of "fault" to begin with; it's an invented mental framework. It's his fault, just like it's his shoes.
Sometimes I'm downright appalled by the ruckus that gets stirred up by people who feel compelled to erect conceptual scaffoldings around the normal churn of everyday life. A TV cooking hostess known for her fried and butter-enhanced Southern dishes has developed diabetes and is also pushing an anti-diabetes drug. To hear people talk you'd think she had been stalking around with a shotgun, dropping folks left and right. That she is somehow responsible for the overweight people that make up a majority of American citizens. Actually, she's an entertainer who shares recipes and demonstrates kitchen techniques. Nobody is required to make her dishes or eat them or watch her TV show or buy her cookbooks or do anything else whatsoever about her. It's a very simple proposition: if you disapprove of all that sugar and fat, then don't eat all that sugar and fat.
Even the most relentlessly propagandistic and hysterically enticing TV commercial is only images and sound. There is no eye doctor promising a happier life if you use her eyedrops. She's an actress. She doesn't know jack about eyedrops or eyes or—being an actress—much of anything. That's not her patient; that's another actress. She doesn't know anything either. They're not actually having a conversation. That was pieced together from multiple takes and took form only after extensive jiggering in Avid or Final Cut Pro. That's not an examining room. That's a TV set. The people making the bottle filled with liquid don't give a flying fig whether or not you have a happier life or more photogenic eyes. They just want you to buy their liquid-filled bottle, because that's how they make their living. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with that; it's called commerce and it's the backbone of our civilization. However, it's up to me to decide whether or not I want to buy that bottle of liquid. The advertisers can strain every nerve to convince me, but they cannot coerce me.
The Internet provides a soapbox for anybody with an issue to raise. (Here I am writing Free Composition.) The fingers get pointed, boy howdy to they ever get pointed. Sometimes it seems to me that everybody is pointing a finger at somebody else for something. Nanny for Hire, Nag du jour, everybody's a critic and everybody insists that the blame is real. But the blame isn't real. It's all made up. Accountability exists, justice exists. Laws are written and enforced. But blame? That's a different animal. I, and I alone, can dispense blame. But just because I can hand out blame like so many free samples, it does not follow that anybody else has to take it. So go ahead: scream and yell, nag and moan, snap and snipe and snip. Call Paula Deen every name in the book. Blame her for everything from obesity to ingrown toenails to the moldy grout in your shower. But remember: it's all your fault, not hers.