Everything In Your Life Is Your Fault

Everything in your life is your fault.

Does that piss you off?

Good.

Let’s make you even more angry.

Your income, your weight, your sex life, your average level of happiness, and everything else like this is YOUR FAULT. That’s right. Yours.

They aren’t your parents fault (assuming you’re well over age 18). They aren’t Barack Obama’s fault or George W. Bush’s fault. They aren’t your government’s fault (unless you live in a dictatorship or communist country). They aren’t feminists’ fault or left-wingers’ fault or right-wingers’ fault. They aren’t rich peoples’ fault or the one percent’s fault. They aren’t white peoples’ fault, or black peoples’ fault, or Jewish peoples’ fault, or Christians’ fault or any other race or religion’s fault.

Nope. They’re your fucking fault.

Sorry. But that’s the truth.

Want more? I’ve got more.

They are also not your ex-girlfriend’s fault. Hey, you’re the one who made her your girlfriend. You didn’t have to do that.

They also aren’t your ex-wife’s fault. You’re the one who married the bitch. You could have married someone else. Even better, you could have been smart and never gotten legally married in the first place. Your fault.

They’re not your boss’s fault. You don’t have to work there. If it sucks, quit. Go get another job. But I can’t get another job that pays this well in this economy blah blah blah. Hey, I didn’t say it’s easy to quit or get another job. I said your income is your fault. So is your overall job satisfaction. Because it is.

Just about any negative condition you can think of in your life, no matter how much it might seem like “someone else’s fault,” you can trace back to YOUR decisions and YOUR actions. Therefore, your fault.

Don’t make enough money? You could make more if you really wanted to. Girlfriend is a bitch? You could dump her ass and find new one if you really wanted to. You’re too fat? You could lose weight if you really wanted to. You’re too skinny? You could get more buff if you really wanted to. Had shitty parents? You could get counseling, read some good self-help books, surround yourself with positive people, and turn your life around if you really wanted to. Never get laid? You could learn some dating skills and get out there and start having sex if you really wanted to.

Again, I’m not saying it’s easy to do these things. Often these things are very difficult. Easy or difficult is an entirely different discussion. I’m just saying these things are your fault. Because they are.

Alright, now let’s deal with your excuses, ‘cuz I know you’ve got a million of them.

What some of you are now doing is immediately leaping to the “we have no free will” debate, and you’re getting your fingers poised to make a comment on this blog post saying that I’m completely full of shit because we live in a deterministic universe where no one has any free will and you cannot control your actions.

I already gave my final word on that several months ago in a comment, but I’ll repeat it here just to be official about it:

Hereâs my final word on why determinism is irrelevant even if itâs 100% true:

Youâre playing World of Warcraft and having a lot of fun. Suddenly, while fighting a dragon with your buddies, you stop and say, âThis is all an illusion. Itâs just a bunch of ones and zeros on a screen sitting on a server somewhere. The software determines my goals and actions. I have no free will here. Weâre all equal here. Whatâs the point?â

Then you just stop and stand there. The dragon kills you and kills all of your friends because you suddenly stopped cooperating. Now your friends hate you and refuse to play with you. When you resurrect, you just walk around aimlessly as you lecture everyone about how all of this is not real because itâs just a game on a server. All you do is annoy people, and you stop having fun.

Are you wrong? No. Technically, youâre right. However, youâve missed the entire point of playing the game. Warcraft is an illusion, but itâs also a game you play with a point; for your enjoyment. Life, even if itâs an illusion, even if you have zero free will at some infinitesimal level you canât consciously perceive, is also a game. One to experience to the fullest and be the happiest and most fulfilled you can while the âgameâ lasts. Acting as if you have no free will, and no one is responsible for their actions, is incompatible with the goal of playing, enjoying, and âwinningâ (however you define that) the game.

It doesnât matter if you canât shoot a lightning bolt out of your hands in real life. In Warcraft you can, so go with it, enjoy it, have fun with it, and use it as best you can to fulfill your objectives in the game.

Sitting there with a frown on your face as you shoot the lightning bolt thinking âthis is bullshit, itâs not realâ defeats the entire point. Turning to your friends in the game as youâre all playing it and lecturing them that people canât shoot lightning bolts out of their hands is fucking stupid and a waste of your time and theirs.

Now switch lightning bolts for free will. It doesnât matter if you donât (or might not) have free will in real life at some inconceivable, imperceptible cellular level. In the âfalse illusion of free willâ that is life, you do have free will, massive free will. Maybe not âfor real,â but again, in the âillusionary gameâ that is life, everything is your fault and your responsibility, so use this to better yourself, be more happy, and bring more happiness to others. While the game lasts.

Microphone drop!

There you go. Even if you are 100% right and we don’t have real free will on some imperceptible molecular level, it’s completely irrelevant to what I’m discussing. Within the “game” that is this “false” world, you control your actions, your actions determine your results, therefore your results are your fault.

I have allowed discussion of the issue of determinism and free will in the comments on this blog for many years now. It’s been debated in detail. Everything that can be said here about this topic has been said. I am now officially declaring the topics of free will, determinism, and nihilism as off-topic for this entire blog. From now on, any comments relating in any way to these three topics will be immediately deleted and replaced with a link to this blog post. If you really want to discuss these topics, that’s great, but do it on a philosophy or physics blog, not here. This is not the place for it.

Alrightee, back to the topic of everything being your fault.

So now what you’re doing in an effort to tell me I’m wrong is reaching way, way out into the less than 2% zone and trying to find an exception to the rule. Then you’re going to try to hit me with something like this:

This is bullshit, Blackdragon. Not everything is your fault. What about little kids who die of cancer? Was that their fault?!? 

Of course that’s not their fault. There are unusual exceptions to every rule. But as always, the exceptions prove the rule. The fact you have to point to children dying of cancer to prove your point shows how weak your point is. How many kids do you personally know who have died of cancer? See my point? Yes, it happens, but it’s so damn rare that it falls well into the 2% Rule.

Just to be fair, I’ll cover some of the exceptions to the “everything in your life is your fault” rule that might be valid:

• Children (people under age 18 or 16 or so) are a possible exception because they often can’t control their own actions or the conditions of their upbringing and thus aren’t often responsible for their results. But if you’re over 18, this isn’t you.

• People who live in highly oppressive nations are a possible exception, because much of their free will and choices are curtailed by coercive government force. So yeah, if you live in Somalia or North Korea, you’re a possible exception to this. As always, I’m talking about people who live in the Western world, which means you.

• People afflicted by medical conditions that are 100% unpreventable are a possible exception. However, this doesn’t get you off the hook for most other medical problems which are preventable and therefore are your fault if you get them. And remember that most cancers (as just one example) are preventable if you live the correct lifestyle. As a perfect example, my uncle died of ALS a few years ago. That wasn’t his fault. However, around the same time I had another uncle who died of a heart attack. That absolutely was his fault. He was fat. That was his lifestyle choice. So ALS = not his fault, heart attack = his fault.

• People maimed in some kind of freak accident where they were not at fault in any way whatsoever might be a possible exception. If you were in a parked car and someone drove into you and you lost both of your arms and legs, then okay, you were an odd exception to the rule. But if you got in that accident because you made an error while driving, or were stupid while driving, or were texting while driving, or got drunk then got into a car, that would be your fault. And for fuck’s sake, please don’t give the typical feminine excuse of “it wasn’t my fault because I was drunk.” You didn’t have to get drunk. You could have given your keys to someone else before getting drunk. (See? Your fault again. Don’t try to bullshit me.)

There are probably three or four more super statistically rare exceptions to the rule I could come up with if I racked my brain, but you get the point. The key point is most people who are bitching and complaining about their lives are not dying of cancer or living in North Korea. 99% of the time, they’re bitching about something this is their fault.

“I don’t make enough money!” Your fault. Get a different job. Start a different business. Market more. Change industries. Get more training. Work longer hours. Move to a more prosperous city. Etc. Again! I’m not saying it’s easy to do these things. I’m saying you could do these things if you wanted to, and if you choose not to, then it’s your fucking fault.

“My ex-wife is trying to take my kids away!” Your fault. You got serious with her. You proposed to her. You married her. You didn’t sign a parenting plan with her or a prenuptial agreement with her. You moved in with her. You had babies with her. Etc. These were all conscious decisions you made that you didn’t have to make.

“My roommate stole $600 from me!” Your fault. You moved in with the bastard. You didn’t run a background check on him before you moved in with him, did you? Likely, you didn’t move out or kick him out when you first discovered he was a shithead. Also, the only reason you needed a roommate is because you don’t make enough money to pay your own rent, or because you want to live in a place more expensive than you can afford on your own. And remember, your income is your fault.

I could go on for the next hour with more examples of crap you bitch about that you think isn’t your fault that actually is. But again, hopefully you get the point. Everything in your life is your fault.

By the way, just to show you how much I mean this…this rule applies to me also. Every problem I have in my life is my fault. Granted, I live a pretty awesome life and I don’t have very many problems these days, but what few I have, or have had, were my fault. All. My. Fault. I have no one to blame but myself for every problem I have ever experienced in my life since I moved out of my parent’s home when I was 18 years old.

And neither do you.

Why This Is A Good Thing

I’m now going to explain why assuming the mindset of “everything in my life is my fault” is one of the most positive, empowering things you can possibly do with your life.

If your current conditions are your fault, you can change them. If you make $25,000 a year and hate it, and it’s your fault, then you can make much more money than that if you so choose. That’s pretty awesome if you think about it.

What if you make $25,000, hated it, and it wasn’t your fault? What if the reason you only made $25,000 is because you lived in a 1984-like authoritarian country, and some government agent who looked like one of the Men In Black followed you around with a pistol to your head 24/7 and made sure you never earned more than $25,000 a year?

That would really suck, because you would truly be powerless to increase your income. If you did, you’d get shot.

But if your income was your fault (which it is!), that would be wonderful! That means you could choose to change your income whenever you wanted.

That’s why when I say your weight or your sex life or your income is your fault, instead of getting pissed off and defensive, you should be happy. It means you can change these conditions. If they really weren’t your fault, you’d be screwed…for life.

I LOVE that my problems are my fault. I think that’s fantastic! That way I have the power to change them. My past problems that are now gone were also my fault. So I put in the work to change them, and now they aren’t problems any more. I’m glad they were my fault, because if they weren’t, I’d still have those problems. That would be bad.

By the way, if your problems are your fault, that also means the good stuff in your life are also your fault. So if you make a lot of money or get laid a lot, and achieved these things through your own efforts, you should give yourself a pat on the back. You did that (regardless of what Obama says). That was your “fault.” Well done! If you achieved quality results in those areas, you can also achieve at least decent results in other areas also. Because those areas are your fault too.

So SUCK IT UP, STOP BITCHING, and GET TO WORK. Everything in your life is your fault. Which means you can change anything in your life you don’t like.

Isn’t that awesome?