Chain of Blame Is described in the Book The Blame Game
Events rarely occur in a vacuum; there is a cause and effect relationship to most things. Legally and realistically, every action sets in motion a chain of events. In blaming this is called a chain of blame, a phenomenon that links events together. Legally, forming a chain of blame typically demands that the outcome is in some respects foreseeable. In real life, we have no such demands. When we try to attribute who is at fault, we often rely on a chain of blame. Developing a chain can take some practice. You believe that X is to blame for Y.
Take a step back, think of what may have caused X to happen. Now that you’ve established that W is to blame for X, what caused W? And so it goes on. You’ll find that with enough determination and practice you can easily build ten or more links. This is a great defensive maneuver and provides a lot of protection from anyone blaming us for something that has happened. There is a lot of blaming to go around, but fortunately it never comes back to us. A chain of blame may spread the liability so thin that rather than looking discernibly at the root causes we just say, “Everybody is at fault, except us.”
This type of blame may make you feel better in the short term, but spending that much time determining who’s at fault (if it’s not for safety, moral or ethical reasons) takes away precious moments in which you could be doing something more positive and productive.
Even if you’re not at fault, reading The Blame Game is a first step toward a better life and an end to the chain of blame.
