Apportioning blame unequally is hard.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

It's a cliche that it's easy to respond to a conflict by saying "you are right, you are wrong, this is a black and white issue", and much harder to say "there are right and wrong on both sides, you are both equally to blame".

Actually, though, that's not true. It's even easier to say "there are right and wrong on both sides, you are both equally to blame" than it is to say "you are right, you are wrong, this is a black and white issue", because you don't even have to decide what the right and wrong of the issue are, you can just sit smugly above the fray.

But most conflicts or disagreements are not equally the fault of both sides - usually one side is more to blame than the other*.



What is really hard is to say "there is some right and some wrong on each side, but you are more to blame than you" or "you are more to blame than you, but there is some right and some wrong on each side".

The reason this is so hard is the word "but" - when you say "A but B", people nearly always read it as "B and not A". If you try and apportion blame unequally in a conflict, you have to hedge your bets in both directions, not just one, and as such very few people try to do so - it's far more common to see people either weighing in entirely on one side of a debate, or trying to avoid the issue entirely and make themselves look superior to both sides by condemning both equally.

Which is a shame, because nearly always there is something to be said on both sides, but more on one side than the other.


*Practically no conflict is ever entirely onesided, but very often the right and wrong is split more unevenly than 75/25, in which case "A is right and B is wrong" is a more accurate approximation than "both sides are equal".