When we are more energized by the practice of blaming than we are by efforts to create transformation, we not only cannot find relief from suffering, we are creating the conditions that help keep us stuck in the status quo
Interpretation
Blaming others prevents personal growth and transformation.
This quote by Bell Hooks emphasizes that focusing on blaming others can be more enticing than making efforts to change our circumstances. By succumbing to the habit of blame, we perpetuate our own suffering and remain trapped in our current situations instead of striving for meaningful transformation.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal accountability, this quote could be used to highlight the importance of taking responsibility for one's actions.
Privilege is not in and of itself bad; what matters is what we do with privilege. I want to live in a world where all women have access to education, and all women can earn PhD’s, if they so desire. Privilege does not have to be negative, but we have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it.
Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else.
While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust.
When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture.
Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.
I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society — because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not.
Adversity is wont to reveal genius, prosperity to hide it.
You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.
There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.
'Bellyache' is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren't real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don't know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.
I think if people really read Martin Luther King, Jr., then they would begin to understand what he really represented.
One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.