Raj Patel, in his book on the food industry, Stuffed and Starved (2007), shows that this approach ignores important realities. Poor neighbourhoods, while boasting a higher concentration of fast food restaurants, have on average four times fewer supermarkets than affluent areas. In other words, people of colour and the poor live in environments that are far more likely to result in obesity. By contrast, richer, whiter areas are more likely to provide access to healthier, fresh, nutritious food, lower in salt and fat. Patel writes:
[M]any choices have already been made for us by our environment, our customs, our routine. Choice is the word we’re left with to describe our plucking one box rather than another off the shelves, and it’s the word we’re taught to use. If we’re asked why we use the word ‘choice’ to describe this, we might respond ‘no one pointed a gun to our head, no one coerced us’ as if this were the opposite to choice. But the opposite of choice isn’t coercion. It’s instinct. And our instincts have been so thoroughly captured by forces beyond our control that they’re suspect to the core.22
Our food choices have been restricted and shaped before we ever really think about them. Consumption habits, like all habits, are shaped by forces ‘beyond our control’. In the case of food, they are formed at an early age and are lifelong – the $10 billion spent annually on marketing food to children in the US is clearly a long-term investment.23 The ideas, values and images we encounter in our environment shape our dietary habits. A striking example is Fiji, where, in 1990, eating disorders were unheard of. In 1995, television was introduced, mostly from the US and packed with advertising. Within three years, 12 per cent of teenage girls in Fiji had developed bulimia.24
Today, those wishing to control their weight are offered a different strategy in The Secret: ‘If you see people who are overweight, do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body and feel it . . . Attracting the perfect weight is the same as placing an order with the catalogue of the universe. You look through the catalogue, choose the perfect weight, place your order, and then it is delivered to you.’25 Byrne’s writing verges on the comical but her message is symptomatic of a powerful trend. The Secret reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for 190 weeks. It has been translated into fifty languages and has over 20 million copies in print.26
A modern secular manifestation of the responsibility myth is found in the promise of ‘The American Dream’ – that anyone can become rich and those who do, deserve it, whereas those who don’t only have themselves to blame. Its roots can be found in classical liberalism, the intellectual forerunner of today’s dominant political ideology, neoliberalism. The tendency to hold individuals ultimately responsible for their lot in life was emboldened in the late nineteenth century by the emerging doctrine of Social Darwinism, drawing its inspiration from Darwin’s theory of evolution.
According to this view (which was not held by Darwin), individuals, groups and races are subject to a law of natural selection so that inequalities of wealth and power between groups can be explained as products of biological differences – imperialism and colonialism can be viewed as a form of evolutionary progress. In other words, it is natural that the weak perish, while the strong grow in power. Its most vocal American advocate, William Sumner, asserted that ‘the drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be’ and that ‘the millionaires are a product of natural selection . . . They get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for society.’27 At a time when governments are simultaneously cutting taxes for the rich and welfare for the poor, it is clear that, although the language may have changed, the ideas of Social Darwinism are alive and well.
Political scientist Charles Murray writes: ‘I want to reintroduce the notion of blame, and sharply reduce our readiness to call people “victims”.’28 His concern lies more with the ‘youngster who is studying hard, obeying the law, working hard, and taking care not to have a baby’ than with the ‘youngster who fails in school, gets in trouble with the law, does not hold a job, or has a child without being able to care for it’.29 He also writes, ‘The standard to which I hold myself, and which I advocate for other commentators on social policy, is: do not apply a different moral standard to strangers – including poor strangers – from the standard which applies to the people one knows and loves.’30
This is dangerously simplistic. When moral evaluations of behaviour are made, this view places a high value on equality of criteria – ’we should apply the same moral standards to everyone’ – but ignores the inequalities that gave rise to the behaviour under evaluation: a blatant double standard. In a partial concession, Murray claims that ‘even if it is true that a poor young person is not responsible for the condition in which he finds himself, the worst thing one can do is try to persuade him of that’.31 This is an extraordinary statement. Knowledge, not ignorance, is what empowers us. What freedoms would have been won if slaves, serfs and exploited labourers had blamed themselves for the degraded condition of their existence? What rights, wages and government assistance would the poor have secured if their explanations of inequality had been restricted to personal failings? Understanding the source of our problems – individually and collectively – is a crucial step on the path to solving them.
A vast amount of intellectual effort has been expended by theologians and philosophers to ‘make the world safe for blame’.32 Many thinkers have taken up the task; none have succeeded. Much has been said about the social utility of blame, our instinct to hold people responsible, and the different forms blame can take, but no argument or evidence has been produced that gives us any reason to suppose that people are truly responsible for their actions. In light of bad behaviour, we may justifiably withdraw trust, express disapproval, feel upset, cut ties and, if it safeguards the welfare of society, support measures such as fines and imprisonment, but none of this requires that we apportion blame. The belief that people are blameworthy finds no support in science or logic and ignores the most basic truths about human beings. It is an anachronism held in place by instinct, tradition and fear.
The myth of responsibility also has great political utility. As legal scholar Barbara H. Fried writes, ‘enthusiasm for blame is not confined to punishment. Changes in public policy more broadly – the slow dismantling of the social safety net, the push to privatize social security, the deregulation of banking, the health care wars, the refusal to bail out homeowners in the wake of the 2008 housing meltdown – have all been fueled by our collective sense that if things go badly for you, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself’.33 The more responsibility that is laid at the feet of individuals, the easier it is to justify the many inequalities in our world. If addicts, sinners, refugees, prisoners, the homeless, the obese, the unemployed and the poor can be blamed for their condition, there is little obligation to help them.
If we believe that each person bears ultimate responsibility for their lot in life, it is far easier to justify discrepancies in power, wealth and opportunity. If the rich deserve their privilege and the poor their destitution, perhaps things are as they should be. As Herman Cain, former Republican Party presidential candidate, declared: ‘Don’t blame Wall Street. Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.’ 34 But no behaviour occurs in isolation. Every choice is the result of heredity, experience and opportunity. Billionaire Warren Buffett recognises more clearly than most the decisive role of luck: ‘Most of the world’s seven billion people found their destinies largely determined at the moment of birth . . . [F]or literally billions of people, where they are born and who gives them birth, along with their gender and native intellect, largely determine the life they will experience.’35
As soon as we place human behaviour in the wider context of cause and effect, a framework that takes into account the steering power of genes and environment, the decisive role of luck in our lives becomes obvious. Simply to exist is extraordinarily lucky, the odds are so incredibly small. Over 90 per cent of all the organisms that have existed on this planet died without producing offspring.36 The fact that you’re reading this means that every one of your ancestors, since life on Earth began, escaped that fate. Luck continues to dominate after birth. A baby born in Japan is