This last point deserves some clarification. One of the meaning perspectives most of us develop comes in wanting to see bad guys and good guys at the center of every situation. That relates quite well to another meaning perspective wherein we find someone to blame for something that has happened or some condition in which we find ourselves. All of what we discussed in those interview classes and in this writing could lead us to such conclusions. They will not serve us very well in our search for the becoming self, and such simplifications and blame will almost always rebound negatively in our faces. It would serve us better to question the meaning perspectives instead and to liberate ourselves from something that could well ultimately weaken us. Blame makes for weakness not strength.
Parental figures act out of love and concern. No matter what it looks like in hindsight, they act out of those motives.[38] This dissonance between the motivation and the actions shows the power of unquestioned meaning perspectives. It can take the best of motivations and intentions filter them through the structure of the meaning perspective, and it comes out with an act which seems completely and utterly oppositional to the original motivation, a complete negation of that original feeling and intention. As a parental figure, we wish to love the child in our care and to make sure she/he grows up in as healthy a way as possible. Indeed, we would go to great lengths to do so, even to our own detriment to some extent. We feel that love, that unconditional positive regard, and it gets immeasurably but absolutely driven through a cliché, often a representation of a meaning perspective, and out comes something else. The efforts of parents often if not inevitably suffer from the depredations of meaning perspectives.
As a loving parent, the essential nature of that being, we want the child in our care to become the best person possible. When that child acts in such a way as to set off some worry in that regard, we feel we have to act.[39] If the exact cliché "Spare the rod and spoil the child" doesn't come to mind word for the word, the meaning perspective that draws its strength from that phrase does.[40] To act lovingly and responsibly toward a child in our care, we must use punishment as our tool. That's where the phrase "This hurts me more than it hurts you" comes from. The phrase has its own grounding in a reality caused by a caring motivation deflected through the twists and distortions of a meaning perspective. It is a terrible thing to do the wrong thing for the right reason. It hurts the actor and the recipient. In that we can all fall into this pattern, and we can see why this pattern can appear in any of us, it does little or no good at all to make the loving and mistaken actor into the bad guy.
That discussion brings up the question of blame itself. It's a habit of mind, a meaning perspective all its own, and it can use some critical reflection just like all the others.[41]