Comment by noduerme

4 years ago

Taking credit for unearned wins while sloughing off deserved blame isn't general to hominids; the name for that pathology is narcissism. I'm not saying you're wrong to diagnose certain persons or organizations with that, but "cynical" is right.

You misunderstand. I'm not talking about manufacturing unearned credit or totally eliminating earned blame, I'm talking about distorting existing, deserved credit/blame to be moderately larger/smaller.

  • So, some organizations or individuals have a tendency to do this, and the tendency can be measured on a spectrum. There's an opposing spectrum that you're excluding, right? The people who take blame for things they rightly don't have to take blame for, who clean up messes that aren't their responsibility, and who shun credit. There are those people, and (we) keep the world running.

    Claiming that the psychology you're projecting is universal is cynical because it excludes those people, or worse attempts to paint their efforts as merely meta-narcissistic victimhood, when lots of people actually just try to correct problems and get shit done.

    • I can't say that I've ever worked with anyone like that but my experience can't be universal.

      I've never worked for a company with fewer than 200 employees, so maybe there's a correlation there.

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