It's one of those base rules like “people mean well” that's more fun to believe, and have a few exceptions, than to not believe at all.
This quote from his essay makes it clear that he isn't a dogmatic adherent to this principle. Instead, it's a productive default way of approaching a situation.
He's not saying to let everyone out of jail. But you knew that.
Exactly. This attitude is a double-edged sword. There is a time for assuming responsibility, even for things that you didn't do directly (that is a huge part of the CEO's job) but extending it too far can be disastrous.
Well honestly I'm a fairly big and imposing guy but there are places in the city I wouldn't go late at night by myself. "Fault" is a complex set of things, and while if I was mugged wandering the Fens at night the moral culpability would lie with the muggers, but there are a lot of people who made decisions that were neccesary-but-not-sufficient for that to occur. And it's always worth looking at the part of the causal network that ran through your decisions in such a case, and thinking about whether you could change the way you make decisions such that the world will be a better place. In this example, I would have know that going to these places late at night was dangerous and could probably have reasonably avoided it, so I think feeling stupid in that case would be pretty justified. But if it was someone else, I'd probably confine myself to laying blame on the morally culpable.
For a woman assaulted while they were wearing sexy clothes, well, is there much evidence that you're actually in more danger when you do that? Even if a woman makes herself some iota safer by dressing down, wouldn't that make things an iota worse for every other woman out there who might want to decide differently.
Just because you can prevent a failure by making different choices doesn't necessarily mean that you should. I might be able to protect myself from betrayal by never trusting anyone, from hear-break by never loving, but that doesn't make either of those the right decision.
I'm pretty certain he isn't suggesting that. The context he is largely talking about is running a business where you are in charge. Not a woman talking a walk through the park one night...
