Scapegoating in Wonder of the Invisible World

Being blamed for something that is not your fault, or not your fault at all, is one of the worst things that people can feel. The feeling of being not good enough can weigh heavily on someone, and can affect their everyday life. Scapegoating is when one person is blamed for the blunders and flaws of others. In Cotton Mather’s “Wonder of the Invisible World”, there are examples of scapegoating throughout the witch trials. All the people convicted are taking the blame for something that happened that they did not cause to happen, and are being killed for it. Scapegoating is not fair and never was or will be, but people do it anyway as a coping mechanism to make themselves feel better. We live in a society today that is all about “What have you done for me lately?” Employers do not care about what you did two years ago, and care more about what you did last week. Fans of sports teams do not care about a good season three years ago if you are not doing well in this season now. So, scapegoating can be mainly attributed to that attitude that we have in the world today, as well as feeling the need to place the blame on something or someone else.

Scapegoating in today’s world is not as severe as the witch trials that were being held in Cotton Mather’s “Wonder of the Invisible World.” In Mather’s poem, they are killing people who they deem as witches without any evidence other than the spoken word of one or maybe two people. They believed that the devil would possess mainly females, but some males too, and that anything bad that happened would be the devil’s acts through those people. We do not kill people today, or at least so we think, but sometimes being labeled a scapegoat can be extremely detrimental to one’s image. For example, in a baseball game, if a batter on a team makes the final out to lose them a game, he may be the one who is taking all the blame. He could have been doing great for the whole rest of the game, but failed at the end. What some do not think about though, is that there was a whole team who could not get the job done on that day. The pitcher could have given up too many runs, or the other batter just did not score enough runs to win the game or any other variable could have happened. In reality, it is a team game, and all the players who played should be at fault, but we like to be able to put the blame on one person. Since the batter made the last out, he is the one who takes all the blame for the loss, and not his teammates, who could be at equal or greater fault. 

Scapegoating also happens frequently in schools and in jobs when something does not go the way people think. In school, if a student fails a test, they like to blame it on circumstances that had little to no effect on them; or in some cases, blame people or opportunities that should have helped them. Some students will blame the teacher by trying to say that they did not teach them everything, or that they are just not a good teacher in general. But, the student did not do all  that he or she could do to get a better grade on the test. They could have taken more time to study, asked the teacher for help with homework, or even tried to hire a tutor to help them understand the material better. Because they do not want to feel like it is their fault, they will blame anything and everybody but themselves. In the workforce, there are some examples of scapegoating as well because everyone is trying to keep their jobs, and feel like if they mess up, it could lead to them being fired. If a bridge designed by a group of engineers collapses, they might try and put the blame on one person, in order to save themselves. They might also try to scapegoat the people who built the bridge and say that they did not build it correctly, or that the wrong materials were being used. Examples like this happen in most schools and jobs as all the students and workers are just trying to help themselves.

One of the biggest examples of scapegoating in society has happened very recently and is still happening to some extent today. The coronavirus is the biggest and best example we have today of how scapegoating works in today’s society. China is the scapegoat for the start and spread of the coronavirus, and this is since the virus started over there when a man ate a bat and contracted the disease. The United States has been one of the worst countries in terms of dealing with the spread of Covid-19, and we like to blame China for causing it. In reality, other countries have fared much better than us in terms of cases and deaths from the virus, but the United States wants to blame any other country besides itself. The citizens of the United States are just as much to blame because at the peak of the pandemic, we had people who were not wearing masks, not social distancing, and pretending that the virus just did not exist at all. But, we do not want to think that is why we were one of the worst Covid-19 countries, instead we choose to make China the scapegoat, and blame them for all that has happened with the virus. Instead of taking the blame and accepting the fact that we, as a country, did not handle Covid correctly, we blame just about everything else that we can, to make ourselves feel better about how the pandemic was treated in the United States.