I admire the response Adam made to God when queried about eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
"The woman" [first words out of his mouth point to somebody else] which Thou gavest me, [as soon as possible sue somebody else in addition, in case Eve doesn't really have enough cash to make the whole venture profitable], she did offer and [at last, just a tiny, negligible part played by mostly innocent me] I did eat."
This useful passage serves as a model for adolescent failure to take responsibility and can be transformed into many applicable shrugs and dodges. It relates to the idea of "plausible deniability", the process of manipulating notifications and interrupting communications to arrange a slate of verifiable facts that, taken together, support a contention.
For instance, given the right set of statements, I might be able to convince the Old Man that the fruit offered by the woman was presented without any notice that it came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I ate it in good faith and I was not notified that it was forbidden fruit. Somebody else, I suggest maybe it was her, is responsible for fraudulently presenting fruit to me without correct and proper labeling. So, it would be my contention that I am innocent, as anyone can see who grasps the set of facts I am presenting.
Fault-finding can be a fun sport. The truth is that troubles don't always have to be somebody's fault, but you don't have to let that out.
