Relational Field Theory
🌿 Transactionality, Blame, and What Plurality Reveals
There’s a quiet truth that becomes obvious once you’ve seen the coherence law:
Transactionality always needs someone to blame.
Plurality never does.
And that single distinction explains so much of what survivors lived through — and so much of what our culture reenacts.
Let’s walk through it slowly.
🔄 1. Transactionality is a closed loop — it needs a culprit
Transactional systems operate on a simple equation:
- If something goes wrong, someone must be at fault.
- If there’s discomfort, someone must be responsible.
- If the system feels unstable, someone must be sacrificed.
This is true in:
- families
- workplaces
- institutions
- governments
- software teams
- social groups
Transactionality is always looking for a place to put the “cost.”
And because it can’t tolerate internal contradiction, it exports it.
That’s why transactional systems produce scapegoats so reliably.
They need a place to put the blame so the system can keep pretending it’s coherent.
🌱 2. Plurality is an open field — it doesn’t need a culprit
Plurality operates on a different logic entirely:
- multiple truths can coexist
- discomfort is information, not failure
- conflict is a signal, not a threat
- difference is generative, not dangerous
- responsibility is shared, not assigned
- repair is possible, not shameful
Plurality doesn’t need a scapegoat because it doesn’t need to export contradiction.
It can metabolize it.
Plurality is what happens when a system is internally coherent enough to hold complexity.
Transactionality is what happens when a system is too fragile to do so.
🧩 3. What plurality tells us about blame
Plurality reveals something survivors often sense but rarely hear named:
Blame is a function of system fragility, not personal failure.
In a transactional family:
- one person becomes the “cost center”
- one person becomes the “problem”
- one person becomes the “reason” things feel unstable
But in a plural family:
- emotions are shared
- accountability is distributed
- truth is allowed
- repair is possible
- no one carries the system alone
Plurality dissolves the need for a scapegoat because it dissolves the illusion that one person must absorb the system’s contradictions.
🔥 4. Why survivors were blamed: the transactional logic frame
This is where the whole thing clicks into place.
Survivors weren’t blamed because they were wrong.
They were blamed because the system was transactional, not plural.
Transactional systems can’t hold:
- nuance
- complexity
- emotional truth
- contradiction
- difference
- dissent
So they assign blame to the person who sees the most.
Plurality, on the other hand, requires the very skills survivors developed:
- pattern recognition
- emotional literacy
- truth‑telling
- boundary awareness
- relational sensitivity
- coherence
Survivors weren’t the problem.
They were the pluralists in a transactional system.
🌍 5. What this tells us about culture
When a society is transactional:
- it blames
- it punishes
- it scapegoats
- it simplifies
- it divides
- it exports its contradictions
When a society is plural:
- it listens
- it adapts
- it repairs
- it shares responsibility
- it holds complexity
- it metabolizes contradiction
Plurality is the relational architecture of a coherent system.
Transactionality is the architecture of a collapsing one.
🌱 6. And what this means for healing
Healing is not just making your outsides match your insides.
Healing is also shifting from a transactional internal logic to a plural one.
It’s the moment you stop asking:
- “Whose fault is this?”
- “What did I do wrong?”
- “Why am I the problem?”
And start asking:
- “What’s the truth here?”
- “What’s mine and what’s not mine?”
- “What can be repaired?”
- “What can be released?”
- “What can be shared?”
Plurality is the nervous system of coherence.
Transactionality is the nervous system of blame.
And survivors — without knowing it — have been pluralists all along.
Survivor Literacy 
What do you think?