The Discomfort with Guilt

 

3 April 2016 at 11:32 ·

One complaint i face is that I try to make people feel guilty. And that instead I should appeal to their sense of charity.

Wrong.The rich are devastating the earth by drawing so much of the resources that the rest are pushed into tiny unlivable spaces. In that mode of existance, if they do charity it cannot undo the damage they are causing. Were they to utterly simplify their life, and treat all their holdings are a public trust, and share, the earth may yet be saved.

We the well-off have all wronged the earth and the poor too much by our excessive resource consumption, and by promoting criminal disparities. We are guity. We need to face it. And then walk the talk.

19 Comments

• Raghu Bhaskaran

  I don't not feel guilty at all. Because I know the poor today will be no different when they get affluent.

  And the poor are no less complicit in abuse of nature.

  Just that the affluent have more bandwidth to do better .

  It is not poverty or affluence, but the attitude that matters.

  I will strive to do better, but for my own self, the plight/benefit of the poor is a collateral

  

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    Aparna Krishnan

    your choice.

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  • Sampatt Shetty

    Generalizing the popular published versions never are the mirror of a realistic society, only the grounded and humble feel guilty when they feel of the unbalanced distribution of resources from nature, that is hoarded by the wealthy few and accepted by the middle-class huge. So it is alarming and dangerous to allow people to feel unashamed and let next generation to be more shameless towards humanity.

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  • Raghu Bhaskaran

    Guilt or shame , is not healthy or tenable emotion, empathy and an progressively deepening understating of the creation, the society and one's own part in it, should bring a more mature change.. That was what I meant..

    

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  • Sampatt Shetty

    Guilt is nothing to do with healthy or tenable emotions, guilt is on the contrary a speed-breaker and signal to look into our own excesses and unruly pride, that we carry due to upbringing and superior feeling of elitism.

    

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  • Suraj Kumar

    Guilt is subjective. If one has unknowingly spoken the bitter truth guilt can emerge in the other. I myself started changing after a heavy dose of guilt. I used to believe guilt is a good agent of change... But now i can say it is not. Yet I rationalise every now and then (despite a vow to follow "satyam bruyat priyam bruyat na bruyat satyam apriyam") and end up using guilt to coax the other... Maybe because it has become a 8 year old habit now for me as nobody, including my family, could see what i saw... except when i took them on guilt trips. Very ineffective and slow when attacked using guilt... but nor is there evidence that conveying things the artistic or scientific way brings about any significant change in individuals as the situation demands. At best there are token gestures like becoming vegans or buying organic or buying electric vehicles... while people participating with industrial society continue to destroy the planet and all her inhabitants at massive mind boggling rates.

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    Aparna Krishnan

    We are guilty by possessing and consuming excess when there is hunger. There is no 'good agent'/ 'bad agent'. It is just facing a reality of being the guilty party.

    

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    Aparna Krishnan

    I am not talking of 'strategies' here. Not my circus, you see.

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    Aparna Krishnan

    I simply place the reality as per my understanding. Everyone can reject it, np.

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  • Raghu Bhaskaran

    I would not presume guilt upon others. I look to my own contexts..

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    Aparna Krishnan

    Facts are facts, and need to be tabled. To choose guilt or otherwise is ones choice.

    

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  • Raghu Bhaskaran

    And it not unusual to mistake perceptions for facts...

    

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    Aparna Krishnan

    We table truth as we understand it. If tomorrow our understanding changes, we accept we were mistaken. anyway, its fine. No point spending time discussing, I just placed my understanding. Thanks.

    

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  • Mamatha Balasubramanian

    In my opinion, like 

    Raghu Bhaskaran

     mentioned, doing something because that's what feels right to you and you want to do it, will have a more far-reaching effect than doing something out of guilt. This conversation reminds me of this essay by Charles Eisenstein. I'm quoting a few lines from it.

    "One reason environmental activists so commonly meet with resentment or marginalization is because of the implicit judgementality of their message. An unstated judgment accompanies such facts as “We are using more than our share of resources,” or “Our way of life is destroying the planet,” or “The average American’s ecological footprint would require five earths to be sustainable.” The judgment is that you are greedy, lazy, ignorant… in a word, bad. You SHOULD do better. You shouldn’t take more than your share. You should sacrifice some of your selfish interest for the good of other people, other species, and future generations. Stop being so greedy. On the collective level, the same logic pits the economy against the environment, arguing that our society must rein in its rampant materialism and greed. Individually or collectively, we have to try harder and do better.

    On the most obvious level, this approach backfires simply because people can always sense judgementality, and they naturally respond to it with hostility. We rarely say it outright, but an intuitive response to anyone who tells us to be ashamed of ourselves is something along the lines of “Screw you!” Alternatively, some people are temperamentally inclined to buy into guilt or shame. The message works on such people, but it cannot spread beyond them."

    http://charleseisenstein.net/dont-should-on-us/

    

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  • Sampatt Shetty

    Everybody does not carry guilt in a similar manner to generalise it, we have made it very easy to pick a quote here and a saying there and brand it as ultimate truth.

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    Mamatha Balasubramanian

     Agree with your analysis. The moment aspersions are cast, people are judged, defensive shields come out and it quickly becomes a dead end conversation.

    

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• Vidhya Subramaniyan

  if you are making people feel guilty , that means your words have reached them in right sense ... first step done!!!

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  Afsan Chowdhury

  I have been called envious of the rich. That I actually want to be like them.. I try not to make feel guilty, just suicidal.... Thanks 

  Aparna Krishnan

Maytod 6S, unp2gionso017surtmramed  · 

Shared with Public

One objection I face repeatedly is that my posts 'try to make people feel guilty'.

My only response, "We are gulity."

Check your monthly budget. I will give you the monthly budget of those who grow our food, the farmers

• Aparna Krishnan

  Also unless the act marches with the word, it stays idle indulgence. And worse, can create a complacence. That is just a caution. We grew in non FB times, and it was easier for us, as we needed to close chapters, and walk, bus, and train. Nowadays the virtual world can deceive. Into a false sense of action.

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• Sãk Shun

  How can there be an implicit judgement in your statement where one believes that what others do is a false sense of action ! There is no questioning anybody's work but placing judgements isn't the path to remove that false sense of action. Making sweeping statements like that only devalues the work done by people, which is in line with values which you might resonate with.

  

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  Aparna Krishnan

  I have no time or interest in 'passing judgements'. I am only tabling that for a FB generation (we were saved that) virtual work can start seeming like real work. Real work is on the ground, and after that FB as a media has its uses. Thanks.

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• Sãk Shun

  Aparna

   okay. Thank you for clarifying.