I remember "Cheaper by the Dozen," a movie from my childhood (the one from 1950, not the 2003 version). I remember that in that movie there was a child who hid crumbly food in her bed because she had not had enough to eat before she was adopted. More pertinent to my current topic, I also remember something about the father trying to figure out which leg of his pants to put on first. For him, the most efficient way was the essence of "best."
Out of all the things you could do, which of them would be best to do? How should you use your precious time here on earth?
I wrote a book review of Rachel Kadish's novel The Weight of Ink in which I surmised that guilt comes from not doing what one was supposed to be doing. Conversely, guilt can be overcome by doing what one is supposed to be doing, even when doing so entails sacrifice.
I was vague about what people were "supposed to be doing:" something about writing or about pursuing one's own path whether or not one's society approved. (Nice work if you can get it.)
In the spring of 2017, Wilfred M. McClay wrote an essay, "The Strange Persistence of Guilt," followed by David Brooks' March 31, 2017, column of the same name, each of them pointing to the assumption of the victim status as the way people and groups these days attempt to deal with rampant guilt.
McClay had cited Nietzsche's theory that guilt is generated by religion; if so, as religion's grip on society weakened, guilt should have declined. In a similar vein, Brooks cited Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue on the breakdown of the moral framework, which, for many thinkers, should have led to moral relativity and more laid-back moral attitudes. Instead, however, the opposite is true; guilt has increased, some say metastasized.
Looking at the build-up of guilt, both McClay and Brooks focus on the lack of societal means of absolution, such as through religion. Nor have Enlightenment mechanisms retained sufficient credibility and power to absolve one of perceived (felt) guilt.
It's at that point that both writers then focus on the assumption of victimhood as the only remaining way of becoming morally blameless. In that scheme, though, guilt doesn't just disappear. That method--assuming the status of victimhood--entails pinning the blame on another individual or a group, an other, where victimhood says 'if it's not my fault, it must be someone else'.' Thus the sequence leads onward toward mob mentality and culture wars--reflecting the pain of feeling "wrong," the desperation to get right, and the human tendency to cope and unify by outsourcing blame onto an "indispensable enemy" (Alexander Saxton, 1975)--all at high cultural cost.
From the first, I thought that Brooks and McClay had it wrong about the central importance of absolution and its supposedly no longer being as available as it had once been. Harking back to societal means of absolution in
the past seems off the target. What was really going on in the past? The rule back then was 'a place for everything and everything (and everyone) in its place.' On the one hand, some were in the right place at the right time, while on other, some were perennially in the wrong place and thus available to serve as scapegoats--or, perhaps, sacrificial lambs. While the lucky belongers undoubtedly did feel the
vindication of social approval, not so for the unfortunate others who (within the majority culture, at least) had no approved role to live up to.
What's really different is that back then, in the
"good old
days," roles, positions, and one's place in society being more nearly secure and fixed, people knew their place and the rules for retaining it. They mostly had little choice in the matter. Post-Enlightenment, those roles were no longer
fixed. People could be anything they wanted to be, or so they were told, and they were squarely to blame if they didn't succeed. Of course, that sense of choice applied first to certain males and has only later been expanding.
In his book After Virtue, MacIntyre goes into the
matter of roles. If one knows one's role, one knows what one ought to
do, that is, the farmer should farm, and the architect should build, and
so on. That's how the "ought" gets into the "is;" one is of value if
one is doing the job entailed by one's role. Here MacIntyre's
conservatism comes into play. Post-Enlightenment, people threw off the
shackles of traditional roles and perhaps found out that the freedom to
be anything they wanted was not all it was held up to be, while
going back to the shackles was not an option either. Alienation and existential crisis could ensue, with the long sought-after freedom just another word for nothing left to lose.
In the midst of such complexity, Brooks' and McClay's nostalgia for old methods of absolution looks to me like wistful idealizing of the past, as though guilt were "just a feeling"--something unconnected to anything real--that in olden days could be magically alleviated and now cannot.
But what is guilt, if it's not "just" a feeling?
Let's say guilt is the liberal democratic version of the external controls as we imagine them in totalitarian societies. Only now, the controls are internal.
Where do guilt, and, for that matter, morality, come from. God? Maybe so, but if so, by way of human societies. It's from our human society that we first learn when we're behaving as we "should" and conversely when we are not. The way we are now requires fewer prying eyes (or did before Twitter, anyway) and relies instead on conscience, that is, on internalized voices from our society. Much of the time it may operate as a smoothly oiled machine of which we're unaware until we violate it. When that happens, guilt ensues, and that's when we know we have consciences. That's when we may anticipate being shunned, or, even worse, punished, usually by ourselves, it seems (assuming we're not sociopaths). But yes, fear is involved. Morality has a power component.
Some of us have stronger and stricter consciences than others--women more than men, minorities more than the majority, and so forth. Think about that hypothesis and what it implies.
Today, we are living in interesting (read unstable, changeable) times. Efforts are afoot to change what's approved of and what is not, or, more accurately, who's approved of and who isn't. Parties who are now held up in some quarters for scapegoating were in the past the
ones wearing the mantle of cultural approval and "rightness."
Will there be a societal shift and reversal? Will large swaths of the societal "haves" be transformed into the "have-nots," having accepted that they were undeserving? In other words, will there be revolution (offense being no more "just a feeling" than is guilt)? For some, that is what would constitute justice. In an emergent cultural story, the former "haves" are under moral duress, and the societal "lasts" are the would-be "firsts."
Some of those who have been nearer the top of the heap--those I'm calling the haves--respond to the moral duress with self-condemnation. They readily cop to having had unfair privilege and accumulating more of society's fruits than they deserve. But I hypothesize that those whose response to being blamed is mea culpa are lacking in intent to become sacrificial lambs. Rather, they will expect their self-blame to bring exoneration, and they will point elsewhere, to an ostensibly more suitable and deserving scapegoat. Hence, not far under their trademark contrition is anger at those who don't see things their way and at the "real" culprit(s).
And that's how the culture wars work: kick the "blame" can down the road: an IED for the future. That is what McClay and Brooks predict: that groups who cannot themselves claim moral blamelessness through victimhood will ally with groups who can and share in targeting an "approved" scapegoat. In fact, the "victimhood" thing could be secondary. It's all about the blaming: an orgy of what Alasdair MacIntyre calls unmasking. Someone must pay.
What's going on is political. Note that power component of morality. Those who find themselves newly blameworthy will be highly selective in how--and onto whom--they deflect the guilt. They will be attuned to whence it came--who had the firepower to assign blame and make it stick and, who, conversely, is the chosen enemy.
Not only did the haves and have-nots of days of yore have fixed roles, but just who was who is in flux. Who were the powerful and who lacked power? On that question and others, history is regularly being rewritten.
Where do our cultural stories that say who is good and who is bad come from? Who gets to tell the story? Who must pay? Who says? Those are power issues, where power means that people have to listen to the story being told. As power increases, they not only have to listen but also play their assigned parts in that story.
Consider that, since none of us are perfect, anyone can seem deserving of blame. There are so many things we need to be doing, on so many levels, even if we are driving ourselves crazy trying to do them all.
I once read in some novel, I think, about a guy who understood women's insecurities and therefore was able to manipulate them. He knew about the tendency to feel unattractive and so forth, and, feeding the need, could have just about any woman under his thumb. In just the same way, the political actor or social justice warrior who knows no one is perfect--no one can do it all--can find clay feet everywhere and by condemning, conquer, and not only on the individual level, but the group level, too. For example, Newt Gingrich, 1994 and every liberal a "traitor." That's from the political Right--far-right, that is; reactionary. Trump. And from the Left as well: the imperfect government is guilty; all "white" people: at fault, across the board, in a moral calculus by which those who have more of the rights that everyone should have are "privileged." Jews, whose designated role in most versions puts them on the wrong side plus makes them powerful, so they will deserve what they get.
We know we're supposed to be kind and loving, so we habitually tell these stories to justify our behavior when we're not. Fine print: if violence is permissible, it's permissible everywhere. We think we can control it but can't. I'm talking about treating others, not as one wants to be treated, but how one has been treated (or fears being treated). That is to say, vengeance. That, and becoming what you fight. That's the workings of power (not morality). It is going to divide, not unite, and it is going to backfire, and it will make more harm when it backfires, provoking reaction, which will result in yet more blame. How, instead, does peace spread?
But first: the answer to guilt, which is after all what I set out to unearth, is self-forgiveness. Practice self-forgiveness now and then sufficiently to do what you're here for. Self-forgiveness can't be managed all the time, but some of the time could be enough to do the job you're here to do, think the thoughts you're here to think, say what you're here to say, and follow those ideas. Find those voices from your internalized family that are loving enough and give permission for one moment in time--and maybe then another moment--and another. Like one's conscience, those voices could be from God, if you please, compliments of your internalized society.
We need each individual for the same reason we need each seed and not genetically engineered seeds. If you don't want all the seeds engineered and improved into identical specimens, then don't herd and confine people into mass stereotypes. Discard that story so easy for our human brains, the story with the simplified "other," the story, I mean, that tells you who to blame. At least look at that easy "strong horse" story. Don't be driven.
What am I here for? That's the positive way to ask the question, not whom I'm here to target and out and blame.
Society's going to be controlling, and of course that's not all bad. Not bad at all. We need controls. We can't have people running amok. We need to have some standards and norms. That's okay. But we need a two-way street, a feed-back loop for society, for the world, this thing we're all part of. We need individuals, every last one. Every one of us individuals is needed, to think the things that need to be thought, to have the ideas, to create and to be the change.
