Guilt

Guilt is clinically described as an emotional state produced when one feels that he or she has not lived up to their ideal selves via feelings that they could have or should have done more. It is one of many natural human emotions, some of which, via the brain, trigger a chemical reaction of pleasure and some of which, like guilt, produce the reaction of pain. Obviously, as intelligent pleasure seeking creatures, our rationalizations seek to maximize pleasure and reduce the pain in our lives.

One of the most powerful quotes of human nature that I have ever read, the author of which escapes my memory, was this: In order for one to truly be happy, they must first divorce themselves from the needs and concerns of others. Wow! When I first read that it just blew me away because it just rang so true from my personal experience as a human. For those with compassion, it is really hard to enjoy life when there is so much suffering going on around you. Why me or why you? Why should we have so much while others have so little? Could you enjoy a full meal in front of starving children? One would hope not.

Call me crazy, but I do believe that most humans are naturally compassionate. I also believe that most humans are most profoundly pleasure seeking, which produces the corollary of pain aversion. Consequently, our desire and drive to attain the natural high of pleasure conflicts with our natural tendency to feel compassion due to the fact that compassion often causes guilt and pain and hence inhibits pleasure. However, our rational minds, which is beholden to our strongest emotions, presents a case to the self on behalf of pleasure which convinces the self not to feel guilt.

In light of these natural tendancies, how do humans generally divorce themselves from the needs and concern of others? One method is the out of sight out of mind method. People simply avoid witnessing people in need. Others who may witness will rationalize that people in need chose their own fate via the choices they make. Another rationalization is that to help those in need only enables the continuation of bad behavior. Yet another rationalization is that the condition of need is natural because of innate shortcomings and any help would amount to a permanent subsidy as the condition will never improve.

These rationalizations work to convince the selfish self to continue seeking pleasure at the expense of compassion, which therefore impedes assistance to others. Its like the cartoon depiction of the good Angel in one ear and the bad angel in the other, seeking to control behavior. The elites, whether they are the elites by virtue of class or by virtue of race, or by both, are the masters of these rationalizations that are made palatable by minor grains of truth. However, their rationalization is not designed to do what is best for the people in need and suffering, but rather, to eliminate the feeling of guilt in their own lives and to continue the pleasure of enjoying so much while others have so little.

In America, whites and the rich, who are disproportionately white, propagandize these rationalizations to the nation. Their intent is designed to eliminate guilt and to conserve the pleasures born from their status over non-whites and the poor. White people and rich people must rationalize that black people and poor people are in their relative state of deprivation because that is the life that they choose. To rationalize otherwise would threaten the feeling of pleasure that they receive from their absolute and relative stature. Whites and the elite also want to conserve the physchological pleasure of feeling the sense of being better, superior, than others in a fair competition of life. They want to feel as if they won by virtue of working harder and or working smarter and that the resultant is the natural order of survival of the fittest. Hence, there is no reason to feel guilt.

You see the natural sequence is that compassion in humans should be followed by assistance. The natural way to deal with guilt is to do all that you can do to help others. However, in order to add something to another person’s life one has to subtract something from their own life, whether it is the subtraction of time and or financial resources that normally go for personal pleasure. Hence, one cannot subtract from their lives and maintain their level of pleasure unless their level of pleasure in life is born from helping others and not materialism and stature. In America, the whole economic structure and system is dependent upon the promotion of the latter, so that is how most people define themselves and why they don't want to sacrafice that definition.

Most white people think the way they do about black problems because they too are human. They are trying to avoid the sense of guilt and moral responsibility and they use all the rationalizations listed above and more. Race is such a painful topic for whites because deep down inside they know that as humans they are not living up to their ideal selves, especially as so called Christians. You see, compassion and guilt are the emotions that helps us be our Brothers keeper. Hence, Blacks must be rationalized as at fault in order for whites to not have compasion or guilt and hence not the keeper of their brother. If blacks were in their position, we would rationalize the same thing because its human nature to seek to rationalize the continuation of pleasure and the aversion of pain.

Many whites rationalize that a valid guilt, in terms of race, is having some responsibility for slavery or Jim Crow. Since no contemporary white person has owned black slaves, they rationalize that they should not feel compassion or guilt in regards to the black condition of inequality. Moreover, they rationalize that despite centuries of white privilege, via the corollary of black oppression, that the relative deprivation of blacks is self inflicted and natural. Moreover, they have evolved to rationalize away feelings of guilt about their own racism by believing and suggesting that blacks are just as racist as whites. However, one would be hard pressed to find empirical evidence that our acts against them are equal in degree and kind to their acts against us. There is no offsetting behavior in blacks towards whites that neutralizes the impact of past and present white racism upon blacks. Yet, these cognitions help whites to avoid guilt and compassion all so that they can continue to enjoy the pleasure of relative and absolute stature and privilege over blacks.

The problem for black and poor people throughout America and the world is that people who have the most power to make a difference will continue to rationalize reasons to not make a difference. The elites will continue to divorce themselves from the needs and concerns of others so that they can not only maintain the pleasure of the egregiously skewed allocation of wealth nationally and globally, but also increase it. I really see little evidence of this changing now that capitalism has spread to nearly every part of the globe.