Siin on Nostr: npub1v9nf2…ggwfc Meditations 10-25 What is guilt? There are several definitions. ...
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Meditations 10-25
What is guilt?
There are several definitions. One describes guilt as "the fact of having committed a breach of conduct especially violating law and involving a penalty".
Another "a feeling of deserving blame for offenses".
Is there a term for feelings of guilt from living in a society whose very foundation is based on exploitation and destruction? I'm not sure. But I can be almost certain, at least from my own experience, that these feelings exist, that they are justified, and that they are common despite that most of us attempt to ignore or bury them.
Are they just a feeling, though? Or do we actually exist in a state of having committed an offense? Which definition applies here? I think that we'd like to believe it's the latter: that we can say that it's not our fault, that we can say it's just a feeling we have, but that it's secondhand. Someone *else* is committing the offense, and we're just stuck feeling shitty about it.
Throughout history, citizens of empires have tended to experience higher rates of suicide and drug abuse than in other societies. This was true of Rome, and of the British Empire. One view might say that it doesn't matter how ignorant you try to be, no human is truly ignorant to the suffering required to live the lifestyles those privileged enough to live in these empires--or their modern counterparts.
Another view might take a more mystical perspective. If everything we own from our furniture to our clothes to the food we eat comes to us with the weight of the magickal power of the corporation that crafted the sigils and symbols on them, to the packaging, to the marketing that got us to buy it; the magickal power of all of the destitute hands that touched it, crafted it for us, went without food or bathroom breaks for it; what effect does that have on us?
And perhaps these are not mutually exclusive views. Perhaps both are true, but the point is frustratingly that we suffer for the actions of the system we live in. This system is us, and we find ourselves inextricably connected to it. It feeds us, clothes us, houses us, and we don't have any other options--or so we think. As John Perkins said in "Confessions of an Economic Hitman": "...we cannot bring ourselves to bite the master that feeds us".
Yet we suffer for its actions, even as we are complicit in them as a driver to a bank robbery, as a doorman who looks the other way and lets a stranger up to a victim's apartment, we are complicit because we work for this system, because we don't find ways out of it, because we think, like all citizens of the empires before us thought, that empire itself is simply inevitable. That if ours doesn't destroy, murder and steal, that another will in our place.
We used to have a phrase: "girls will 'down-bitch' themselves to death for useless men". It echoed situations we'd seen dozens of times repeated: women going to jail or being murdered or caught in crossfire for a man who didn't care about them for the sake of being 'down' or showing their commitment. But to not be 'down' enough sometimes also meant death, violence, or total exile.
We are certainly in a precarious and difficult situation that none of us singlehandedly solved but that all of us collectively continue. And like the women I grew up with, the answer is not simple, and every choice has a consequence.
But I'll ask you: what do you think the answer is? How do you minimize complicity, and grant your conscience some relief?
#Meditations #Ruminations #Guilt #Imperialism
Meditations 10-25
What is guilt?
There are several definitions. One describes guilt as "the fact of having committed a breach of conduct especially violating law and involving a penalty".
Another "a feeling of deserving blame for offenses".
Is there a term for feelings of guilt from living in a society whose very foundation is based on exploitation and destruction? I'm not sure. But I can be almost certain, at least from my own experience, that these feelings exist, that they are justified, and that they are common despite that most of us attempt to ignore or bury them.
Are they just a feeling, though? Or do we actually exist in a state of having committed an offense? Which definition applies here? I think that we'd like to believe it's the latter: that we can say that it's not our fault, that we can say it's just a feeling we have, but that it's secondhand. Someone *else* is committing the offense, and we're just stuck feeling shitty about it.
Throughout history, citizens of empires have tended to experience higher rates of suicide and drug abuse than in other societies. This was true of Rome, and of the British Empire. One view might say that it doesn't matter how ignorant you try to be, no human is truly ignorant to the suffering required to live the lifestyles those privileged enough to live in these empires--or their modern counterparts.
Another view might take a more mystical perspective. If everything we own from our furniture to our clothes to the food we eat comes to us with the weight of the magickal power of the corporation that crafted the sigils and symbols on them, to the packaging, to the marketing that got us to buy it; the magickal power of all of the destitute hands that touched it, crafted it for us, went without food or bathroom breaks for it; what effect does that have on us?
And perhaps these are not mutually exclusive views. Perhaps both are true, but the point is frustratingly that we suffer for the actions of the system we live in. This system is us, and we find ourselves inextricably connected to it. It feeds us, clothes us, houses us, and we don't have any other options--or so we think. As John Perkins said in "Confessions of an Economic Hitman": "...we cannot bring ourselves to bite the master that feeds us".
Yet we suffer for its actions, even as we are complicit in them as a driver to a bank robbery, as a doorman who looks the other way and lets a stranger up to a victim's apartment, we are complicit because we work for this system, because we don't find ways out of it, because we think, like all citizens of the empires before us thought, that empire itself is simply inevitable. That if ours doesn't destroy, murder and steal, that another will in our place.
We used to have a phrase: "girls will 'down-bitch' themselves to death for useless men". It echoed situations we'd seen dozens of times repeated: women going to jail or being murdered or caught in crossfire for a man who didn't care about them for the sake of being 'down' or showing their commitment. But to not be 'down' enough sometimes also meant death, violence, or total exile.
We are certainly in a precarious and difficult situation that none of us singlehandedly solved but that all of us collectively continue. And like the women I grew up with, the answer is not simple, and every choice has a consequence.
But I'll ask you: what do you think the answer is? How do you minimize complicity, and grant your conscience some relief?
#Meditations #Ruminations #Guilt #Imperialism