The Awkward Weapon: Guilt

Since the Internet developed, and people with more anger than noesis no longer needed a stamp, a sheet of paper, and the address of the local newspaper, the world has been awash with “discussion groups” and “comments sections.” The level of venom on these groups would appeal Dean Swift.

Disputants use various techniques. Obscene abuse is a big favourite. So is pseudo-psychological contempt (everyone accuses everyone else of “denial”) and imputation of hidden motive — “Party X claims to support the highway project but anyone who can think knows it is because they want to grind the FACE of the POOR into the CEMENT.” Imagine what Demosthenes could have done with caps lock.

But the most widely used weapon, and the most difficult to defend against, is the guilt. The guilt card is the Kalashnikov of popular eristics.

From left to right and from right to left, but mostly from left to right, the air is full of accusations of SIN. Isaiah would love it. Everything, we are told, is rotten, and it’s YOUR FAULT. It is your fault (you, Tom, or you, Mary) not because you did something yourself but because you belong to a group marked by indelible collective nastiness.

Women use guilt on men, Black and Brown use guilt on White, non-Christians use guilt on Christians. You can dip into the newspapers and bring up a bucketful.

Accusations of guilt, collective guilt that is, guilt accruing because you share genes with a bunch of people who did The Bad Thing, is very difficult to handle.

Never mind saying, “well, I’ve never put the moves on anyone at the office,” or “I don’t think any of my family ever owned slaves.” Someone who looked a lot like you did, and that suffices.

Nor is it a valid reply to say “Alas brother, we all share collective guilt. We all have gone astray. The local airport was indeed, yes it was, built on land ripped off from the Mohawk Indians, innocent li’l children o’ nature, but even you, O aggravated minority member, have used the airport.” As a member of a group already convicted you lose the right to impute guilt to others and if you try it is hotly resented.

In fact, even the refusal to admit guilt is proof enough.

After all, if a representative of the Anti-Sexism league (a branch of the Ministry of Love) accuses Fred of doing the dirty, and Fred says, well, I didn’t, that denial can be seen to be accusing the representative of error. And, since objection-to-point-of-fact amounts to covert attack, that amounts to an attack on anti-sexism. Q.E.D. your honour, and can I pull the trap? Any way, any denial is…well, denial.

Frankly, this last refinement in dialectics fills your columnist with admiration. There is an elegance to it, no doubt about it.

So, guilt is pretty useful, and charges of guilt are all around us.

At the same time, and on the other hand, and But, the guilt card has some traps. In fact, it has two big problems piled on top of each other, like a sunken PT boat resting on top of the wreck of a pirate ship (does anyone remember that movie?).

The first is the hidden assumption of a standard.

The problem with guilt is that it brings in right and wrong and r&w drag in all sorts of morality.

A case:

You: You there. Do not club that baby seal. Stop that right now.

Miscreant: Why the $#$^%!) should I?

You: Because I have a Smith and Wesson and I will blow your fool head off.

Actually, that would work, at least until you go away to reform someone else. But it doesn’t employ guilt, per se. You want an internalization, so to speak. Normally, the dialogue actually goes:

You: Because you oughtn’t to do it. Isn’t nice. Isn’t right.

Miscreant: Oh. Okay.

It is that “ought” that is the problem. “Ought” moves us out of the indicative mood into the imperative, and, evade it as we will, and we will evade it like billy-o, we will be shoved back to the question of the ontological foundation of moral obligation. “Ought” implies “right” and “right” implies “good,” and very soon we are going to have to ask about a transcendent ground for all this.

There are options for answering that and not one of them is particularly comfortable. Nor is this just a question of elevated metaphysics. If the reader will visit a few comments section (that’s a conditional not a suggestion!) she or he will find that this is a live wire, hissing sparks…

There is a response to this, however.

You: Stop that. That’s disgusting.

Miscreant: Why?

You: It’s not nice. It’s not moral.

Miscreant: Mister, I admire your nerve. You are a Voltairian materialist nihilist. You don’t recognize

Morality. How can you call me out on morality?

You: That is true. But you, as a devout [fill in denomination name] ist claim a moral code. So live up to it, you disgusting little bourgeois.

What we have here is an example of asymmetrical ethical warfare, also known as Tom Mix vs. Black Hat Pete syndrome. One side feels itself obliged to obey a moral code, of some sort, and the other…doesn’t. But BHP is free to take advantage of the moral code of the other (“I will walk away now, Tom Mix, and you will not stop me ‘cause I know you don’t shoot people in the back. See you round, sucker.”)

To find oneself in such a situation would arouse apoplectic rage in Mother Teresa. Instances of this sort of thing go on everywhere, all day and into the night.

What is to be done? Is the situation hopeless?

Answer one: declare a special emergency case and let loose. After all, they started it.

The problem is, it will work, when it works, only for now. This was the approach the allies used against the Germans and Japanese, and that worked. But the west has had “hypocrite ” tattooed on its forehead ever since.

Answer two: avoid the fight (this is sometimes possible). If your opponent is speaking in bad faith, don’t talk to him. Don’t kill him; just don’t talk to him.

If our enemies were cattle . . . but they are not. The same standard of human morality (C.S. Lewis called it the Tao) that they use against us forbids us from writing them off as predestined to perdition. G-d loves even the editorial board of Salon.com, yes, He does.

Answer three: We follow it, we get to interpret it.

This might work a little better. This amounts to: only those within a framework of a particular obedience are qualified to judge the consistency of the obedience, because only they can understand, albeit dimly, the good to which the Tao means to lead. You outside the Tao are working from no standard at all. If we are hypocrites, we make the call.

Answer four: Keep your nerve.

The conflict here is not for three periods of twenty minutes each. This is a long game. We need to remind ourselves that over the long term, something (our side) usually beats nothing (them). Moreover, again in the long term, the higher standard will set the register on ethic issues. So, bit by bit, the rule “you can enslave anybody you can get a hold of,” gives way to “You can only enslave foreigners who look funny,” and then perhaps to “No slaves at all.”

The danger to those who use “You believe it, even if we don’t”, “it” being some sort of morality, is that they will find they need “it” as much as we do.

But don’t expect too much in the short time. The guilt card will be played and it will bring in a lot of tricks yet. Guilt is a powerful weapon, though an awkward one.

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