guilt

I interviewed with four people for my current job. I talked about my work in Guatemala with all of them, but one of the interviewers in particular stood out. He asked me to describe the work I did there, and when I was done he asked me how long the guilt lasted. I knew exactly what he meant. How long until I didn’t think constantly about how privileged I was, how I could never do enough to help the people I worked with. My response to him was to ask, “The acute or the chronic?”

The acute guilt after being exposed to poverty like I saw in Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, and now here, doesn’t last. When you are removed from constant exposure to it, seeing it every day, the acute guilt fades. Sometimes it takes a few weeks or months, occasionally, after a truly difficult experience, it takes years, but it does fade. The chronic guilt, on the other hand, never goes away.

And I would never want it to. It is that constant reminder -- of the woman who is nothing more than skin and bones from TB, or the two year old child who can’t walk from malnutrition, or the child who wants to be held constantly because that is his only comfort, or the dogs who are too scared of being hit to come close to a person --- that keeps me doing what I do. It keeps me from driving my car, makes me go to the thrift store instead of buying new clothes that were made in sweatshops, encourages me to go to anti-war protests even when that is my one free day of the week, and has me joining and supporting the local food co-op which provides cheap healthy food to people who are food-insecure.

However, part of me wonders if “guilt” is the right word to use for this, since it implies responsibility for the outcome. Some might argue I do not have control over the circumstances that have led to the various tragedies in the world, so my responsibility is limited to fixing them as best I can without taking ownership for their existence. But that approach ignores the privileges I have possessed since birth, as a white upper middle class intellectual born in the richest country in the world. That approach ignores how those privileges came into existence, and how they have been maintained over the course of my life.

I did not ask for those privileges, but I continue to benefit from them, and those benefits exist because someone else is paying the price. So while I cannot claim single responsibility for the existence of poverty, inequality, discrimination, oppression, and violence, I have benefited from the existence of those evils, and have participated in their perpetuation through my very existence—through using clothes, books, food that were made by people earning less than a living a wage, by creating more pollution than any 10 people living in developing countries, and in countless other ways.

So, yes, guilt is the best word for this, because I do hold some responsibility for the existence of the systems that have caused such suffering. My responsibility for fixing them, therefore, lies not only with my altruistic belief in human equality and social justice, but also with my debt to those who have suffered for my privilege.