Guilt should be ditched. This is a claim made by Sarah Jaquette Ray in A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety in Chapter six. She says, \u201cWhen privileged people get stuck in guilt, they paradoxically can feel excused from the work of justice (Ray, 115).\u201d I wondered whether this strong claim is right, so I considered how guilt may play a part in bringing about actions against climate change. Eventually, I think Ray could be right according to her characterization of guilt, but it is not something that should be \u201cditched\u201d in terms of climate change. Firstly, I would concisely lay out the reason why I doubt Ray\u2019s view on guilt and climate change overall. Then, I present Ray\u2019s reasons why Ray believes that guilt should be abandoned for its counterproductivity in practice. Next, I will use my own experience to articulate why I think guilt can be a source of action and engagement in a certain way.<\/p>\n
When I started reading chapter six of Ray\u2019s book, I immediately felt uneasy about myself when she says that guilt is ineffective because I am someone who feels at least some guilt about myself in terms of my impact on the climate (Ray, 114). However, although I am not currently participating in any organization related to environmental protection, I am intentionally living in an eco-friendly way, and I prepare to continue in the future. This inevitably makes me doubt Ray\u2019s surprising claim against guilt in terms of climate change. Let me briefly quote how Ray characterizes guilt\u2014more specifically eco-guilt. She says, \u201cEco-guilt is the feeling that we have so harmed the environment that we are eternally indebted and will never be able to right that debt, no matter how many green choices we make on a daily basis (Ray, 115).\u201d This specific characterization already adds a very negative implication to guilt, while this implication itself can be called into doubt since not all people feel such kind of guilt in different situations no matter about climate change or else. Nevertheless, before refuting Ray\u2019s point, I should explain how she reaches her understanding.<\/p>\n
Eco-guilt, as we have seen by definition, is a kind of guilt that looks profoundly negative because it prevents people to act responsibly against climate change. Let us see this more clearly from Ray\u2019s personal experience with her student (Ray, 114). \u201c[H]e struggled with \u2018being the cause of all the problems [of climate change] we learn about.\u2019\u201d Eventually, he could not overcome his fragility and guilt and dropped the environmental studies major. Because Ray does not present this example more in-depth, probably for the student\u2019s privacy and feelings, I should try to analyze why he feels exactly the eco-guilt according to Ray\u2019s characterization for better clarity. Given other information, this student, like many of us, was a privileged person with many resources and choices just because of the place, time, and family he was given birth. He, therefore, identifies himself with a specific group that has done and is still doing a lot of harm to the environment. More specifically, not only his privileged identity induces guilt but also his own choices that have done and will continue to do harm (Ray, 114). He felt this burden and found himself guilty of causing or exacerbating climate change, and this feeling and response will be classified as eco-guilt. More specifically, about why eco-guilt should be banished, Ray mainly argued in terms of guilt as such. The psychological mechanism through which guilt \u201cparalyzes\u201d those who feel it is unclear in Ray\u2019s book, but the effects are presented\u2014those privileged people \u201cparadoxically can feel excused from the work of justice (Ray, 115).\u201d That is because they typically want to alleviate the feeling of guilt itself (maybe by distractions, therapy, or other means, but there is no clue what this means exactly) rather than directly do justice. Also, they tend to ease their emotional burden while ignoring others\u2019. Ray thinks that this psychological and behavioral pattern due to guilt is counterproductive when people can choose to do justice. The same applies to eco-guilt. When people are overburdened by their identities and consuming habits, they may fall into the \u201cagonizing self-reflection\u201d without doing anything impactful on the environment to any extent (Ray, 115).<\/p>\n
However, Ray\u2019s description of guilt is seriously at odd with my thoughts and experience. Admittedly, her argument on guilt is quite convincing to me if I only consider her characterization of guilt, but on the other hand, guilt could lead to some attitudes and actions very different than what she demonstrates. Frankly speaking, I am not certain if I genuinely feel guilty very emotionally or is it another deep feeling of imperative at the time when I make just and eco-friendly choices like turning off the lights. In fact, I uninstalled several lightbulbs in my dorm just because I think that will save electricity and the room is more than bright enough for me without them. In the whole process, however, I do feel guilty, and it may be how I feel guilty that makes a difference. Let me interpret how guilt plays a role in Ray\u2019s explanation first. According to my observation, her argument is mainly based on that those who feel guilty are feeling guilty of that people of their kinds have done something wrong and\/or are still doing them (Ray, 114-115). This can be supported by the definitions, explanations, and examples I quoted above about those who feel indebted about their identities and habits. The only exception I found, which Ray does not intentionally discuss, is that people feel the \u201cguilt about not showing up to \u2026 protest or meeting (Ray, 114).\u201d This is another kind of guilt\u2014the guilt for not doing something that can produce positive effects\u2014which is the kind of guilt I sometimes feel. The difference between her example and mine is that I feel guilty for not doing things that can be done relatively easily, like turning off lights and consuming in an eco-friendlier way compared to some larger-scale activities like protesting. By relatively easy, I mean spending comparatively low perceived effort or compromising a relatively acceptable amount of desire and habits, etc. for making those choices, so this can be very personal. What I want to underline is that people cannot make their ethical choices in the same extreme ways, but they can still often be relatively ethical and eco-friendly, especially when compared to themselves now. Apart from considering the subject of guilt (which is an action) relatively easy, people probably know very well that this subject can result in significant changes if done by more people. Ray says a lot about the tendency that people, for instance, experience \u201cguilt about how our consumer habits are destroying the planet (Ray, 114).\u201d I interpret this as that Ray herself also acknowledges that people often realize that their habits should be corrected for the devastating impact. By contrast, this realization does not result in their actions according to Ray\u2019s argument\u2014she thinks that the guilt brought by this realization paralyzes people. On the other hand, the particular kind of guilt I just wrote about can potentially propel people who feel it since it is directly linked to the actions. So, the difference is between feeling guilty about an existing tendency itself without connecting to an action and guilty about a potential action that people can perform to combat the challenge of climate change. As a result, by feeling guilty about not making relatively effortless eco-friendly choices as opposed to feeling guilty of being unethical or not doing certain hard things, people might become more ethical.<\/p>\n
Maybe you are thinking: now that I have a sense of how guilt may lead people to more ethical choices, but why feeling guilty? Ray probably thinks the same. Although her argument about guilt might be flawed, she is probably right to say that positive emotions, like gratitude toward the resources we have, are more comfortable for people and more consistent in motivating them to adopt an eco-friendlier lifestyle (Ray, 117). It seems more natural to teach people to be grateful for resources than to teach them to be guilty, which already sounds very odd to me to say so. However, my point about the way through which people feel guilty is nothing about that it is good to feel guilty or that people should feel guilty about something in order for them to act. What is important is simply that those who feel guilty should not all be wronged because, at least, guilt is an emotion or feeling that could produce good results in certain ways. Furthermore, guilt and the positive willingness to make eco-friendly choices can coexist. For example, I am sincerely willing to uninstall unnecessary lightbulbs, and I feel happy to choose to do this, but at the same time, I can feel guilty if I choose to leave those lightbulbs there and continue to use more electricity, while it is very simple to uninstall them. Here, guilt might have even been a push for me to actually perform an ethical action because the guilt already connects me to the potential action itself. Conclusively, Ray is wrong in that she does not recognize the various situations that trigger an experience of guilt, leading to her radical conclusion that guilt cannot bring about changes in actions. In reality, we are not being unethical to feel guilty, especially when the guilt is related to the simple acts to be done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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