Guilt is Good

“People resent feelings of guilt because of a societal overemphasis on happiness.”

Feeling bad is good sometimes. It makes you a better person. It's great to feel happy, but we shouldn't be teaching children to expect to feel happy all the time. Happiness is only a small part of what makes our lives rich, meaningful, and fulfilling.

I've been thinking a lot about the function of guilt lately. In the past few months I've anecdotally observed children and adults becoming angry and victim blaming when they think that they've been made to feel guilty. The script goes something like this: Some real or perceived transgression takes place, the transgressor feels guilty, resents feeling guilty,  and becomes angry at the target of their transgression for causing them to feel guilty. People resent feelings of guilt because of a societal overemphasis on happiness.

Disclaimer: I'm not a mental health expert and overwhelming feelings of guilt experienced as more than a transitory feeling need and deserve to be attended to. Although I absolutely believe guilt is an important mental state, depression and anxiety are not. Mental illness is not something anyone ever deserves. Your mental health is important. We should never be intentionally dismissive of mental illnesses. But we're not supposed to live in euphoria all the time, either.

I'm not prescribing mental anguish. Our lives naturally provide an ample supply. I am suggesting that we find healthy ways of embracing mental turmoil by working through it and growing from it rather than resenting, ignoring, or wallowing in it.

We shouldn't avoid feeling guilty. We shouldn't aim to use mindfulness as a tool to eradicate feelings of guilt.

It's absolutely magical that we have a capacity to feel guilty. Have you ever really thought about it? We have negative physical and emotional response to any real or perceived awareness that we have done something to harm someone else.

Why do we have that? Wouldn't "survival of the fittest" dictate that we should all get ahead by any means possible in this dog-eat-dog world? No! Absolutely not! We're social creatures and we're programmed not to harm one another. We have survived this long by collaborating and working together and for that to be possible we need to be sensitive to harming one another. Guilt is proof that humans are good. 

We're hard-coded to iteratively become better people by feeling guilty when we harm others, making reparations to relieve our guilt, and avoiding doing the thing whatever we felt guilty for again.

If someone calls you out, makes you feel guilty, calls attention in any way to the fact that you've hurt them, apologize, do something to repair the damage and thank them for helping you become a better person.

Maybe there are things we've done that we can never make amends for. Maybe there are things happening in society that can't simply be fixed to relieve our collective guilt. I certainly feel that way. I feel compelled to keep trying to be good and do good knowing that I'll never be able to do enough to make amends, nor do I want to. I don't ever want to feel like I've done enough.

Climate Change, Colonialism, and Genocide

As resources become scarcer due to ecological degradation and climate change, social justice issues and conflicts are exacerbated and members of vulnerable economically impoverished communities are forced to emigrate. Refugees often face stigmatization, marginalization, and economic poverty. Some researchers suggest that loss of culture due to displacement, increased conflict over scarce resources, and lack of asylum for refugees could create conditions conducive to cultural or ethnic genocide.

This is a work in progress. I am using this space to paint some broad strokes of what I think is happening and how, but I'm ultimately most concerned with why, at the individual level, we're causing these issues and what we can do to support those most affected.  

I am beginning to research the relationship among climate change, colonialism and genocide. Specifically, I work to build capacity in marginalized communities to survive climate change. While Pedagogy for Restoration focused on restoring justice and healing the planet through education, I feel a need to also investigate pragmatic responses to the immediate and inevitable impact of climate change on the most vulnerable communities. 

Colonialism is without question the fundamental cause of anthropogenic climate change. To make things worse, climate change exacerbates the neoliberal form of colonization that should rightly be identified as genocide. 

Subsistence communities may be the most vulnerable to climate genocide because the world has already made these communities invisible, illegal and nearly impossible through international policies and trade agreements. 

The pool of resources to be exploited by industrial nations in subsistence communities is shrinking, while consumption by highly industrialized nations continues to rise; resulting in such a scarcity of resources that those equipped with the capacity to live sustainably are no longer able to do so. 

All too many of the communities managing to survive have become so vulnerable to floods, droughts, and other natural disasters, that climate change represents a ticking time bomb. The question is not if they will face a crisis threatening their existence, but when. 

On top of that, neoliberal environmental organizations further exploit and colonize the few surviving subsistence communities by enforcing "pro-environmental" behavior that is at odds with the cultural knowledge that has sustained them for thousands of years including the past several hundred years of colonization and globalization. 

The culmination of these neocolonial pressures force people and communities into reliance on international aid and results in loss of autonomy, de facto participation in global economy, and economic development as a means for survival. These economic pressures practically force communities to abandon subsistence farming and necessitate either unsustainable exploitation of natural resources or migration into more industrialized nations. 

This is why the industrialized destroyers of earth have a moral obligation to increase capacity to provide asylum for climate refugees - but that's not nearly enough.

Even if we overcome the challenge of sustainably increasing the population capacity of our cities and reform our immigration policies, few refugees are likely to make it to our borders. More often refugees will be turning to neighboring nations also struggling to survive climate change and colonial exploitation and with little capacity to sustain themselves, much less refugees. This is and will continue to be a huge source of conflict in many parts of the world. The likely perpetrators of climate genocide could easily (but wrongfully) be identified, not as industrialized nations, but the developing nations we've forced into our rat race.

This is not something that could happen if we do not work to reduce climate change, it is something that is happening already. Whether intentional or not, Trump's policy on refugees and his refusal to support efforts to reduce the effects of climate change are leading exactly in the direction of the catastrophe I see us headed for.

So, what can be done? 

It is critical to consider both indigenous and refugee subgroups as members of a continuum of oppressed populations affected by climate change, where indigenous populations are also vulnerable to becoming refugees if their resources are destroyed. Despite both communities likely having smaller carbon footprints due to lower consumption, they are pressured toward largely unattainable sustainability goals designed by and for privileged communities. It is critical to better understand the environmental issues faced by these vulnerable communities to promote their resilience and wellbeing.

I'm increasingly realizing that the people dying right now due to warfare, famine, floods, droughts, etc. don't have time for the epistemological shift that seems necessary to address what I believe is the root cause of this crisis. Awareness is an important step, but the world needs immediate and decisive action. The people most affected by climate change need those of us living in the luxury of the part of the world destroying their part of the world to put a wrench in the gears. I don't claim to have all of the answers, but I am committed to both research and action. Let me know your ideas.

The Unfulfilled Promise

The historical foundation of America is filled with atrocity from colonization to the genocide of Indigenous peoples and slavery. We need to face history and our roles in history as a continuing process. We have to do so to collectively heal and begin to fulfill the promise of our idealized foundation: liberty and justice for all. The Statue of Liberty stands over our eastern shore as the personification of America; as a symbol of welcome; as a beacon of freedom; and as a promise of protection from imperialism.

You probably memorized the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, but when was the last time you deeply reflected on the message we chose as the welcome for our immigrants.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” (Lazarus, 2002/1903)

This was a promise that was largely fulfilled for my family and so many European immigrants, who entered United States through Ellis Island, but it is disgracefully unfulfilled for many longtime residents and recent immigrants. What welcome do those entering United States via the Mexican border receive? What New Colossus awaits them?

Lazarus didn’t focus on the U.S. American reality, but instead on the U.S. American potential. Maybe we can't afford to do the same today, but it's worth reflecting on. It's worth thinking that decades later Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called upon the same aesthetic and same potential in one of his final speeches before his assassination in 1968 as he organized the Poor People’s Campaign:

In a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive… in this nation…. Yes, we are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled masses…. We are going to bring those who have come to feel that life is a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. We are going to bring the children and adults and old people who have never seen a doctor or dentist…. We are not coming to engage in any historic gesture. We are not coming to tear up Washington…. We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago…. We are coming…to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between the promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible. (as cited in Smiley & Ritz, 2014, pp. 226–227)

I say we call upon equal parts rage and hope as we fight for the promises and dreams that America has authored.

We are coming

Food Insecurity and Climate Genocide

As a result of climate change arable land is shrinking and cities are growing. We will have to do more with fewer resources or drastically reduce our population. If we continue a capitalist system where few hoard resources while many barely scrape by, it is going to result in genocide. However, the dire outcome of the status quo is not inevitable. I have become increasingly convinced that the key to preventing climate genocide is dismantling capitalism and the key to dismantling capitalism is eradicating hunger. 

Of all the problems that or communities face, food insecurity and diet related illnesses can be eradicated immediately if we pull together and decide that enough is enough. Once we eradicate hunger, we will see more and more strong communities and strong leaders emerge to solve the problems of a world descending into crisis.

I'm done being a hypocrite who writes about it but doesn't take action. This week, I finally had enough knowing that some of my students don't have enough food or don't have access to healthy food. I have spent enough time feeling like I can't do anything, like I don't know what to do, or like someone else should do it. Capitalist, colonialist society conditions us for that kind of thinking, but the only thing that makes solving our problems impossible is the belief that they are impossible to solve. 

I came up with a list of four things that will improve food security and health at school: 

  1. Start a school pantry so students can take food home.
  2. Keep healthy snacks available to students at all times.
  3. Improve quality of school breakfast and lunches.
  4. Serve dinner at school.

Starting a pantry turned out to be fairly easy. I did some research on what sorts of programs exist that could support the effort and found plenty. But in the meantime, I just started buying a bunch of food and leaving it at school. By doing that, others took notice and joined the effort. Now we have a pantry. In fact, by the time some of the outside support I've sought arrives, I'm not sure we'll need their help.

Providing healthy snacks is also easy enough. A lot of teachers already keep snacks in their rooms. Again, I just threw some money at it and started leaving a mountain of fruit in the cafeteria every morning. It sounds like the food service staff got the message and will soon take over that effort.

The latter of my list will take a little more time and effort, but are very accomplishable. Despite the fact that I'm using my own money to jumpstart the efforts, there is plenty of funding available. I think what schools and communities need is someone able to put the time and effort into getting these programs going. I think most people are too burdened with their own struggles and obligations to work for change. Those of us who can have an obligation to our fellow humans. 

That's what I'm doing. It's not enough and I am committed to doing more. 

What are you doing?