guilt

Just as we humans are uncomfortable when we leave our comfort zones of civilization and thus must leave a bit of trash in the hiking trail (equivalent to a dog marking territory and also a potential subject for a doctoral thesis in psychology), so also we humans cannot live without guilt. if you doubt me, read on.

in the years of yore, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, before the boomers thought they could change all the rules, mix up the stats and thus make it look like they were winners, there was plain old garden-variety guilt.

whether it was catholic or jewish guilt, baptist or presbyterian, you basically knew the rules of the lifegame and felt guilty that you were failing. if you were a citizen, you had a general idea of what was going to play in peoria and what was going to get you killed. or feeling guilty, at least.

but then, the sixties. we got "freed" from guilt by the hippieboomers. but very quickly, they and the sharp-stick ladies (women who never let their kids play with sticks or climb things because it was all about safety and control) became the arbiters of guilt.

and somewhere, all the hippiedom became yuppiedom and the liberated women tensely began to rule. we were all innocent as babes for about five minutes.

but a lack of guilt equals a lack of control by the sharp stick ladies and their cohorts. and nature abhors a vacuum. so they took over the simple mechanics of responsible living and turned it into two things:

First, the joys of political correctness--a general guilt over the failings of your ancestors, of other people of your race, neighborhood, church group or card club--or occasionally, of ourselves...PC basically told us we should feel badly about the way we have treated absolutely everyone we have ever dealt with. if they were female, male, transgendered, abled, otherlyabled, white, black, brown, hispanic, chinese, otherly asian, of native american descent, polish, you name it, they were OFFENDED. and YOU had done it. it was YOUR FAULT.

the subtle shift here is that because the mayvens of guilt had so completely placed themselves--MEMEME--- as the center of the universe, their own centrality on the stage of their own minds flowed over the banks and into the culture.

so because they can't imagine life without the CENTRAL ME, all of the things they consider wrong MUST BE YOUR FAULT.

they tell you that YOU are responsible for stuff you did in ignorance. (you certainly along the way made someone feel bad about themselves, either by not labeling them correctly or by labeling them at all, or by looking at them or by not looking at them.)

AND you are responsible for stuff you never did. thus, it's YOUR fault that your ancestors, whom you never even knew, did stuff you don't approve of. (that is the ultimate insanity. but we've bought it, haven't we?!)

This smacks of the best catholic guilt, interestingly enough. it is inescapable. no matter what you do, even if you are lying in a hospital bed, paralyzed up to your EARS, you are doing some bad thing. you must be thinking evil of some innocent victim of society you are seeing on TV, imagining their pain is not as great as yours because the person is whining about the injustice of getting bad service at the spa.

and the kicker is that we now have a generation of kids who grew up believing this. these are the children of the sharp stick ladies. they fill our colleges. and they have completely bought it that each of us is responsible for stuff we never did.

So, the second: enter people like Leo DiCaprio telling us in no uncertain terms that whatever has happened to the planet over BILLIONS AND BILLIONS(right?!) of years, is ALSO our fault. we are, in our own minds, so incomparably CENTRAL to EVERYTHING, that if the ozone has a hole, it's YOUR fault.
if artic penguins wash up on the coast of california on ice floes, it's YOUR fault.
and now,
there is a movie for "the family" aimed at propagandizing little kids and their already-guilt-ridden parents, who are buying indulgences, oops, "carbon credits" online for their environmental sins, that APPEARS to be a documentary about the arctic.

but in the best Michael Moore fashion, the producers have filled it with "facts" that are the direct result of being children of the sharp stick ladies.

thus, the whole artic full of cute polar babies is DYING AND FLOATING AWAY and it is YOUR FAULT.

ahem. like the catholic church with its medieval selling of indulgences, this guilt also has a tremendous "follow the money" component.

there is SO MUCH MONEY to be made in selling these myths that it's NOT on the agenda to solve the problems (the solutions have been loudly touted for 30 years and they're mainly simple and low-budget. do less. spend less. reuse it. don't buy it in the first place...all solutions that DON'T MAKE MONEY FOR ANYONE!)

i'm a diehard environmentalist, but this is NOT about the environment. This is about guilt. It is the direct result of having put MEMEME (or "the great, perpendicular 'I'" as one of my mentors called it) at the CENTER of the universe. God's not responsible for anything anymore; it is ALL YOUR FAULT.

And in your guilt, go to the right movies (how much would you do for the environment NOT to go to the movie and drive your car and support a hugely wasteful industry?).

Buy the right products as penance (and what if you just bought the same thing at the thrift shop? so uncool. so NOT putting MYSELF at the center...but it's recycling, duh!)

And don't forget to buy those carbon credits! (supporting organizations that tout environmental solutions but have followed the donation dough are just another 501c3 scam, but it'll assuage your guilt!)

We are not the center of the universe, no matter what the sharp stick ladies and the posthippies tell us.

the second law of thermodynamics is still in operation. that means things slow down--entropy--they wobble, they fall apart, they just don't function as well as they did in the garden of eden.
you can call it the effect of sin. or you can buy carbon credits and keep on feeling guilty.

or maybe, just maybe, you and your kids could not buy new. you could plant a tree, tend a garden, build (NOT BUY!) a compost bin and recycle whatever you threw away before.

you could find out that all the stuff you thought you needed you probably don't need.

you could skip the hype films. you could quietly know that while al gore lives in his hugely wasteful house, you can free yourself from guilt and live simply responsibly on a little gem of a planet that your loving Father put you on. being a responsible kid is one way you can say, "thanks, Dad! it's beautiful!"

free yourself from guilt. it's time for the revolution of responsible living to begin somewhere other than with the sharp stick ladies, the posthippieyuppies and the 501(c)3 scammers who are making a bundle off this completely ephemeral guilt.