Has anyone else noticed that all discussions of guilt – except those applying to defendants in our court system – are now reflexive? For some reason, no one ever gets up and expresses feelings of guilt over bad behavior toward others. For example, Tiger Woods noted at his pre-Masters press conference, that what he had done was wrong, that he had lied to himself and that “I need to be a better man going forward.” But he didn’t say he felt guilty about sleeping with approximately three-percent of the American, female population during his marriage.
Similarly, neither Jesse James nor Senator John Edwards has expressed feelings of guilt. Of course, many of you will point out that several of Woods’ and James’ mistresses have gone to the press to express their feelings of guilt toward the cuckolded spouses. But I believe that these pleas can be dismissed because the press only showed an interest if the mistresses were either palpably repentant or glaringly brazen.
Because the word ‘guilt’ does have legal implications, those in the media usually avoid its use in order to evade consequences. But with its common use has gone all feelings of remorse. Some, like Woods and Sarah Ferguson, admit to wrongdoing, but very few express sorrow at their actions. As if all of life is a spelling test and errors are not things to be mulled over in an emotional manner, but merely items that need to be relearned differently, regardless of their consequences for others.
Yet, in day-to-day life, we hear about guilt more than ever -- and not because so many of us have Jewish and Catholic mothers. On television, in magazines and in daily conversation with women, all I hear is that they feel guilty for eating this or eating that, for not exercising, for not taking proper care of themselves. Notice, they don’t express guilt over yelling at their children, or more importantly for not disciplining their children, for wasting money or not giving to charity. No, these days, all expressed guilt is related to personal wellbeing.
No longer is it popular in American culture to express regret over behavior toward others. No, we all have such difficult and complicated lives that our bad acts are simply things to be accepted, or perhaps improved upon, but not things that require regret. Apparently, guilt and regret are passé, old-fashioned, not cool. Man’s relationship to man, on a personal level, is no longer a priority. While White Guilt, Jewish Guilt, European Guilt and Christian Guilt are all still popular concepts, all traces of personal responsibility have disappeared. Being the descendant of a group of misbehaving troglodytes is cool. You can regret collective past decisions, mourn poor judgment and atrocious actions, but your own exploits remain immune provided you don’t start the Spanish Inquisition or begin your own slave trade.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, guilty is defined as “having committed an offense, crime, violation or wrong, especially against moral or penal code.” Also, “showing or having a sense of guilt.” Therefore, saying one feels guilty means that person feels that he or she has committed an offense against, in most but not all of these cases, the moral code. So the fact that none of the erring husbands, nor Bernie Madoff, the greatest Ponzi scheme operator in history, have expressed guilt, possibly means that they do not feel they have committed a moral wrong.
On the other hand, women who eat bread and butter, ice cream and don’t jog -- they walk around talking about their feelings of having violated the moral code. Could this mean that the only moral code that our society explicitly articulates is that women must be thin, and that sleeping around, stealing money, abusing children and just being nasty, are all problems, but nothing to feel guilty about?
To be honest, I did hear a woman recently say that she felt guilty that because her husband’s hours had been cut back, she would have to return to work, thus necessitating the placement of her 10-month-old son in daycare. “I am so worried that he will resent me later for this,” she added. Again, she was not feeling as if she were violating a moral code, she was worried about how her son’s feeling would affect her. In our solution-centered society are these merely issues that, perhaps, we need to work on, but don’t have to feel bad about?
Perhaps. But what it really means it that we have sunk so far into self-centeredness that the only real guilt we express is in how we treat ourselves. So, I guess we better work on that. When we get to it. Until then, don’t feel bad about it.
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