Guilt. What is it good for?

Like most people studying the environment, I feel a lot of guilt. In fact, I think it's a little disingenuous to have a blog on the emotional impact of climate change and not talk about guilt. But I often avoid discussing my guilt because it makes others feel guilty, and I don't like making other people feel bad. But should I avoid making others feel guilty? How should I deal with my own guilt? Some would say that Americans, as a whole, are guilt deficient. But I'm not convinced of guilt's utility to our cause.

I took the weekend off from working - woohoo!! I had a great time skiing with my family. Ah, skiing. I paid a wealthy corporation a lot of money to fragment ecologically sensitive habitat on slopes with high rates of erosion and then burn a ton of fossil fuels to carry my lazy ass up a mountain, so I could slide back down again. Not to mention giving suburbanites an excuse to buy SUVs. As I rode the chair, admiring the spectacular view of the Greens in crystal, snowy sunshine, the guilt bubbled up. But guilt is a little like bad weather - it makes your experience slightly less enjoyable, but it doesn't necessarily change your behavior. I kept skiing. Moments like this are a regular part of my life - struggling to improve a problematic society without entirely exiling myself from it.

Waiting to get into one of Burlington's many over-crowded restaurants post-skiing, my mother told us stories of how her mother (my grandmother) got involved in the environmental movement and became the stout, white-haired radical we knew and loved. I was reminded of a story my aunt told me (apocryphal perhaps) of great grand-daddy Wilson, the big union Democrat. Every night at the dinner table, he would ask his children (including my grandmother) what they'd done for their country. "Recombinate" that with my great grandpa on my father's side ("every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity an obligation; every possession a duty") and you get my brother and me, equipped with a driving sense of responsibility and an overdeveloped sense of guilt. Maybe we should spread it around a little? Share?

Though Americans might be generally guilt-deficient (at least according to the rest of the world), guilt is not that persuasive. Ted Norhaus and Michael Shellenberger lambasted the environmental movement in their now famous "Death of Environmentalism" for dwelling on the "nightmare" - the guilt. Other environmental theorists note that dwelling on all the bad stuff makes folks turn off, tune out.

Well, fine, but this is a blog about the emotional impact of climate change. I am guilty. We all are guilty. This is a major barrier to the climate movement - we can't rail against the perpetrators because we are all perpetrators. We are all guilty.

Because it's Black History Month, one of the campus coffee shops has a prominent display of Black literature. In a rare moment of killing time, I picked up a book of Martin Luther King's work and opened to a chapter. This essay was on love - love as a central organizing principal for his movement (a little reminiscent of my post on balance, though much better articulated). In the essay, he noted that his movement was never against people - never against Whites. It was a movement resisting the injustice within people - within all of us. Extolling the virtues of non-violence, he fought violence with love - a kind of love he called agape.

I think this is the approach we have to take. And, if we don't subscribe to the dominant philosophy that as individuals we are complete rational wholes, if we allow for the fact that we are more complex than that, with many conflicting desires and personas, then we don't have to let the guilt overcome us. We can recognize and resist the "injustice" and greed within ourselves, as Martin Luther King suggests, resisting it through love. Which means we have to cultivate the capacity to forgive ourselves, also.

And then, of course, Edward Abbey and Mary Oliver (other inspirations) would remind us that we have to spend some time enjoying nature as well, noticing, reveling, being present to the wonderful gift of the Earth, with gratitude. We can't feel guilty all the time, or we'll forget to save our one "wild and precious life." My friend Erin just sent me this Abbey quote:

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am -- a reluctant enthusiast ... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; you will outlive the bastards."
[Missoula, Montana, 1978]

And Mary Oliver would add:

"The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save." - Mary Oliver

I need these reminders. Let not the guilt overcome me, nor the drive to save all life be so great that I forget to live, forget to save my own. Let me resist the injustice and greed within myself and within others with love and forgiveness. Let the Earth, the present moment, and my enjoyment of it - my gratitude - help me to cultivate that love. Experience the guilt - learn from it - but let it not overcome me.

In the final passage of Martin Luther King's essay on love, he reiterates his belief that the creative forces of the Universe - whatever we choose to call them - are on our side in our pursuit of justice in the world. Perhaps when we connect with the Earth, as Abbey suggests, we reconnect with this force within the Universe, and it reinvigorates us, strengthens our capacity to resist.

I'm not implying that commercial downhill skiing is the best way to do this. In fact, I think connecting with nature is probably a lot easier if we're not simultaneously destroying it. I'm just wrestling with the guilt, struggling to find that balance between E.B. White's well-articulated struggle: "I wake each morning torn between the desire to improve the world and the desire to enjoy it. It makes it hard to plan the day."