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Global guilt

The world is in shambles, and humans have themselves to blame for it. The average human is just a bystander, content to sleep at night blaming someone else -- a politician from an unfavourable ruling party, a corporate executive, or perhaps a generation passed. Others get their rest by lying to themselves and living out a fantasy where the problems don't exist. Why cry over vaccine inequity if you believe the pandemic is a conspiracy theory? Why mourn your carbon footprint if you refuse to acknowledge the climate crisis?

My point is not to criticize those who can cope, but to cast light on the harsher reality of those who are burdened with humanity's errors. Those who spend sleepless nights mulling over their own complacency and culpability in the crises, simply for being born a human being. In a rarely spoken twist, this guilt is proportional to a person's privilege -- the more a person has from birth, the more shame they can carry for their inaction.

There is a fallacy in confusing individual and societal choices. For climate, there is a gap between an individual choosing to fly and a society rejecting a carbon tax or clean air regulations. An individual might oppose their society's environmental laws, yet fly anyway. For the pandemic, a citizen of a rich country has no choice whether their government hoards vaccine doses at the expense of healthcare workers abroad. An individual might wish their government did not do so, yet obey public health guidance telling them to get vaccinated with a dose that could've gone to someone more deserving, in a decision made by a more powerful person, even with a guilty conscience. Intellectually, both the dissonance and a (utilitarian) resolution is clear. The emotions are harder to manage.

I suspect there is a "type" of person prone to internalizing guilt, afflicted with hyper-empathy to the pain of strangers (human or otherwise) across the globe, and ill-equipped to fix the world. The kind of person prone to protest flying, to go vegan, to work for a non-profit or university, to run only free and open source software, and to still struggle to sleep at night. Sometimes the issues change -- pandemic inequity is a novel concern -- but the emotions are remarkably constant.

I know, I know.

I should not feel guilty for choices I did not make.

If I repeat it, maybe I'll believe it.