I couldn’t possibly do that, I’d feel too guilty!: Contribution for First Person Singular column

I couldn’t possibly do that, I’d feel too guilty!

How often have you heard someone say something of this kind, or even said it yourself? To listen to people’s reactions, you’d think that feeling guilty was the worst thing that could happen to a person. Indeed, since I started writing on the topic, I’ve come to realise that guilt has become one of the great taboos of our time. Talking about sex and death are positively popular by comparison.

The late twentieth century saw many changes. I grew up in the sixties, a time of radical questioning of ‘old fashioned’ values and upturning the status quo. We debated ‘new ethics’. Would you have shot Hitler if you had had the opportunity? Was authenticity in relationships more important than marriage certificates? Could everyone’s actions be valid if their motivations and circumstances were appreciated? Proscriptive views of right and wrong and sexual propriety, which previously riddled us with guilt, were upturned.

Of course, this social revolution filtered into public awareness at different rates. For some, old certainties and standards still held sway against what was seen as wishy-washy liberalism. For many, however, things changed irrevocably. Few still thought sex outside marriage was a sin, and laws were reformed to support attitudes of greater social equality and address discrimination.

Time moved on. Ideas progressed. With them a new dictum emerged. We learned we should feel good about ourselves, not beholden to others’ views. We should ‘actualise our potential’. The eighties produced the ‘me generation’. The last thing wanted was to feel guilt. That decade abolished society, telling us to get on our bikes and find individualistic paths to success. We perfected ourselves through self-help books and lifestyle gurus, who told us we were beautiful people, simply needing to love ourselves more.

This attitude spawned personal and corporate makeovers on TV, and, believing we deserved it, we went on a collective spending spree, funded by increasing credit. Throughout this hedonism, guilt, the potential whistle-blower, became shameful, avoided at all costs.

But inevitably our lives are not perfect. We don’t inhabit celebrity TV. Despite trying to escape the critical views and restrictive condemnatory attitudes we associate with the old paradigm of our parents and grandparents, many of us still carry the secret fear of the critical voices of that previous age. At the same time, the new-found culture of individual achievement feeds high expectations which we inevitably fail to fulfil. Amongst the impossible ideals is that of guilt-free, happiness.

Beset by guilt of both sides, then, we seek a life unhindered by self-criticism. We know deep down that we deceive ourselves. We fear the guilt and insecurity which reveal our ordinariness. We tell ourselves should not have them. We not only feel guilty, but also feel guilty about feeling guilty, yet if we faced these feelings we might paradoxically be happier letting go the pretence.