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Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

psyche.co

151–160 of 268 posts

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#151

Guilt-tripping isn't morally neutral. It's manipulation, exploitation, getting people to do what you want without giving them what they want. Doing it is evil and makes you evil. In my late teens and early twenties I constantly guilt-tripped people close to me. It was my "thing". It hurt everyone a lot. Then one day I realized how sick it was, and stopped completely. Now I never do it to anyone for any reason, and pu…

You're not wrong, but the article isn't about externally-introduced guilt. It's about the reduction of internally-produced guilt.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#152

Guilt-tripping isn't morally neutral. It's manipulation, exploitation, getting people to do what you want without giving them what they want. Doing it is evil and makes you evil. In my late teens and early twenties I constantly guilt-tripped people close to me. It was my "thing". It hurt everyone a lot. Then one day I realized how sick it was, and stopped completely. Now I never do it to anyone for any reason, and pu…

This has always been obvious to me. I have actually struggled with the opposite, where I have at times struggled to pursue what I want at cost to others, not understood how to set boundaries, or failed to hold people accountable to even their own principles.

It's funny that people can have such different backgrounds and life experiences, and that, as it turns out, end up in similar places because maturity results in finding a balance. At least in my opinion.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#153

Guilt-tripping isn't morally neutral. It's manipulation, exploitation, getting people to do what you want without giving them what they want. Doing it is evil and makes you evil. In my late teens and early twenties I constantly guilt-tripped people close to me. It was my "thing". It hurt everyone a lot. Then one day I realized how sick it was, and stopped completely. Now I never do it to anyone for any reason, and pu…

> Doing it is evil and makes you evil.

Whoa: hold on just a second there. I don't necessarily disagree with your wider point but we need to step away from this inflammatory and accusatory language.

You said that you used to guilt-trip people constantly when you were younger, and then you stopped when you realised how sick it was. Doing it didn't make you evil: it made you immature, and then you grew out of it.

Except that - and I sort of hate that I'm pointing this out - you haven't entirely grown out of it because you recommend people not do it but then brand them evil if they do. That's guilt-tripping, and it's manipulative and inflammatory. (Still, we all have our off days and revert to type from time to time, so please don't see this as a personal attack.)

Anyway, my wider point is this: part of maturing is developing better and more effective social skills. Hence many people change a lot between their late teens and mid-20s.

Not everybody does though. If guilt-tripping and similar kinds of manipulative behaviour become the pattern someone follows throughout their life (i.e., they don't choose to grow out of these behaviours) that might make them evil, but let's try to avoid almost literally demonizing vast numbers of people who are probably just immature.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have no control over Faulty assumption here. You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. That's how it continues from generation to generation, by white people holding on to their money and power instead of working on ways to distribute it.

> You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. Do I? I'd be (genuinely) interested to know what kind of power you think I have to change the system. Because from my perspective as a middle class white person I feel just as powerless to change the system as everyone else.

There's not much that any one of us can do alone. Refusing to make excuses for an unjust system, and finding ways to make the shitty bargains required for survival that at least minimize the extent to which we support it, is the best sort of start I can suggest. We may be forced by circumstance, especially those of us who have given hostages to fortune, to be complicit. But we can recover some agency at least over the extent of that complicity.

I'd like to be able to suggest some group or movement here, but I've never been much of a joiner. The BLM folks I've heard from seem to have good heads on their shoulders, though. You could do a lot worse than to consider their suggestions on the question of "how do I help?"

I definitely do understand feeling powerless. But remember also that, as a middle-class white person, especially if you're male and the head of a conventional family household, that puts you pretty close to America's own idea of what America is. Believe it or not, there's a subtle kind of power in that. Things that might likely be ignored when said by - oh, someone like me, for example, who while also middle-class-ish white is a weird queer redneck loner and always has been - often are taken more seriously when said by someone who presents a gestalt of commonplace American normalcy, simply because of the sort of person who's saying them.

That really is a power all its own. If your social and professional circles are anything like mine, you can often enough find opportunities there to wield that power - gently, of course, and with real care for those with whom you're talking; to be, or to be seen as, a humorless woke thought editor, is to fail - in a way that might help redress injustice in a small way simply by convincing someone else to think about whether they should see the world a little differently from how they have before.

It's a small thing, for sure. And it can on occasion be a risk; if nothing else, to speak honestly from the heart on any subject constitutes a degree of vulnerability, and people don't always treat that kindly. But little in my experience worth doing is entirely unattended by risk, and little in my experience does more to ameliorate a sense of powerlessness than to hear someone say "you've given me a lot to think about", and then to see over time that they have thought about it.

It's subtle, as I said. It's a small thing, and it doesn't always work. But it is something. And even when you fail - which you will, sometimes at least - at least you will have tried, and even in that there's a kind of consolation to be found.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#155
Anecdotal, but in Detroit we don't have recycling pick up. One of our recycling centers started making recycling an event, you show up, organize everything by it's proper number and you get a free concert, and then they also throw pretty awesome parties (pre-covid, for everything) for the full moon and Detroit specific events. It's not perfect, but it was exciting to see people recycling for fun

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have no control over Faulty assumption here. You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. That's how it continues from generation to generation, by white people holding on to their money and power instead of working on ways to distribute it.

>You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. That's how it continues from generation to generation, by white people holding on to their money and power instead of working on ways to distribute it. An alternative way to look at it: what did western civilisation do to grow such a huge amount of wealth compared to the rest of the world? What could the rest of the world learn fro…

They gained a lot of that wealth by fucking over the rest of the world with superior military power. I'm British, and the British empire was literally 1/3rd of the world at one point. A lot of the infrastructure in Britain which enables to compete favourably against other countries in competitive markets was built off the back of trade in goods that we forced the populations of other countries to produce then took the profits of for ourselves.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You do have control over maintaining the system of privilege that you were born into. That's how it continues from generation to generation, by white people holding on to their money and power instead of working on ways to distribute it. An alternative way to look at it: what did western civilisation do to grow such a huge amount of wealth compared to the rest of the world? What could the rest of the world learn fro…

They gained a lot of that wealth by fucking over the rest of the world with superior military power. I'm British, and the British empire was literally 1/3rd of the world at one point. A lot of the infrastructure in Britain which enables to compete favourably against other countries in competitive markets was built off the back of trade in goods that we forced the populations of other countries to produce then took th…

Capitalism? That's what you're describing.

Is the 'forced' a stretch? Or was it based on slavery. I don't know.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#159

I agree that framing issues in a way that allows people to avoid feeling like they have done something wrong is more effective. I also think most activists are aware of this. I also think that crafting positive, uplifting messages requires a certain level of societal support. Hard to know what one could buy to stop police brutality right now, for instance. I suspect people will come up with things. When I see a prote…

The interesting corollary is that, while individual change may be positive, that's not what gets into the media. Just look at the news. What sells and gets clicks is violence, protest, and conflict. Only the occasional baby panda story makes its way through.

There was a story on HN recently about how protestors for the Micheal Brown case made headlines while the Eric Garner case did not, and it was because the Brown case had shades of grey, while the Garnet case was open and shut. Similarly, college rape cases with evidence don't make the headlines, while unsubstantiated accusations get picked up by feminist organizations and promoted. Another example, PETA makes waves with irritating campaigns that turn people off from the movement, while other animals rights organizations quietly do good.

But all those movements have a purpose. Even if they do not convince any individuals, while only preaching to the choir, they get important messages out there, expand the moral Overton window, and make their peer organizations' positive messages more likely to be heard and accepted.

Re: Want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

#160

Wait, this is great. It means the guilt trip is very good at entrenching a viewpoint. So if you want to fuck someone over, find something he's doing that's hurting him and guilt trip him till he doubles down. You can do this at the whole society level: for instance, no society that underemploys some large fraction of its populace will effectively compete against an equivalent one with efficient workplace participatio…

> Wait, this is great. Slave labor can be more "effective" than workers with rights.

Debt is much more effective than slavery. Unless misery is your goal, you can do a much better job at extracting value from people and keep a population working for your benefit with debt. It has a way of making both sides feel like what is happening is “right” while having the same effects.
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