The Moral Economy of Guilt: The curious process by which notions of sin and guilt have become both illusory and omnipresent.
Wilfred M. McClay
On the ways people feel about and deal with guilt. Great discussion on forgiveness.
Especially interesting: why the interconnectedness and freedom new technologies offer open us to ever more reasons to feel guilty:
"In a world in which the web of relationships between causes and effects becomes ever better understood, in which the means of communication and transportation become ever more efficient and effective, and in which individuals become ever more powerful and effective agents, the range of our potential moral responsibility, and therefore of our potential guilt, expands to literally infinite proportions. In an ever shrinking and ever more interconnected world, it is theoretically possible for every living person to go anywhere that he or she wants to go, and to be made literally, or at least virtually, present to any other person, in ways that promise to become ever more vivid and high-definition in the future..."
Later attributes a recent glut of counterfeit trauma accounts to people trying to absolve their mounting guilts, just without traditional methods or assumptions. Good stuff.
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