Thanks for the positive responses even when I've been snarky.
I'm genuinely confused to as to what you mean here:
However, you were very clear above in your belief that there is no way, period, for me to not be ethically culpable.
That is incorrect. I do not believe that there is "no way, period", just that it is incredibly difficult.
No, the statement you just made above is incorrect. You said as much here:
Because they only way to avoid ethical culpability in your situation is to not exist. There is no, not being culpable in your situation with the exception of not existing altogether.
Yep.
Call me old fashioned :), but not existing is pretty much the bar for there being no way for it to happen.
I don't think you're old fashioned, I just think you're not thinking through all the possibilities if you think those two statements are equivalent.
I eliminated my own possibility of escaping culpability by literally, physically escaping because that involves privilege. You haven't mentioned another option, and you commented yes to my question in direct response to everything that the only way to avoid culpability is to not exist. Since you said that you would have to not exist to avoid culpability, then I have to stand by what I said that if that's the bar for things, then the bar is impossible. Where am I misunderstanding the progression?
In regards to the other thoughts:
Ok, so here's the issue with what you're saying. Of course I'm talking about the physical emotional state of feeling guilty. Of course I'm talking about the internals of it. That's all there is left in the argument.
We've both agreed that acknowledging the fact that we've benefited from the society is good. We've acknowledged the facts.
Great!
Sorry, I don't have time to respond to everything you said individually. I'm on the road and about to disconnect from the internet for a while; I will come back to this conversation, but it will be a week or so.
But in short--I think you're reading some things into my words that aren't meant to be there (which is, of course, my fault for not being clearer). What I meant when I said guilt, and what you mean when you say guilt are clearly not the same. Let me try it in different words to avoid the ones that seem to be a source of disagreement.
-We are responsible for the the society we live in.
-If our society is unfair, that is because of choices we make.
-Because the unfairness is often amorphous and subtle, it can be easy for people to disavow their individual responsibility and say "I'm not part of the problem".
-It's healthier, more honest, and more productive to acknowledge that individual responsibility, particularly in the cases where you are a beneficiary of a bias.
I definitely think there's a disconnect between what we're meaning by our words but some on the substance as well at least from how I'm reading your points.
For the individual points, I would agree that we are somewhat responsible for the society we live in. At least, we have some responsibility to work toward changes we want to see. However, I do not really agree that if society is unfair it's because of the choices we make if the we drills down to all individuals.
Let's use politics as an example. Are we (all collective and drilled down to each individual person) responsible for everything bad that's happened the past few years with Trump. What if I didn't vote for Trump? What if I actively opposed him, campaigned for Clinton, spent 80 hours a week trying to get him not elected? I would say at some point on that spectrum, at least, I would bear no responsibility for it happening or the resulting decisions. I get that this line of thought can lead to apathy and a "well it's not my fault" attitude, but I think it's a good example to prove that the statement "If our society is unfair, that is because of choices we make." is not universally true.
I guess there are two points overall. One, I don't think that we individually have personal responsiblity for not eliminating bad situations overall and existing inside them. Society is too vast. We can benefit from someting and not be at fault for the something we've benefited from. The second part is the fact that we are talking about guilt even though we are looking at things differently. I think that if we use the term guilt, then the majority of people will have a hard time separating in their mind factual guilt as you say from an internal problematic guilt. That's been my experience. I also see parallells here to the improved terminology of biases. I think it's been a good step to call out unconscious biases in terms of how we handle situations and see people in our mind due to media presentation, upbringing, etc. Rather than call everyone racist, a very loaded term, we call it out for biases, and can even truthfully indicate that minorities often have these biases against themselves. It's something we can fight and work towards, but we remove the loaded term of racism when people aren't out there throwing out racial slurs, calling the police for no reason on minorities, laughing at racist jokes, etc. It makes it easier for people to acknowledge the issues even inside themselves and is actually very accurate. I think this is the same thing. Let's acknowledge the problem - a biased system which we benefit from but also fully factually, one in which we are born into and one that we can and should work to eliminate. I think we can focus on that with the same perspective as the biases without taking the leap to the blame part, which will alienate more people, feel like an attack, and ultimately not be a true black and white issue (there's a continuum of responsibility that we could discuss for the societal issues, it's not clear cut).
