Collective Guilt

[DrZoidberg]

Do I feel past and present racial grievances need to be addressed, yes.
.

What do you mean by this? What concretely does it entail? To me it looks like you're saying that you don't feel guilt but you like to pretend you do, or something equally confusing. I don't get it. Either you're guilty or not.

My neighbor got in a car accident with a drunk driver. I do not feel guilty about it, as I don't drink and drive. I think the grievance needs to be addressed.

Seems pretty simple to me.

What has that got to do with collective guilt?

 

[DrZoidberg]

The collective is not guilty of crimes committed by individuals within the said collective. However, when living individuals that have been wronged by the guilty individuals seek a lawful remedy, the nonguilty can either help if they so choose or expect resistance if they choose to stand in the way.

Sure they are. If you're not, you're not part of the collective. That's the point of being part of a collective. A collective is a group of free individuals who are going together to act as one unit. But they're doing it willingly. Collectives are egalitarian with shared guilt or benefits. As opposed to a hierarchical organization, like a kingdom, or something more nebulous like a nation.

You seem to have a very narrow understanding of adjectives & nouns. Everything you've mentioned from collectives, egalitarianism, guilt to benefits carry nuances you've managed to pigeonhole; forming the horrendous spitball barreling across this messageboard.

Exhibit A: an individual person in a collective is no longer acting as a group when said individual does something the rest of the group did not do.
Exhibit B: feeling guilt does not automatically mean that you are guilty
Exhibit C: not all collectives are egalitarian; a solid argument can be made that the USA is an elitist country
Exhibit D: not all collectives consists of entirely free individuals (I'd give an example but a mob of white people will jump down my throat for bringing racism/slavery into the discussion)

I explained what the word means. You explained how, there's corner cases where it can get blurry. The two posts don't contradict one another

 

[repoman]

What would Machiavelli have to say about collective guilt?

 

[Trausti]

What would Machiavelli have to say about collective guilt?

Use it against those you seek to destroy.

 

[steve_bank]

I predict nothing but good things for this thread. It could very well be the most productive discussion in the history of the internet.

Oh man, now I feel terribly guilty....the guilt trip you just laid on me is unbearable.

 

[steve_bank]

Guilt and empathy are two different feelings.

I have empathy for what blacks went through, but I do not carry a sense of guilt for being born white during some of the worse of racism and Jim Crow which I had nothing to do with.

 

[Gospel]

You seem to have a very narrow understanding of adjectives & nouns. Everything you've mentioned from collectives, egalitarianism, guilt to benefits carry nuances you've managed to pigeonhole; forming the horrendous spitball barreling across this messageboard.

Exhibit A: an individual person in a collective is no longer acting as a group when said individual does something the rest of the group did not do.
Exhibit B: feeling guilt does not automatically mean that you are guilty
Exhibit C: not all collectives are egalitarian; a solid argument can be made that the USA is an elitist country
Exhibit D: not all collectives consists of entirely free individuals (I'd give an example but a mob of white people will jump down my throat for bringing racism/slavery into the discussion)

I explained what the word means. You explained how, there's corner cases where it can get blurry. The two posts don't contradict one another

There is nothing blurry about what I said, you may want to get that checked out. You spoke in absolutes (about "the word") as if a collective regardless of individual actions remains a collective. I provided an example of how that is not true for any collective. A collective is "done by people acting as a group" if one person is not doing what the group is doing that person is not acting as a group and as such is not a part of a collective during the said act.

 

[Gospel]

Guilt and empathy are two different feelings.

I have empathy for what blacks went through, but I do not carry a sense of guilt for being born white during some of the worse of racism and Jim Crow which I had nothing to do with.

Guilt and feeling guilty are two different things. No need to bring empathy into this.

 

[JohnG]

My father was not racist but two of my uncles were certainly racists and open about it. Do I feel guilty in anyway about it being in my white family, no.

Do I feel a collective guilt as a white person for past grievances, no. Do I wear a crown of thorns, no.

Do I feel past and present racial grievances need to be addressed, yes.

I do not walk around carrying the weight of actions done by others.

No one is asking you to carry the weight of actions done by others, but here is a question. What benefits of the actions of others do you enjoy?

An inconvenient concept to many...

 

[Patooka]

I predict nothing but good things for this thread. It could very well be the most productive discussion in the history of the internet.

Oh man, now I feel terribly guilty....the guilt trip you just laid on me is unbearable.

Then go sit in the corner and think about what you've done. You haven't just let me down; you've let yourself down.

It's okay steve_bank, I'm not angry with you. I'm just disappointed.

 

[DrZoidberg]

You seem to have a very narrow understanding of adjectives & nouns. Everything you've mentioned from collectives, egalitarianism, guilt to benefits carry nuances you've managed to pigeonhole; forming the horrendous spitball barreling across this messageboard.

Exhibit A: an individual person in a collective is no longer acting as a group when said individual does something the rest of the group did not do.
Exhibit B: feeling guilt does not automatically mean that you are guilty
Exhibit C: not all collectives are egalitarian; a solid argument can be made that the USA is an elitist country
Exhibit D: not all collectives consists of entirely free individuals (I'd give an example but a mob of white people will jump down my throat for bringing racism/slavery into the discussion)

I explained what the word means. You explained how, there's corner cases where it can get blurry. The two posts don't contradict one another

There is nothing blurry about what I said, you may want to get that checked out. You spoke in absolutes (about "the word") as if a collective regardless of individual actions remains a collective. I provided an example of how that is not true for any collective. A collective is "done by people acting as a group" if one person is not doing what the group is doing that person is not acting as a group and as such is not a part of a collective during the said act.

Dude, that's, what the word means. Yes, reality is messier than ideological slogans.

In a democracy does the people really have the power or are other factors at play? It's still what the word democracy means.

 

[Trausti]

I thought by collective guilt we mean “all Jews are responsible for killing Jesus.” That sort of thing.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I thought by collective guilt we mean “all Jews are responsible for killing Jesus.” That sort of thing.

Yes. Exactly. In that statement we want all the Jews to have agreed to the killing of Jesus. Ignoring the realities of iron age civilization. It's simply a handy way to justify murdering Jews.

The concept of collective guilt has problems when applied to the real world.

Communist countries are officially collectives. But members of that collective will get shot if they disagree with their egalitarian chairman who is more equal than others.

A real life example. Sweden and Denmark are collectivist cultures. We will defer to the views of the collective. But we are empowered. Opinions voiced by our leaders are merely seen as suggestions and will be ignored if most people disagree. Which can make it frustrating being the boss. This is deeply ingrained into the Scandinavian cultures. As opposed to more individualistic cultures like USA and UK where the president of a company assumes, correctly, that he will be obeyed by his employees.

 

[steve_bank]

I thought by collective guilt we mean “all Jews are responsible for killing Jesus.” That sort of thing.

I heard that as kid in the 50s.

I shoud have clarifie context to today in the OP.

By collective guilt I mean holding descendants of perpetrators of human rights abuse accountable for the past.
hat to shame whites today. I do ot buy that or allow myself to be handed a guilt trip for being born white.

Should modern Germans be made to feel guilty for the Holocaust? They should be aware and be guided by it today, but not feel ashamed for being German.

Same for whites today, No shame for neing white, but culturally we are somewhat guided now by the abuses of the past.

 

[Swammerdami]

The entire US economy? That's a bold statement. Do you have evidence for this?

...
In those days many of the rich were those who dealt in cotton and slavery

This was a pre-oil, pre-Industrial Age society.

Innovation was fueled by the wealth created in the cotton or slave trade.

All in a society benefit from the innovation made within the society.

This claim intrigued me so I did a bit of research. Results aren't conclusive, but still might be interesting.

Starting with an established list of the wealthiest Americans (relative to the U.S. GDP of their time), there are 12 names who died before 1860. (The top three on this list were much wealthier than the other nine.) All but three of the men were largely self-made.

John Jacob Astor 1763-1848 :
. . . . New York, fur and opium trading, real estate
Stephen Girard 1750-1831 :
. . . . Penns., shipping, banking
Stephen Van Rensselaer 1764-1839 :
. . . . New York, landowner -- inherited

Elias Hasket Derby 1739-1799 :
. . . . Mass., shipping, privateering
Israel Thorndike 1755-1832 :
. . . . Mass., shipping, privateering, industrialist
John Hancock 1736-1793 :
. . . . Mass., merchant -- part. inherited
George Washington 1732-1799 :
. . . . Virg., real estate, planting (tobacco) -- inherited
Thomas H. Perkins 1764-1854 :
. . . . Mass., shipping (slaves, furs, opium)
John McDonogh 1779-1850 :
. . . . Maryland & New Orleans, shipping, real estate
Samuel Slater 1768-1835 :
. . . . Rhode Island, textile production (cotton)
Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790 :
. . . . Penns., publishing
Peter Chardon Brooks 1767-1849 :
. . . . Mass., insurance of ships (mostly slave-traders' ships)

The only planter was Washington, and he planted tobacco. Only one of the names is associated with cotton, and he operated textile mills in New England. (There are few slave-owners on the list; those few freed at least some of their slaves.)

 

[RVonse]

I think that white guilt is just narcissism. It's for pJimathetic white people trying to inflate their own importance by admitting to various crimes. Only so that they get to feel that they could have committed the crimes if only they'd wanted to. No they couldn't.

American slavery was initiated by colonial subjects to the British crown. The number of white people who benefitted from the slavery is tiny. Of those living today very few has benefitted one iota.

This is a common misconception about how wealth works. When the Nazi's seized the Jewish gold or Idi Amin seized the Asian's property they didn't make any money from it. It was almost immediately a loss to the German and Ugandan economies. The concentration camp system was a net loss to the German economy. Stalin thought the Gulag slaves would boost the Soviet economy. Nope. All it did was to make USSR lose money.

The white people who made money from African slavery mostly wasted it, and it's questionable if it has benefited any white people today. Current American wealth creation comes from the industrial economies in the north. It's quite likely that the white people who were engaged in the slave sector, were made relatively poorer by it, compared to their northern white nationals, because they were in the slave trade.

My point is that we can make a group of people impoverished without it actually benefitting anybody in the long run. In the long run, those whites who engaged in the slave trade, most likely, aren't among the elites of the current US economy.

edit: The clever thing about the modern capitalist economy is that it makes each slave into it's own slaver. We use the threat of not keeping up with the Joneses as an incentive to make people a hell of a lot harder than slaves ever did. And even better, we don't even have to guard them or punish them. The workers today do it to themselves. It's a brilliant system that outperforms a slave economy every time.

That makes it very hard to calculate what the current white Americans benefitted from American slavery. Most likely it was nothing. Most likely the transatlantic slave trade was a stupid idea that never should have begun. Started by greedy and stupid short sighted colonials who couldn't do maths for shit.

Agree with this 100%

 

[Gospel]

Yeah, that's a pretty damn decent take indeed from DrZoidberg I'll say that.

Edit: Prematurely hit post button, I meant to add, too bad it doesn't take into account how important slave labor was to the development of the Caribbean, North & South America as a whole. It's not only about how much money some white dude made.

 

[Elixir]

Yeah, that's a pretty damn decent take indeed from DrZoidberg I'll say that.

Edit: Prematurely hit post button, I meant to add, too bad it doesn't take into account how important slave labor was to the development of the Caribbean, North & South America as a whole. It's not only about how much money some white dude made.

Again, the number of people who benefited from that development were relatively few.

 

[Gospel]

Yeah, that's a pretty damn decent take indeed from DrZoidberg I'll say that.

Edit: Prematurely hit post button, I meant to add, too bad it doesn't take into account how important slave labor was to the development of the Caribbean, North & South America as a whole. It's not only about how much money some white dude made.

Again, the number of people who benefited from that development were relatively few.

Railroads were critical infrastructure that everyone benefited from just to give you one example. The railways generated a lot of wealth and aided in the development of the USA that every US citizen benefits from today.

 

[Gospel]

Look up the history of Wall Street. Wall Street (that everyone benefits from today) was built on the back of slavery under the Dutch. Then Englishmen took it over and abracadabra, they open up a slave trade there themselves and did other market-related stuff there as well to ultimately launch the stock ticker soon after. The English just continued what the Dutch were already doing so it wasn't a change in venue at all.