People don’t exist alone – we exist in society – peacefully, socially, economically, and even empathetically. Very few people can survive true isolation, living only off the land. Just as a newborn will absorb diseases from its mother, we absorb guilt from the human machine through our reliance upon it.
Just as the economic money-blood flows through a society, guilt and innocence are transferable. And as much as it is more an intense bond to have empathy and love flowing within a family or communal group of people, guilt and innocence flow more intensely through families.
This is simply the way things are, this isn’t an opinion. I won’t speculate about how things should or shouldn’t be.
It happens frequently that someone commits a crime so heinous and destructive that the guilt of the crime overwhelms their personhood; no amount of torture or pain in this world could ever make up for the damage caused by this (hypothetical) crime.
Thus, the guilt spills over to the family and community around the guilty criminal – does this community ignore the crime, or do they hold the criminal accountable?
Too often, situations in our world end with unanswered injustice. The loose ends of innocence are mounting in number, and as the guilty walk free, victims unable to do the same, the family and society which accepts that guilty person also absorbs the guilt.
In this way, the families of the murdered police are guilty. In this way, all American citizens are guilty of ignoring the largest genocide our planet’s ever witnessed. In this way, to become aware in America and not act is to become guilty.
This is only the way it is. This is not belief.
This is why too many people have such a skewed version of guilt and innocence – it hides their own, personal guilt of inaction. Too often, we view guilt as a decision for authority, and we outsource our moral reasoning to lawyers, who view guilt as non-transferable. Guilt is transferable (to the degree that it is unpunished), and we don’t need to pay a lawyer to know it; we don’t need to pay a priest to know what’s a crime.
This societal guilt-leak I’m speaking of is what occurs when a crime goes unpunished. It is attempting to understand the degree to which the inaction of society can cause an increase in guilt of another person.
Yes – a person can become guilty by participating peacefully with the already guilty, yet unprosecuted. All that remains is for we human beings to become aware of our own ability to look within ourselves for moral timeless guidance, and to judge innocence and guilt for ourselves.
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