Guilt!!
Peter Sawtell, the Executive Director of Eco-Justice
Ministries, offers some constructive thoughts about the uses of guilt
as a motivator for good causes.
NOTE: Sawtell offers balanced reporting:
He has more recently shared a very nice reflection
on grace. [1-11-02]
[11-19-01]
A cartoon from the New Yorker (10/22/01)
shows the sales floor of an automobile dealership. There's a rounded
little car with a sticker in the window, a couple looking at the car,
and the salesman is saying, "It runs on its conventional
gasoline-powered engine until it senses guilt, at which point is
switches over to battery power."
Guilt is an often-used motivator. It can be remarkably
effective for the short term, but it does not hold up well for the long
haul. Nagging may get some people to act, but the goal of their action
is to get rid of the pain and annoyance of the guilt, and not to make a
positive difference.
Write a check. Make a phone call. If that gets rid of
the guilt, fine. But those actions are rarely tied to a growing
commitment to the cause. Hooking people's guilt seldom inspires them to
take future actions on their own.
And, clearly, the guilt trip won't work on those who
don't already have some degree of commitment and involvement. The
amazing auto of the cartoon will never switch over to battery power if
the driver doesn't care about the environment.
Appealing to guilt is the easy way out for the
organizer. It does not demand a lot of complicated thought or strategy.
It does not need a fresh interpretation of the issues or the options.
All it takes is an effective hook into some deep-seated sense of
obligation.
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Another New Yorker cartoon (9/17/01) shows
two men of the classical 'cave man' type. Both men are barefoot, dressed
only in animal skins draped over one shoulder. One expounds to the
other: "At first I'm pissed because she's all 'Fur is death! Fur is
death!' But then I think, Dude! She's naked!"
Continued appeals to guilt tend to get people
"pissed." The listeners become genuinely interested and
motivated only when they find something that is positive, attractive,
and interesting about the message.
Appealing to guilt is easy. Appealing to a positive
vision is harder.
We have to figure out for ourselves what the vision is
all about. Folk with a passion about an issue can start to see the
reason for their efforts as "intuitively obvious to the most casual
observer." It can be a surprisingly difficult challenge to back up
and explain again just why working on the issue is important. That
explanation, though, is essential to attracting new blood to the effort.
Then we need to find a compelling way of presenting
that vision to others. Such a project is hard enough with a homogenous
audience. It is even worse when we're reaching out to a diverse group.
As the cartoon suggests, some of our listeners may be
attracted to different parts of the goal. "She's naked!" has a
very different appeal than the ethics of animal rights, but either
approach might be effective in stopping the killing.
In a more contemporary and realistic case, some may
want to work on toxic waste issues because of the tie to racism in the
location of waste dumps, others because of an interest in children, and
still others because of a passion about cancer. All of these, and more,
are important and legitimate reasons to be involved. But it makes it
hard for the organizer to know what approach to use. It is so much
easier to fall back on guilt -- "have you written your Senators
about the new bill on Superfund cleanups?" -- than to compose a
persuasive philosophical appeal to a diverse constituency.
Guilt -- and the companion emotional hooks of fear and
anger -- are frequently used to kick people into action in short-term
campaigns. Look at the action alerts that you probably receive on any
number of issues. Do those motivators work for the long term? No. But
they do work pretty well for mobilizing the troops for this week's
crisis.
Those of us who are trying to do effective, long-term
social change work -- who are trying to bring about personal,
institutional and societal transformation toward eco-justice -- have a
tricky balancing act. Sometimes we need to use guilt, fear and anger in
a quick message to our diverse audiences, because it is so important to
elicit a response on an immediate issue. But we also need to remember
that over-use of that strategy tends to "piss off" people,
instead of motivating them. And the emotional appeals won't ever bring
new people into our constituency. Frequently, we need to shift
strategies. We need to find the time, energy and focus to go back to the
basics, and explain again and again why the cause is important.
It is only when we can proclaim our vision
persuasively that we will really motivate people to invest themselves in
the good work of caring for all of God's creation.
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"Lasting change happens when people see for
themselves that a different way of life is more fulfilling than their
present one." -- Eknath Easwaran
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Shalom!
Peter Sawtell, Executive Director of Eco-Justice
Ministries
web page (www.eco-justice.org)
e-mail at ministry@eco-justice.org
