2004-02-16 8:53 p.m.
Guilty As Charged
As I was reading through a proposed transportation plan that's on the March 2 ballot (thus making myself an informed voter) and in particular cheering on the BART improvements (with a frisson of self-satisfaction, now that I'm able to take carpools and transit to work nearly every day), something occured to me -- we Bay Area people have the guilt thing down.
Maybe it's the area's Catholic heritage, from when the first Spaniards showed up to oppress indigenous Californias through the Mission system, on through waves of Irish, Italian and central American immigration. Maybe it's an outgrowth of our history of lawlessness, from the 49er and frontier days (when even representatives of the law weren't particularly lawful) to when California was part of the US but still remote as far as the rest of the country was concerned, to the political activism of the 1960s. Or perhaps it's just an artifact of living somewhere where people tend to assume we all have shared values and many people have a pet cause for which they're able and willing to make a case at a moment's notice, complete with pamphlets and citations. In any case, if you live in the Bay Area and don't feel guilty about something, you have no conscience and no soul.
But in the Bay Area, guilt isn't just for white people and hill dwellers any more! Potential sources of guilt lurk everywhere and one must be properly vigilant.
Let's start with that perennial favorite, white guilt. The Vegan Warrior scenes in Kim Wong Keltner's funny chick-lit book The Dim Sum of All Things are particularly dead-on illustrations of the Bay Area version. There's also rich guilt, where you make lots of money and own a nice house and car but feel the constant need to prove this doesn't make you a heartless yuppie, and straight guilt, where you feel bad because you can get married without a right-wing organization filing a lawsuit to try and stop you.
Then there's your job. I've addressed the large salary issue above, but being broke doesn't get you off the hook. Are you doing something every day that is nurturing and nonviolent and empowers the oppressed, such as massage or midwifery? Are you working for a folksy little nonprofit, or are you working for the man? (Incidentally, Bechtel, the granddaddy of Bay Area corporate evil, has been gradually pulling out of San Francisco, despite the company's history here. Apparently having protesters draped across your doorstep for 30 years has been getting pretty old. Also, people who really need the jobs will follow the company to Maryland, while those who can't or won't move will probably stay but be unemployed with a clearer conscience than they've had in years.)
And how do you get to your nurturing, nonviolent job? Bicycling is best for both you and the environment, walking is almost as good (though it doesn't have the air of committment that splashing out for a human-powered vehicle does), transit is also good and carpooling is marginally acceptable (preferably in a hybrid car, though there's a year wait to get one and you do intend to buy one as soon as possible, honest). Though if you really loved your Mother you'd find a way to stay away from the petroleum products altogether.
Speaking of Mother Earth, does your community have curbside recycling, or do you use your human-powered vehicle to take your recycling to the local recycling center? If you don't have curbside recycling, you should feel terrible for not having gone down to your local City Council meeting and agitated for it -- provided you could get a slot in in between the activists lined up ahead of you during the public comment period who are surely drawing attention to important issues such as global capitalism. Their issues, after all, are just as valid as your issues because we won't have consensus unless everyone has a voice, even the nutters. (The terms "civic engagement" and the militaristically-phrased "civic duty" are as quaint as a 1950s filmstrip; people who care about their community are "activists", and if you can't get everyone to agree with your point of view, you're a "failed activist.")
Of course, the recycling you do should be pretty limited anyway; you know you should be buying minimally-processed and minimally-packaged foods, since we live in a crowded urban area, landfill space is limited and that packaging takes a lot of energy and other resources to produce. The more meat and dairy products you eat, the guiltier you feel, since raising "meat" and dairy cattle takes up an enormous amount of natural resources and animals feel pain. If you're noble enough to pass up the meat (even the sustainably-raised, grass-fed stuff) you'd still better be sure to buy organic produce (because you know what horrible things pesticides do to the farmworkers, not to mention the effects of pesticide residues on your children) and compost as much as possible (even if you don't have a garden). Organic costs more and is sold in richer neighborhoods, both of which put it out of the reach of the poor, which feeds into the white/rich guilt. But maybe once you're laid off from Bechtel you'll have time to start that bicycle-powered organic produce delivery service to Richmond.
You also know you should minimize your consumerism in general, because of the landfill space and because of all the reasons that woman ahead of you at the City Council meeting cited in her fight against globalization. And you should shop locally, not just because it supports small businesses in your community but because you never know what the management behind the new chain in your neighborhood has been up to.
If it sounds like I can't make up my mind whether all this guilt is annoying or motivating, you'd be right. And damned if I don't feel guilty about that, too.