Guilt of a White Girl

Less than three months till graduation. Perhaps the looming specter of the “real world” magnifies every choice I make into epic proportions. If I don’t get to the March on Washington, the world won’t end. If I go to live in Scotland because I find life more pleasurable there, the American peace movement won’t shrivel up and die. But I will be admitting that there are limits to what I’m capable of achieving. To someone who’s always been the best and the brightest, it’s a difficult admission to swallow. With the sense of inadequacy comes an overwhelming sense of guilt: the strange and self-defeating activist guilt of a white, working-class American woman. What Starhawk would call the voices of the self-hater and the judge scream at me in righteous rage:

“You have no right to be stressed out, living in such luxury compared to the rest of the world!”

“There are activists with twice as many committments who devote twice as much time to peace!”

“You should be doing more!”

“You have the ability to get people together, you need use that ability and organize for peace!”

“You know what evils are happening in the world, so you need to educate others!”

“You’re not doing enough — and if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem!”

“You can’t go to Scotland, you’re needed here, in the belly of the beast!”

Where are these voices coming from? They certainly don’t sound like the voices of equality, solidarity, and freedom which are the ideals to which I cling. They sound remarkably like the hierarchical, dehumanizing system we’re trying to transform. It seems ironic that the mechanics of war are so deeply internalized that its tiresome dialogues apply themselves even to the movement for peace. But once I recognized these dialogues, I was able to isolate them, and look at what they’re really saying.

They don’t argue for peace at all. Like a retrovirus, war uses the immune system of its host to protect its reproduction. I want peace. I long for it, plan for it, dream of it… So what better disguise for the systems of war than my deepest desire for peace? My empowerment is mutated into ego, making me fear that the movement will collapse without me. My unhappiness with Los Angeles is belittled and denied. My admiration for other activists is twisted into a sense of inadequacy. And perhaps worst of all, the pursuit of peace within myself becomes a battleground where fears, desires, and guilt rip apart my sense of purpose and agency and hope.

To pit the needs of the individual against the needs of the movement is something only a war culture could do. The best soldier, the best corporate worker, the best citizen, is one who cares more about the whole than about their own well-being. Someone who would suffer relentlessly, without question, in the name of the group. In order to break the cycle of war, we need to question our suffering, and weigh the gains with the consequences. There are many sacrifices we can make in order to achieve our goals. But when those sacrifices become personally damaging, then they are no longer helping reach those goals. My mother pointed out that I won’t be much good to anyone if I have a nervous breakdown.

I am resisting the culture of war. I am silencing the voices that tell me I’ll never be good enough. I am admitting my limitations and pushing them gently, with respect, not tearing through just to prove something. I am taking care of my own needs, in an attitude of self-respect rather than selfishness. And I am working for peace, in the ways which are feasible and effective and meaningful in my life.