It's Impossible To Be Blameless

It’s no secret that some individuals are very skilled at using guilt as a tool to manipulate us.

Politicians are particularly good at consolidating power by championing a particular class of victims and portraying everyone else as guilty.

It’s a proven tactic and one that far too many of us unwittingly play into without realizing how it allows power-seekers to control us.

What makes us vulnerable to this type of manipulation is a desire to be seen as above reproach.

To put it in slightly different terms, we operate from an irrational fear that someone will call us out as bad.

The problem with this is that, despite our best efforts, none of us is perfect.

As Paul Rosenberg puts it:

"The only way to be completely unassailable – where no one can slap blame upon you for anything – is to be dead, or very nearly so.”

The people who use weaponized guilt are often highly skilled at distorting anything we do as something bad.

The proper response to individuals who seek to obtain power from our guilt is to recognize that they have no moral standing and to ignore them.

Instead, we must accept that it’s impossible to be blameless.

This means when we make mistakes, we should fix them and continue pressing forward.

We don’t have to be perfect to want to have a hand in improving the world around us.

But our motivation should come from a desire to build rather than from a sense of guilt.

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