A Guilty Week

I feel guilty about everything.

If I take any action that leads to the slightest negative consequences for anyone, by and large I will feel guilty. There are of course exceptions to that rule, as some people are truly not worth the energy that this guilt would cost me. But mostly any possible joy I can have from a situation will be tempered by the potential that it costs someone else the same joy.

I realised yet another aspect to this early in the week. I heard of something tragic and I instantly felt guilty for my own inaction in remedying the situation. I engaged in a hypothetical understanding of the situation, yet the only hypothetical I would allow was the one that made me feel the most guilty. More than this, I began to feel guilty that my own guilt was de-railing the true tragedy of the event and that I was being selfish.

Can I actually do anything or not do anything without feeling guilt? I am getting pretty sick of it myself and I cannot imagine how tired my friends must be of my constant efforts to martyr myself. I hope that I can get this under control and at some point, feel worthy of the compassion that they show me at every possible opportunity.

Or perhaps I will feel guilty for taking up their time too.

-The English Student

Earth Hour?

The cynic that I am was quite reluctant to embrace the so-called 'Earth Hour'.

For those of you not currently sitting in darkness, allow me to explain the concept. For one hour in the evening, all lights across the globe are supposed to be switched off in some kind of bid to save energy. Apparently many major landmarks across the globe are taking part, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge and The National Aquatic Centre in Beijing.

But honestly, what use is this? How much energy will really be saved with this minor gesture towards positive environmental attitudes. It is probably a safe bet that the energy used to spread information about this 'Earth Hour' outweighs the actual energy saved. Perhaps I am setting up a straw man to defeat here and actually avoiding the main point of this gesture. The main issue here must be to create awareness and a sense of solidarity across the world. We can surely address climate change together with such positive actions.

I do not, however, buy into this. Surely a more efficient 'Earth Hour' would include turning off all electricity for one hour, rather than just lights. Surely if we truly understood the massive ramifications of our grotesque use of energy we would dedicate more than an hour to this cause. Surely such an 'Earth Hour' would be less of a novelty and more of a foreboding anticipation of the future. 'Earth Hour' seems to be highly appropriate in that it shows the half measures that we take to solve problems that are not overtly threatening us. While these gestures may assuage some of our collective guilt, they do almost nothing to actually address the problem.

Until climate change becomes a more obvious problem or until we grow as a species to gain some real foresight we will remain the generation that failed the planet.

-The English Student