THE MORAL ECONOMY OF GUILT - Essay by Wilfred McClay

The following podcast is an audio version of an essay that attempts to peer into the spiritual and moral machinery of our culture and discern its workings. I have personally returned to this essay many times since its publication, and I regard it as one of the most important for getting a handle on what is happening in our country at the present time. A teaser: "How can one account for the rise of the extraordinary prestige of victims , as a category, in the contemporary world? The explanation is traceable to the extraordinary weight of guilt in our time, the pervasive need to find innocence through moral absolution, to discharge one’s moral burden, and to the fact that the conventional means of finding that absolution”or even of keeping the range of one’s responsibility for one’s sins within some kind of reasonable boundaries”are no longer generally available. Making a claim to the status of certified victim, or to identification with victims, however, offers itself as a substitute means by which the moral burden of sin can be shifted and one’s innocence affirmed." You can read the essay online here: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-moral-economy-of-guilt