GUILT & REDEMPTION
What I admired the most about Germany was its courage to own its past — it was willing to look at history as it was, rather than trying to hide, deny or distort it.
I found it particularly admirable having grown up in South Korea and being aware that not only Japan’s refusal to acknowledge or apologize for the atrocities that it had committed to its neighboring countries, but also its attempt at denying and rewriting history had been a constant source of tension in Asia.
What I wasn’t aware before moving to Germany was that Germans were not only willing to openly acknowledge and apologize for what happened, but they carried a heavy burden of guilt — two generations after the war — which saw no prospect of redemption. As it turned out, neither blankly denying the past nor acknowledging the past solved the problem.
‘Guilty until when?,’ they would silently protest, but unable to do so openly, afraid that no longer feeling guilty might appear evading or denying their responsibility for the past. Germans seemed tired of feeling guilty — having to carry the burden of guilt for the crime that not even themselves, but their ancestors, had committed.
Guilt, I sensed, was expressed in Angela Merkel’s open door policy during the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015 — which seemed to have come out of an exaggerated sense of moral responsibility, as if the open door policy was a chance to ‘redeem’ for the country’s past and prove to the world that they were indeed good. There was a difference between doing good out of a sense of moral responsibility and doing good in order to prove one’s goodness, under which one secretly feels insecure about one’s own goodness.
Guilt, I sensed, was also expressed in the form of Germans not being able to express freely what they really thought about the open door policy, for the fear of being labeled as racist or xenophobic. Guilt, I sensed, was also expressed in Germans jumping to a defense about how tolerant and inclusive Germany was when anyone accused of it not being so. Guilt, I sensed, was also expressed in Germans not being able to be openly proud of their nation, for the fear of being nationalistic. In all, it seemed that Germans had an underlying insecurity about their own inherent goodness.
Guilt, in essence, revealed Germany’s unhealed relationship with its past. Moreover, guilt was blocking Germany from getting on the path of collective healing process.
Psychologists talk about guilt as a ‘passive’ emotion. Why was guilt passive? Because it keeps you stuck in the past, blaming and beating yourself for up what you did, without being able to do something about it to change the situation.
How could Germans be redeemed of guilt and get on the path of collective healing process?
The first step would be to relieve Germans from their underlying insecurity about their own inherent goodness — challenge their unconscious belief that they are inherently bad based on the actions that their ancestors committed and get in touch with their inherent goodness, which can be undeniably felt internally when they can access the inner wholeness and goodness that has always been there within themselves, underneath the guilt, underneath the false belief and conclusions, which had been blocking the access.
Once they are securely rooted in their own inherent wholeness and goodness, they can look at, with a dispassionate distance, what happened: what happened was not because of the inherent nature of Germans, but unconsciousness that took over the collective psyche of the nation, which could have happened anywhere. Nazism took over the collective psyche of Germany, but Germans were not inherently Nazis. Separating their inherent nature from the forces of unconsciousness that took over them, therefore, would be the key to the collective healing process. ‘One could only act according to one’s own level of consciousness,’ Eckhart Tolle said, therefore presents the possibility of forgiving oneself as well as others.
It was no different from an individual healing process, which was liberating oneself from the problematic sense of self that one had falsely identified with — ‘there is something wrong with me.’ ‘I’m a bad person.’ Reconnecting with one’s inherent goodness and wholeness that had always been there within oneself presents a possibility of forgiving oneself for one’s past unconscious actions, as one can now clearly separate one’s inherent self from one’s level of consciousness at any given time, and being able to move on from the past, instead of keep beating oneself up and feeling guilty about what happened.
This was not disowning responsibility for what happened by calling ‘it could have happened anywhere,’ but being reminded of how unconsciousness could so easily take over the collective psyche, and being vigilant of these forces from ever taking hold again. As long as we, as a collective as well as as an individual, have reconnected with and became rooted in our inherent wholeness and goodness, from which we can be watchful of the forces of unconsciousness from taking hold, then we can minimize the chance of being overtaken by them.
And the energy that had been trapped in guilt — beating oneself up and feeling bad about oneself — can now be re-directed towards not only being vigilant about the unconsciousness ever taking hold again, but also actively creating and building the vision of a society that we believe in. No longer busy projecting or defending an ‘image’ of an inclusive, egalitarian & tolerant society as a defense to cover up the underlying insecurity about one’s own goodness, now we can look at society as it is and working on improving where inclusion, equality & tolerance is lacking.
Taking responsibility for what happened could focus on the past making retribution to the victims or the descendants of victims via compensation or preferential treatment. But true redemption would be working on actively creating a society that is inclusive, egalitarian and tolerant for ALL groups — here and now — and becoming an example for the world to envy and follow.