My most splendid Jeffrey,
You confide in me, your friend and mentor, that you feel guilt transacting with Mr. Siddiqui because you foresee that he may abuse our peace instruments, potentially threatening the civilians domiciled around Mr. Siddiqui’s failing political state. The malady can be explained by your unwitting conditioning to deploy guilt in instances where it is impossible to attain revenge. You formed a conscience as a means of counter-repressing your mother, just like me! In response to her excessive repression, and consistent with any rational person, you availed yourself of second-order pleasure, and became a “good boy” – all the while your mother wallowed in misery. You conditioned yourself for years to deploy this strategy against your mother. Even though the guilt contaminated otherwise pleasurable acts, the unlimited, furtive, unconscious revenge against your feminine oppressor outweighed the ephemeral gratification of a fleeting desire. This immense rapture in limitless vengeance, however, so thoroughly conditioned your response to every instance of repression. You generalized a revenge-schema – which only functions against the sadistic oppressor you know and love – onto every instance of repression.
Just as I failed to facilitate an illegal mining operation in an abandoned rock quarry, so too do you feel guilt for potentially contributing to harming a class of persons domiciled around Mr. Siddiqui’s failing political state. In my case, I unwittingly deployed a stratagem of revenge against an identifiable oppressor: while I lacked a personal relationship with the rock quarry owner, he was still identifiable in theory: he had a name, a central nervous system, even a family! I could, in theory, determine his sadistic impulses. In your case, though you deploy the same strategy, not only do you lack a personal relationship with anyone harmed, but you also cannot identify who will be harmed. You cannot ascertain who, if any, of these people will find pleasure in harming you! If my “relationship” with the rock quarry owner was too attenuated to deploy a stratagem of revenge, surely your relationship with an unidentifiable class of persons is attenuated, too.
Even assuming in arguendo the entire class seeks retribution against you, these indigent persons lack the pecuniary resources and logistical might to actually harm you. Recall as a child your mother could separate you from her milky glands as you were a 1/3 of her size. She could revoke your karate privileges because she owned a car. Even the stranger-landowner could exclude me from his fallow land because he could marshal the repressive state apparatus and force me to forfeit my spoils of enterprise! Forget the fact that you cannot even identify who constitutes the putative class of vicariously harmed persons: can you identify what this putative class of harmed persons threaten against you? What repressive act could they do to prompt your counter-repressive repartee? They can neither harm your life nor your property, as the class of potentially harmed persons dwell tens of thousands of miles away from your nearest offshore account. They cannot harm your reputation, either, as an honest arms dealer. Even if the entire class of persons veil their sadistic impulses under the guise of “justice” or “retribution” or “righteous indignation,” it is simply an impulse, because they lack the tools to actually repress you.
In summa: the only rational reason to have a conscience is to counter-repress the sadistic repressor because the happiness of unlimited, furtive, and unconscious revenge outweighs the displeasure of guilt. You feel guilt towards a class of persons that can neither be identified nor repress you. Thus, the discontent caused by your guilt must outweigh any prospect of second-order happiness, and should therefore be absolved. A rational stratagem producing limitless pleasure has perverted into a neurotic condition producing limitless guilt!
In order to fix you, I recommend causing harm to the entire class of potentially harmed persons around Siddiqui’s failing political state. Call your financial advisor and urge him to cease all humanitarian “donations” to the surrounding region. Disrupt the logistical supply chain. Sabotage public infrastructure. Endeavor to harm these people to the top of your intelligence. What harm actually caused to the putative class circumscribes the guilt you can justify feeling. This remedial measure functions to ground your guilt to acts society could justifiably repress. As opposed to feeling guilt for acts whose consequences have yet to emerge, feel guilt for acts you have, in fact, caused!
In the alternative, you could, like me, absolve yourself of guilt altogether and forgive the feminine oppressor. I originally contrived my conscience to substitute the limitless pleasure of breast-feeding. Just like my binky, the unlimited, furtive, unconscious pleasure in vengeance substituted the original oral pleasure. But I no longer need a limitless source of pleasure derived from a unilateral source as I did as a child. As a mature adult, I consciously repudiate the existence of a panacea – and with it, the right to limitless pleasure. I no longer need the counter-repressive strategy I call the conscience because I forgive my mother for sundering me from her breasts. I realize now that I am a separate person from her. I do not have a right to her body like I do my own. Her body is not fallow land to excavate to the fullest extent of the law. In order to respect a woman’s body, I have to repudiate guilt!
So that, my dear Jeffrey, is how and why you can and should overcome guilt.
Liberté, egalité, fraternité,
Edwin Buttered
Chief Executive Officer, Chairman, Buttered Up, Inc.