It is worth being reminded that we are constantly producing guilt, a guilt that far exceeds the basic fundamentals of daily living. There is of course a good kind of guilt, which arises out of the relation between the guilty subject and others who are in a state of immiseration, in which impoverishment stands in contrast to the better off state of the guilty, which serves as an internal claim on future energy flows for the immiserated, hopefully progressing to stability sometime in the future.
Similarly, there is a kind of guilt (or shame) in which one judges one's effort or contribution to be not enough in terms of one's ability, so one is spurred to work past whatever limitations like motivation or skill level are presently in place.
But with the ongoing extreme concentration of wealth and resources, there is a constant squeezing and rending of the power relations of a majority of the population, so that any kind of measure or calibration of one's own guilt in relation to others becomes impossible. One is either disgustingly privileged or a useless worm, and the state of anxiety that arises from this amounts to a general burning sense of anguish that can't be put out, and which has no real directionality or applicability beyond self hatred and/or despair.
There can be unexpected benefits from this state, such as a radical spiritual break from conventional ideology and lifestyle, and perhaps a decoupling from traditional means of power maintenance and an acceptance of lower levels of energy consumption and living standard, which for the imperial citizen benefits all of humanity.
But there are also serious problems with this state as well. If one never values oneself in one's relations to others, or one becomes exhausted with the possibility that one is hopelessly out of reach of any kind of connection to one's suffering fellow beings, then further exploitation is possible from those who know how to manipulate such situations, or further abuse is possible from those giving up on the claims of others, or whatever.
More generally, larger effects can be discerned over hundreds of years with the right hindsight. There does seem to be a connection between guilt and the spiritual and ideological turn away from the earth that can be observed in Christianity for example, which from our standpoint today, appears as a terrible mistake with catastrophic consequences.
