In a Washington Post piece titled "grappling with a wealth of guilt," we learn about the particular burdens of reluctant noblesse oblige, or at least the Adams-Morgan version thereof.

They are young people who have inherited or stand to inherit big money, and they are spending their post-college years living modestly and working to address the needs of the poor, hungry and politically disadvantaged. But the privilege they grew up with and the money coming their way nag at them in ways few people not in their position can fathom.

Now, it's easy to be snide about this sort of thing - dismiss it as a sort of earnest, modern-day Petit Trianon - which the article is quick to address. The meeting the author describes was, he says,

a rare chance for members of the Resource Generation, a nonprofit group whose 35-and-younger members devote themselves to philanthropic work for social justice, to talk about their guilt and their views on social inequalities without fear of eye-rolling from people who might view them as spoiled rich kids playing at helping the downtrodden.

Later he adds, "The young wealthy are keenly aware that there is little public sympathy for the moral doubts they struggle with. In a harsh economy, few people worry about the insecurities of heirs in their 20s and 30s who choose to work in social change philanthropy."

And yes, everyone in the piece does good work: they give to charity; one is a teacher; several work for non-profits. And they, too, have health and family problems. Nevertheless, parts of the article still read like parody, and the D.C. Young People with whom I spoke were not amused by what was perceived as a "seriously doubtful" "non-phenomenon" and unsuccessful attempt to be "edgy and contrarian." (Hey, Zagat is onto something!) Said one denizen sourly, "All I know is, when I used to work in a high-end hat boutique for a bit during college breaks, I can assure you that none of the moneyed youths to whom I sold $75 silk headbands appeared to have any serious qualms about the issue." (Different crowd, I guess.) Another queried, "in that picture why does the guy look like he's not standing on anything?" Perhaps the last word goes to the Logan Circle resident who wrote me, "yeah, there are rich people here, but if anything this feels like less of an issue in this economy...because so many of us are relatively lucky, just to be employed, fed, well, and dealing with a "survivor's guilt" that didn't exist a few years ago."

Because, here's the thing: there's a presumption here that the rest of the world is judging people...for being rich and living normally? For giving away money? For being conflicted? And, the thing is, we don't care. Most of us don't mind. Nice person who came into money and does good work? Great. We might envy the security, but I don't think we resent it. One guy in the piece says, "I definitely feel like I am at war between my desires instilled in me to eat out at nice restaurants and my better sense and principles," and I wanted to shout, "it doesn't help anyone if you don't go to a restaurant! Do it! If I had money, I would!" Like D.C., New York is full of rich people, many of them young. Some of them are, like these people, conscientious and civic-minded. Others, in Born Rich. Most of us are aware of this and aren't thinking about or resenting them nearly as much as they seem to imagine.

Here's what I do resent: when people pretend they can afford SoHo lofts on their artist incomes; when they're scrupulous about never paying a cent more than they owe at dinner because they think people are using them; when they complain about having to go on extravagant family vacations; and, most of all, when they talk about buying brownstones in "marginal neighborhoods." That's what we resent: not people having money, not their giving it to charity. I can even understand needing to vent about the guilt - although, don't you kind of get that off your chest? How often do you need to wallow in it? - and it's not their fault that someone wanted to profile them and left them open to cheap cracks from raging creative underclassers like me who, relative to much of the world, is still in a pretty well-fed percentile. It's all degrees of guilt and narcissism and analysis that, ironically, separates us further and further from any of the actual issues we're discussing.

The other evening, my grandfather, born very poor, reflected on feeling guilty "as a former Communist" for now living in such a swank area code. "I really feel like it's a sin," he said. "But at least there are like-minded people in the building." Then the doorman brought up some takeout.

Grappling With A Wealth Of Guilt [Washington Post]

In light of Sylvia Plath's son, Nicholas Hughes, committing suicide this week, as his mother did years ago, CNN is reporting that it's actually common for family members of people who have committed suicide to have suicidal tendencies themselves. A first-degree relative, such as a parent, sibling, or child, of a person who has committed suicide is four to six times more likely to try to kill themselves, said Dr. David Brent, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. According to studies on twins, suicidal behavior is 30 to 50 percent due to inherited factors. Even suicide victims' biological relatives who were adopted away show a greater rate of suicides.

According to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences depression may also be inherited. Researchers found that the children of depressed people had a similar structural difference in their brain. The data showed that even before the children and grandchildren of depressed people developed symptoms, they had a thinner brain surface than average.

Researchers believe this thinning of the cortex may interfere with the processing of emotional stimuli, but say the cause of depression and suicidal behavior is still a combination of genetics and environment. The rate of suicide in America is 10.9 suicide deaths per 100,000 people, which means suicide is still rare. "Genetics is not destiny," said Dr. Brent. "The odds are still very much against you having this happening to another relative."

But even though having these afflictions doesn't mean they will definitely be passed on, people often feel that they are responsible for their children's genetic disorders. ABC News reports that feelings of guilt may be becoming more common, since with advances in medicine we can often determine which conditions are genetic, or which parent may have passed on the gene for a disease.

Six years ago, when Marietta Drucker, then 76, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, her two daughters tested positive for the breast cancer gene a few weeks later. "I felt devastated. I felt sick about it. How could I give the people most precious to me in my whole life — my two daughters — this awful, awful gene," Drucker told ABC News.

Evolutionary psychologists believe that humans developed the emotion of guilt long ago to help compel us to help others and empathize. However, guilt can also be harmful, as it may cause people to be filled with a sense of shame that cuts them off from others, even when it's not warranted.

Dr. Philip R. Muskin, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University, says that even though technically it is a parent's fault when a child inherits a disease, parents shouldn't feel guilty about it. "A parent can't control the fact that her child has a disease, but she can emotionally take on the burden. Feeling guilty is a sly, emotional way to take control," says Muskin. "Ideally, the parent comes to the conclusion that 'this isn't my fault' and accepts there are things out of our control. Can people reach that point? They can. Is it easy? No."

[Image via Flickr.]

Suicidal Behavior May Run In Families [CNN]
The Heaviest Heart: Guilt And Genetic Disease [ABC News]

Barron YoungSmith gives the example of a hypocritical environmental consultant who has the gall to pursue a cross-continental relationship even as she preaches conservation.

Consider what happens when these two fly to see each other once a month. Since greenhouse gases emitted from high-altitude airplanes are thought to have several times the impact of ground transport, a carbon offset company would pin their romantic travels with the equivalent of 35 metric tons of CO2 each year. If that responsibility were divided evenly between the two, our sustainability consultant's lifestyle would be about six times worse for the environment than that of the average gas-guzzling American—and up to 10 times worse than that of the average San Franciscan. (Indeed, for her, breaking up would be about 10 times better for the environment than going vegetarian.)

Oh, and if you're driving? Even worse, you heedless solipsist! Indeed, by roughly calculating the number of long-distance couples in the country and tallying up the damage their travel has done, YoungSmith figures such hapless folks are pretty much single-handedly destroying the earth for the future generations they're so selfishly intent on begetting. The answer, of course, is a "Date Local" movement akin to our new conscientiousness about food and growing awareness of manufacturing practices.

Let's start thinking about "sex miles": Just how far was this person shipped to hook up with you? And how many times more efficient would it be to date someone within a 100-mile radius? If the movement spread globally, mirroring either the decentralized development of Local Food co-ops or the manifesto-and-chapter model that built up to the Slow Food movement's mega-confab this summer, its environmental benefits could multiply many times.

And, he adds, it wouldn't just help the planet: dating local would increase people's socialization - the implication is that such sad-sacks are slaves to their computer monitors — and the amount of sex they had, which would in turn result in important health benefits. Naturally, the author's tongue is, if not firmly, at least slightly in cheek: even he acknowledges the obvious drawbacks of enforcing such a policy:

Of course, like many eco-conscious attempts to instill social virtue, this proposal runs the risk of killing romance. Many a true human thrill—the high-octane cheeseburger! the long shower! the Chevy Suburban!—has been deflated by green evangelists out to render the personal political. And, in a way, long-distance dating is romantic precisely because it expends so much in the way of resources and effort...No, our Date Local movement won't be overbearing. It shouldn't try to break up every cross-country love odyssey. Instead, it will discourage this special type of conspicuous consumption at the margins, nudging people toward the realization that breaking up is in their own, and enlightened, economic self-interest.

In fact, the piece had the opposite effect on me: it made me realize that LD daters are one of the most marginalized and maltreated of subspecies! No one needs to be told the benefits of living in the same place! Does YoungSmith think people choose the agony of separation and loneliness deliberately? For the thrill of stressful travel, the inadequacy of scheduled phone calls, the awkwardness of getting to know each other anew each time and then the pain of parting after a visit? While there may be a few blithe souls who like the detachment of such a relationship, no one I know has regarded it as anything but a necessary evil. And leaving as huge an environmental footprint as he suggests? Most of us should be so lucky: we're at the mercy of high airfares and punishing work schedules. The LDR is one of the few things which has been unambiguously aided by modern technology — couples separated by necessity, or lonely folks who've had to look far afield to find love — and if anything, this beleaguered population should be getting a dispensation rather than a lecture!

This said, I'm all for Mother Earth and so I suggest that the rest of us form a counter-campaign: conserving a bit more to make up for our friends who can't. "Going Green for LDR" we'll call it, and live twice as locally if need be! Heck, I won't even take a car back from Ikea tonight if it means one couple can drive another two miles to see each other! We could even donate airmiles! "Dating locally", after all, doesn't make most of us feel smug — just lucky.

Date Local [Slate]

Says Newsweek's Johnnie L. Roberts:

Unofficially, profligacy became passé on Oct. 6, when disgraced Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld appeared at a congressional hearing after the firm's historic $600-billion bankruptcy. He encountered a blizzard of scorn over his half-billion-dollar compensation and baronial lifestyle: a $21 million Park Avenue penthouse, a $25 million estate in Greenwich, Conn., and an estimated $200 million art collection.

Since then, we've seen Vogue slumming it at Wal-Mart and luxury ad numbers drop.

It seems like even if the uberwealthy are not personally suffering, it's now in poor taste to flaunt what you've got. Call it conspicuous austerity: a newfound sensitivity has made restraint temporarily chic. And not all luxury brands can keep up: according to the New York Times,Time Style and Design, which closed before the economic downturn, now feels anachronistically tone-deaf as the totaled items "would cost more than $51 million, or about 340 times the annual income of its average reader." As one woman told The Guardian, "now, when someone admires my dress, I never say it is by Balenciaga or Bottega Veneta. I tell them it's an old Phillip Lim. This neatly conveys the message that, just like everybody else, I've cut back on shopping and am happy to wear something by a modest label." And according to the article, luxury goods makers are taking different tacks: "highlighting heirloom appeal, ", "cultivating a guilt-free image" by teaming up with charities, or allowing secret splurging with sites like Gilt.com, that send purchases in unmarked brown boxes. Says The Guardian article, "the web offers the perfect opportunity for a new breed of 'stealth shoppers', embarrassed about flaunting their wealth, or what is left of it."

While asceticism is a reality for most of the world right now, it seems unlikely that everyone with riches of this magnitude will be able to maintain such a low profile after the novelty really wears off: empathy has its limits, after all - that or the luxury industry will get wily enough to get around peoples' guilt altogether. The Depression, as we know, saw some of the starkest contrasts the country has ever known, and historically speaking, great poverty has never dampened the relative pleasures of money much. If restraint is in with people who can afford it, well, they can afford to get tired of it in a year, too - which is probably what the $175-billion global luxury market is counting on.

Luxury Shame [Newsweek]
Celebrating Luxury In The Time Of Melancholia [New York Times]
Stealth Shoppers Shun Stores And Splash Out On Luxuries Online [The Guardian]

Leibenluft presents us with a hypothetical: to make lo mein or to buy it. He finds that both have downsides (packaging; energy-inefficient appliances as opposed to the wasted food when cooking for one) and that ultimately it's kind of a wash. As he concludes, "what you eat almost always matters more, environmentally speaking, than how you eat it." That said, the energy overhead at a restaurant is enormous, so "environmentally speaking", it's a definite luxury.

Financially speaking, too: for most of us, the issue is probably at least as much fiscal. While it's a myth to claim that home cooking is always cheaper - anyone who's done it knows you have to scheme - cooking in a batch and eating off of it is far more cost-effective than getting takeout for each of those meals. We get takeout, for the most part, when we don't have time to cook, or if we are ill, or at the office, rather than as a day-to-day alternative. Certainly I for one am not going to order in Chinese when I have the time and energy to make from-scratch lo mein. Basically, it seems like if you have to ask "can I justify this on environmental grounds," you already know what the answer is. For my own part, I have a harder time justifying making a delivery guy bike through freezing rain so I can get a burger without leaving the house. As is usually the case with guilt, it's expensive (tip-wise). Much cheaper all around to sacrifice novelty (which is what we're really talking about here) and cook something for eight. Since I'm currently plowing into my third day of vegetable stew, I'm in a position to sermonize!

An Order Of Lo Mein With A Side Of Guilt [Slate]

Like most things related to my sexual assault, it took me a couple of days to really understand why this makes me so uncomfortable. For one, as I've said before, my sexual assault is not someone else's political issue. It has nothing to do with Sarah Palin's view on emergency contraceptives (which suck), or who paid for my rape kit or whether I have the right to have an abortion. It just doesn't. It has a lot to do with how the system treated me, and continues to treat me, how the prosecutors and police department tore my life open and left me hanging and violated my Constitutional rights. I want those things fixed, because that's the only justice I'm ever going to see. Those things have nothing to do with this election, and Barack Obama isn't likely to get me justice any more than Sarah Palin is.

And, let's be frank, a lot of rape victims struggle with guilt, and struggle with saying "no." I have. And so if I was asked — by a friend, say, who works for the Obama campaign — I would have difficulty saying no. Because I am willing to talk about it, right? And I don't want McCain elected, right? And yet the whole time, I would be feeling uncomfortable and obligated because in my opinion, I've been attacked enough this year. So, I wouldn't want to be asked. I wouldn't want to be thought of. And I wouldn't find refusing easy. My point remains, as it did on Monday, that recruiting for what was an as-yet unscripted ad among women you don't know — as Kiersten Steward seemed to be doing when she said, "this is a big ask and I haven’t seen a script" — is not quite the same as asking women who are already willing to talk (or have, as part of speaker's bureaus) about their assaults. That women can or would volunteer to do so is great, and a testament to the courage of those women. But not everyone is there, and not everyone would know how to refuse.

On top of that, I have a little experience with how campaign ads use crime victims, from when Tom Tancredo's campaign appropriated the image of my close friend's murdered client for an ad of his own. I was so angry, and he (and her family) were even more livid. And the details of my sexual assault are as easily appropriated for causes I disagree with — immigration reform, say, or tougher sentences or more invasive sex offender registries. Where would it stop? I'm not sure it would. Using my sexual assault for this kind of political purpose, as Lindsay acknowledges, would be to open myself up for attack and — which is worse, to me, as I open myself up to personal attack every day I write — to lose what little control I have of how my story is told, when I am ready to tell it.

So, I acknowledge what Ann, Amanda and Lindsay have to say about having a real victim talk about their sexual assaults, and talk about the issues in the campaign, from who pays for rape kits to the necessity of offering victims access to emergency contraception — though, frankly, I think it's as disingenuous to suggest that Palin supports raping women as it is to suggest that Obama supports infanticide. But, for me, from my experience, I remain uncomfortable at the thought that my sexual assault and my politics would mean that someone would think to recruit me for a political ad. And I can't say that I'm super-pleased that so many people seemingly think I ought not to be.

On Recruiting Rape Survivors For Political Ads [Feministing]
Over the Line [Pandagon]
Obama Recruiting Rape Survivors for Campaign Ads [Firedoglake]
Palin Opens Up On Controversial Issues [CBS]
Obama Sought Rape Victim For Ad [Politico]
Tancredo Ad Writers Are Shitty Human Beings [Wonkette]