by Philip Briggs
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GUILT
by Philip Briggs |
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"We in the West take many things for granted - food, water, electricity, the right to housing, education and information. We are used to democratic societies where we are free to live more or less as we choose; we can, with a modicum of intelligence, education and good fortune, pick and choose the work we want to do; in many countries, we can even choose not to work but to receive state support. I am not for a moment saying that nobody in the West is a victim of circumstance or ill fortune. Nevertheless, most people in a Western society are shielded by the state from destitution, starvation, poor sanitation and all the other maladies of genuine poverty." |
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To someone raised in the West, first exposure to the developing world is always something of
a shock. However concerned you may be about the inequality of global wealth distribution, and
however much you may have read and thought about the issues, confronting the reality is
something entirely different from dealing with it in the abstract. And most of us, to some extent,
respond with a feeling of guilt. Now, guilt is an unfashionable emotion. Pop psychologists and
magazines tell us it is entirely useless, and they are probably right. Nevertheless, guilt is real.
Where it exists, it is better admitted to and confronted than denied. On a global level, the
developing world has suffered greatly at the hands of the West, and it continues to do so.
We should expect to experience some level of guilt at confronting the realities of a country like Ethiopia - it would take an overdeveloped sense of self-righteousness not to - and accept that this guilt will influence our thoughts and actions. In this light, it is best we consciously confront the question of guilt and decide to what degree and in what manner we should respond to it. A common response to a country like Ethiopia is to feel that it is wrong to enjoy ourselves amid such suffering, that tourism is frivolously out of context in such a poor country, that we are exploiting Ethiopia by taking advantage of its poverty to have a cheap holiday.To resolve this sort of misgiving we must recognise that what is making us feel guilty has nothing to do with tourism. Tourism is not responsible for the inequalities of the world. Your presence in a country like Ethiopia in no way exacerbates any local suffering. On the contrary, Ethiopia, like most developing countries, is desperate to encourage tourism because it brings in foreign revenue and creates business opportunities and jobs. If you want to do something for a country like Ethiopia, spending your money there is asserting your consumer power in the most positive manner possible. It strikes me as a far more appropriate response than to travel only in developed countries and pretend the inequality doesn't exist. This piece on guilt is the very last to be written, but I think it is perhaps the most important. Guilt is not so much a useless emotion as a dangerous emotion. It leads us to take purgative or defensive actions where rational thought would be more appropriate. In this light, I suspect that an element of guilt is responsible for many of our kneejerk responses to African dilemmas. This is natural and normal enough: the important thing, if we are to try and draw conclusions about tourism in Ethiopia, is that we are alert to the possibility that guilt is clouding our judgement, and that we aim for an understanding that is motivated primarily by the needs of Ethiopians and not our own need to alleviate our guilt. I have long held doubts about my work. I have been torn between the feeling that it is useful
and constructive to be writing books that might encourage tourism to little-visited countries, the
fear that tourism might in some way damage the country, and an anger at the way that some
tourists, most especially budget travellers, ride roughshod over Africa. By chance, I happened
across a James Baldwin quote the other day: 'The price one pays for pursuing any profession or
calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side'. This hit home: tourism has its ugly sides, but we
should not allow them to obscure its far greater potential for good.
Cultural Perspectives | Responsible Tourism | |
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