Is It Good to Feel Guilt?

(What Debt Financing Can Teach Us About a Difficult Emotion)

In an obvious sense, it’s good for those guilty of wrongdoing to be found guilty—and to internalize the verdict.

Yet I ask not about guilt in the legal or even moral sense, but in the emotional sense. Is it good to feel guilty that we don’t do X enough or do Y too much?

If guilt is a motivator, then, like any negative emotion—say, anger or anxiety—it cl…