Q: Is the tendency for the West to engage in self-criticism at the level of the collective caused by its status as a guilt society at the level of the individual?
A: the phrasing of that question is almost incoherent without some brackets to indicate order-of-operation, but i'm pretty sure the answer is no. and by that i mean, it doesn't seem to be an individual tendency -- it seems to be more inspired by the collective conversation of the era. but now that i re-read your question, i just found another way to orient the brackets, and thus evaluate the meaning of the question entirely differently, so i don't know