Our ability to feel guilt (and its cousin — “shame”) is considered to be merely identical to our empathy. They are both forms of our emotional connection to others, one negative and one neutral. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt_(emotion) )

The sense of guilt is similar to the sense of pain. You feel guilty, then something is wrong or at least someone wants you to think that something is wrong. Society uses guilt to regulate our collective well being the same way the pain does, it inflicts discomfort when some undesirable (from society perspective) situation occurs. The regulation idea of guilt feeling as a negative motivator to do the right thing is sound, but it opens a gate for misuse. Religion (e.g. catholicism) has a long tradition to make people feel guilty (the original sin) as an instrument of devious influence and manipulation. In personal respect (including family dynamics), once you know how to make someone feel guilty, you own them (if that’s your idea of relationship). Our mothers (especially in our adulthood) use the guilt as family glue, you will never value family enough or see them often enough.

It wouldn’t be true to say that I don’t feel guilty at all, I still can accidentally step on somebody’s toe in the tube. Although, knowledge and having control over the mechanism of a person or group of people is trying to make you feel guilty is advisable. That probably will not make you immune to it, but you still have some way to control the pain.

The guilt feeling exists as an actual feeling as well as anticipation of the feeling. Our decision making is strongly influenced by that anticipation of guilt. Take as an example the thought experiment — the trolley problem. Even 90% of people say they would switch the trolley to the one-man path, the remaining 10% estimate the situation as minimizing the anticipated feeling of guilt. The loophole they hope to explore is “If I am not involved in the situation, I cannot be blamed”, so if I keep my distance I could take myself out of the equation, hence my responsibility is minimal (if any). As you can see that is simply wishful thinking, the involvement of the person does not depend on him/her, in most cases, it’s the situation that determines the participation. The film “Sophie’s choice” offers a good (and tragic) illustration of my point, the feeling of guilt is unavoidable even when it is not our fault.

PS I’m curious, which side does the law stay on if there is an explicit text regarding the trolley problem situation.