Knowledge begets responsibility which begets guilt

Guilt is both a curse and a salvation. I conclude that guilt is perhaps one of the few internal mechanisms that can prevent human self-destruction.

Rational analysis and recognition of self preservation can drive us to correcting problems that have immediate and visible impact on our life but it is this internal friction we call guilt upon which we must depend for avoiding long term consequences resulting from our behavior.

Guilt is difficult to analyze because it is ‘dumb’. It is a feeling of being blocked and frustrated without knowing why we feel that way. This develops when embraced by powerlessness while clutched by the unknown. Guilt is a bind of life.

A feeling of guilt emanates from our peculiar ability to apprehend life’s totality but unable to move in relation to it. “This real guilt partly explains willing subordinacy to his culture: after all, the world of men is even more dazzling and miraculous in its richness than the awesomeness of nature. Also, subordinacy comes naturally from man’s basic experience of being nourished and cared for; it is a logical response to social altruism.”—Ernest Becker.

Stewardship-- the conducting, supervising, or managing of something... the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care...

Stewardship is a word used often in the Bible and was at one time used often in England. It was used in England because the youth of the landed aristocracy was taught that they were responsible for the care of the family properties in such a way that they passed on to the next generation an inheritance equal to but more appropriately larger than that received. Each generation was not the owner but was the steward for the family estates. Any individual who squandered the inheritance was a traitor to the family.

I am inclined to think that each human generation must consider itself as the steward of the earth and therefore must make available to the succeeding generations an inheritance undiminished to that received.

In this context what does "careful and responsible management" mean? I would say that there are two things that must be begun to make the whole process feasible. The first is that the public must be convinced that it is a responsible caretaker and not an owner and secondly the public must be provided with an acceptable standard whereby it can judge how each major issue affects the accomplishment of the overall task. This is an ongoing forever responsibility for every nation but for the purpose of discussion I am going to speak about it as localized to the US.

Selfishness and greed are fundamental components of human nature. How does a nation cause its people to temper this nature when the payoff goes not to the generation presently in charge but to generations yet to come in the very distant future? Generations too far removed to be encompassed by the evolved biological impulse to care for ones kin.

How is it possible to cause a man or woman to have the same concern for a generation five times removed as that man or woman has for their own progeny?

I suspect it is not possible, but it does seem to me to be necessary to accomplish the task of stewardship.

Guilt may be our only hope for human acceptance of the responsibility of stewardship.

I need no guilt. My love for the earth carries with it the urge to love the planet and care for it. Perhaps you need it. I don't know. But as a general rule, that guilt is a good thing, I disagree.

I agree with coberst, guilt is absolutely invaluable.
If you trace back where guilt actually started to become socially unfashionable it began with the self-help and self-management culture of the late 20th century.
The same thing has happened to an extent with 'shame', another emotion thats gone out of fashion.

Of course all of our emotions serve a valuable purpose, they arnt negative forces 'holding you back' atall.
As coberst put it so well 'A feeling of guilt emanates from our peculiar ability to apprehend life’s totality but unable to move in relation to it.'
Which if anything is a concise emotional summary of the intellectual destination youve arrived at.

Guilt is not an emotion. It is a split. YOu can feel the split when you feel your own guilt.
Remorse over having done something you know is wrong does not have this split.
Most people assume that you have to be split against yourself. If you feel deeply into guilt you will find that one portion, usually a more mental verbal part, is judging another more emotional or desire based part. There is a split in the self.
If I hurt someone and I 'get it' I do not have a split. I feel terrible about what I did. I have not learned to hate myself or to suppress portions of myself. I am not split.

The advocates of guilt think we must be split. i have sympathy for their position, but it is a limited one.

So what youre basically saying is - remorse is the desired output of a transgression rather than guilt.
Guilt simply shows that youre conflicted, and that you cant fully resolve your own transgression.
Whereas remorse is assuming immediate responsiblity.

Im down with that, if i understand you right that is.

Knowledge begets responsibility which begets guilt. Ignorance leads to bliss.

So what youre basically saying is - remorse is the desired output of a transgression rather than guilt.
Guilt simply shows that youre conflicted, and that you cant fully resolve your own transgression.
Whereas remorse is assuming immediate responsiblity.

Im down with that, if i understand you right that is.

I think we are now saying something similar or the same.
If I walk around feeling guilty that I have sexual feelings, this is a split.
If I realize that the way I expressed a sexual feeling scared someone and feel bad about that this is remorse over an action. I learn from the experience.
'Assuming immediate responsibility' sounds like an ideal to strive for; speaking for myself, the process takes at least a little time.
another way to look at this is that guilt can continue even if the behavior stops. YOu feel guilty that you did something bad long ago even though you wuold not do it again. Guilt also can be ongoing while continuing to do something: anything from 'guilty pleasures' to repeatedly abusing someone and feeling guilty about it. Especially this latter phenomenon shows that guilt is an unresolved state. There is still a portion of the self, perhaps even the main portion, that does not understand. The guilt is a lid that pops off. Instead of saying bad feeling, bad desire, we shut you in the basement a more accepting process can lead to aligning these seemingly bad parts, a process that often includes remorse about what happened because _________it seemed like the only way to express this or that emotion or desire.

Knowledge begets responsibility which begets guilt. Ignorance leads to bliss.

This seems to imply that if you don't feel guilty you are ignorant. Loving oneself and others is a vastly better way to prevent doing damage they viewing portions of the self as bad: certain emotions or desires. Guilt does not resolve the issue. It sets up a prison system in the self. Or a master slave relation in the self.

As you once said:
I think that one task of intellectual maturity is examining our closely held assumptions, which in many cases are carried over from our childhood.

This idea that guilt is necessary is definitely one that is carried over from childhood. We are trained to be very fearful of what would happen if we stopped feeling guilty. We look around us and see examples of seemingly selfish people who do not seem to have guilt and see the damage they cause and assume that therefore without guilt we too would cause as much damage.

If, on the other hand, some people start peeling back these layers of guilt and learn to accept the emotions and desires that we are trained to feel guilty about, they find that this is in fact not the case. There are strong emotions of care about self and yearning to belong and be close that also inform the ways these desires express.

To assume that the lid of guilt must always be in place has done a lot of damage to good people and been heartily ignored by others who have no idea how they are cutting off their own noses to spite their faces.

As I understand it Guilt happens. This human characteristic is used by others for various purposes. I was raised as a Catholic and I learned as a child that religion is prepared to use it for ends that religion considers to be important. People use patriotism in the same way. I was trying to use it as a means to save the species.

Knowledge begets responsibility which begets guilt

Guilt is both a curse and a salvation. I conclude that guilt is perhaps one of the few internal mechanisms that can prevent human self-destruction.

Rational analysis and recognition of self preservation can drive us to correcting problems that have immediate and visible impact on our life but it is this internal friction we call guilt upon which we must depend for avoiding long term consequences resulting from our behavior.

Guilt is difficult to analyze because it is ‘dumb’. It is a feeling of being blocked and frustrated without knowing why we feel that way. This develops when embraced by powerlessness while clutched by the unknown. Guilt is a bind of life.

A feeling of guilt emanates from our peculiar ability to apprehend life’s totality but unable to move in relation to it. “This real guilt partly explains willing subordinacy to his culture: after all, the world of men is even more dazzling and miraculous in its richness than the awesomeness of nature. Also, subordinacy comes naturally from man’s basic experience of being nourished and cared for; it is a logical response to social altruism.”—Ernest Becker.

Stewardship-- the conducting, supervising, or managing of something... the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care...

Stewardship is a word used often in the Bible and was at one time used often in England. It was used in England because the youth of the landed aristocracy was taught that they were responsible for the care of the family properties in such a way that they passed on to the next generation an inheritance equal to but more appropriately larger than that received. Each generation was not the owner but was the steward for the family estates. Any individual who squandered the inheritance was a traitor to the family.

I am inclined to think that each human generation must consider itself as the steward of the earth and therefore must make available to the succeeding generations an inheritance undiminished to that received.

In this context what does "careful and responsible management" mean? I would say that there are two things that must be begun to make the whole process feasible. The first is that the public must be convinced that it is a responsible caretaker and not an owner and secondly the public must be provided with an acceptable standard whereby it can judge how each major issue affects the accomplishment of the overall task. This is an ongoing forever responsibility for every nation but for the purpose of discussion I am going to speak about it as localized to the US.

Selfishness and greed are fundamental components of human nature. How does a nation cause its people to temper this nature when the payoff goes not to the generation presently in charge but to generations yet to come in the very distant future? Generations too far removed to be encompassed by the evolved biological impulse to care for ones kin.

How is it possible to cause a man or woman to have the same concern for a generation five times removed as that man or woman has for their own progeny?

I suspect it is not possible, but it does seem to me to be necessary to accomplish the task of stewardship.

Guilt may be our only hope for human acceptance of the responsibility of stewardship.

Listen dumbfuck, I know only that I am, and I know only that I deduce that you are via shitforums, where your mom hangs out. Those are the only two things I can know at this moment in "time" (which is nothing more than transformation).

Knowledge begets responsibility which begets guilt. Ignorance leads to bliss.

Ignorance leads to fear dumbass.

coberst man are you gay? I mean I can almost deduce that via the mere perception of the things you communicate. That I know only that I am, and I know only what I deduce not what you might be, but what you are through the things you are communicating.

That I am is the only knowledge I have ever gained. Everything else is a deduction.

Knowledge begets responsibility which begets guilt



Only in a Christian mindset.

Those of us who know Sartre and Nietzsche, we have knowledge and no guilt whatsoever. Join our cult and set yourself free!

coberst man are you gay? I mean I can almost deduce that via the mere perception of the things you communicate. That I know only that I am, and I know only what I deduce not what you might be, but what you are through the things you are communicating.

Go troll elsewhere.

Go troll elsewhere.

Are you hitting on me? :bugeye:

The questions I would like to ask everyone are:

1) Do you agree that the acceptance of stewardship responsibility for this planet is vitally important?
2) Do you think that this human characteristic of guilt can be important for stewardship to happen?
3) Do you have a different idea whereby this stewardship might develop?
4) Do you give a damn?

Guilt can hardly be considered a positive motivation--perhaps it shows you're not a sociopath but I'll take a proactive morality over a reactive one any day (2nding that pro-Nietzsche/Satre comment).

1) Do you agree that the acceptance of stewardship responsibility for this planet is vitally important?


stew·ard /ˈstuərd, ˈstyu-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[stoo-erd, styoo-] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. a person who manages another's property or financial affairs; one who administers anything as the agent of another or others.
2. a person who has charge of the household of another, buying or obtaining food, directing the servants, etc.
3. an employee who has charge of the table, wine, servants, etc., in a club, restaurant, or the like.
4. a person who attends to the domestic concerns of persons on board a vessel, as in overseeing maids and waiters.
5. an employee on a ship, train, or bus who waits on and is responsible for the comfort of passengers, takes orders for or distributes food, etc.
6. a flight attendant.
7. a person appointed by an organization or group to supervise the affairs of that group at certain functions.
8. U.S. Navy. a petty officer in charge of officer's quarters and mess.
–verb (used with object) 9. to act as steward of; manage.
–verb (used without object) 10. to act or serve as steward.

The problem with this metaphor for me is 1) the idea that it is someone else's. I am doing this for someone else - God? future populations? society as a whole?. Whereas my love for the planet comes from feeling a part of her. 2) it is a job metaphor. I am employee doing my duty. This does not fit the intimacy I feel here. My motivation is not one of duty.

Stewardship is a metaphor used a lot by those who care about the earth. I have sympathy for that and them, but ultimately I think it tends to take on this moral, duty bound somehow noble aspect. I think these are tired notions that 1) do not fit my relationship with the earth despite the fact that I do alot of things these people would want me to do 2) turn off a lot of people who think they must not be selfish or must throw themselves on a cross.



2) Do you think that this human characteristic of guilt can be important for stewardship to happen?

No. Guilt as a motivation always unravels sooner or later. And many people do not respond to it and these people often have a of power. Good, milder people often quite willingly take no guilt and recycle their cans while a corporation comes in and chops the beautiful Virginian mountain top off and fills the neigboring rivers with all sorts of toxic poisons. Guilt is not getting to the heart of the problem in individuals and in society as a whole.

3) Do you have a different idea whereby this stewardship might develop? Engage people's self-interest.


4) Do you give a damn?
Yes.

No. Guilt as a motivation always unravels sooner or later. And many people do not respond to it and these people often have a of power. Good, milder people often quite willingly take no guilt and recycle their cans while a corporation comes in and chops the beautiful Virginian mountain top off and fills the neigboring rivers with all sorts of toxic poisons. Guilt is not getting to the heart of the problem in individuals and in society as a whole.

Engage people's self-interest.




I think that religion is the only answer. Reason will not work and guilt can only work if their is a strong emotional inducement that only religion can bring.

I think that religion is the only answer. Reason will not work and guilt can only work if their is a strong emotional inducement that only religion can bring.

A look back at history shows that religion + guilt failed to produce good behavior amongst the powerful. The colonization of the America, church sanctioned slavery, church supported elimination of communal lands, jihads, crusades adn other holy wars, the repression of women.

Of course you probably have a nicer religion in mind and probably a better idea of what people should feel guilty about. But the religious conception of what we should feel guilty about and how we have through history inevitably thrown off this guilt, sometimes in horrible ways - priests sexually abusing children - and sometimes in wonderful ways - chaninging attitudes towards nature adn women as a couple of examples - should lead to some low expectancy of the effectiveness of using guilt as a tool, perhaps especially via a religion.

Religion has its positive and negative characteristics. Religion can cause people to behave in both bad and good ways. Until we develop a secular moral philosophy that critical thinking people will accept we will need religion to help society accomplish some worth while actions.

How is reality absurd? I have no idea, it "just is". Or rather, just is.

Why learn random things when you can learn anything?

Religion has its positive and negative characteristics. Religion can cause people to behave in both bad and good ways. Until we develop a secular moral philosophy that critical thinking people will accept we will need religion to help society accomplish some worth while actions.

I'm not quite sure why you are speaking about this hypothetically. It sounds like you are asserting that we should have religion, temporarily. We do have religion.

I think it would be fair to say I am religious, but in the context of religion and guilt I see no benefit from more 'holy' experts claiming they know what God wants us to feel guilty about. Even if I have sympathy for the goals or the things they are trying to get us to treat more lovingly.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, guilt causes backlashes, resentment, intentional rebellion and eventually dissolves even its positive short term gains. I think we need to find other ways to get people to do the things we want them to do, rather than telling them that one part of them must dislike the urges of another part of them. Again, the ones who really need to change are not going to listen to this. All we do is produce a voice in the head of milder open people who then feel bad about themselves.

Why learn random things when you can learn anything?


I agree. I should focus my learning upon matters that provide understanding concerning that which interests me. I always study with questions in mind. I am cinstantly seeking to put my world into a structure that is real and especially is meaningful for me. That is why we all need to be self-actualizing self-learning independent critical thinkers.

I'm not quite sure why you are speaking about this hypothetically. It sounds like you are asserting that we should have religion, temporarily. We do have religion.

I think it would be fair to say I am religious, but in the context of religion and guilt I see no benefit from more 'holy' experts claiming they know what God wants us to feel guilty about. Even if I have sympathy for the goals or the things they are trying to get us to treat more lovingly.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, guilt causes backlashes, resentment, intentional rebellion and eventually dissolves even its positive short term gains. I think we need to find other ways to get people to do the things we want them to do, rather than telling them that one part of them must dislike the urges of another part of them. Again, the ones who really need to change are not going to listen to this. All we do is produce a voice in the head of milder open people who then feel bad about themselves.


Guilt can be positive as well as negative. It can be the force that aids in our developing a world that is meaningful and smart. We have created a world that is killing us. The future is in our hands and we are presently doing a lousey job.

Guilt can be positive as well as negative. It can be the force that aids in our developing a world that is meaningful and smart. We have created a world that is killing us. The future is in our hands and we are presently doing a lousey job.

This is a bit like saying mercury filled filling can be positive as well as negative. If we have found that there are problems with these fillings - which we have - why not try something else?

The future is in our hands and we are presently doing a lousey job.

And guilt has been used for a tool for thousands of years. I think the current situation makes it clear why it fails and also that the ways in which it 'works' are at best mixed. A lot of people feel like shit a lot of time.

Guilt happens. Our task is to use that propensity to our advantage.

Guilt can be removed. That has been to my advantage and, despite all the religious and other claims to the contrary, this removal has been to the advantage of those who come in contact with me. The only people who have not benefited are those who would use me or feed off me in some way. But even these people, one could argue, are being presented with the option of feeding themselves.

guilt happens puts the debate in deterministic terms. We do however have a choice, whether in relation to this or that specific guilt or to having guilt in our lives at all. There are many ways to remove guilt and it often is a very large and tricky task, but still one can and many people are right now, in therapy, via reading, with friends, via alls orts of activities taking steps to eliminate guilt. Guilt about sexual feelings and who they are attracted to and guilt about how they really feel about what happens in the family or at work or in the world around them. Guilt that told them to trust authorities figures who they come to realize should not be trusted.

Remember once Kings were like Gods and the church damned people by excommunicating. A significant minority of the world is waking up to the fact that allt hese things were supposed to feel guilty about we do not need to feel guilty about. Guilt plays no positive role in my life at all. Period.

If you are convinced you have to be bad in some way without guilt, well, perhaps you are right. But it's time this form of self-hatred slipped away.

Granty

I think you are correct that the guilt can be repressed. I disagree that it can be removed.

A battered wife feels anger at her husband. she comes from a conservative Christian background that says that the wife must obey her husband. Over time her anger gets stronger (and her fear of the man) but all this time she feels like it is rebellious anger. They she meets a childhood friend who has left the church. The childhood friend, once battered herself, tells the other woman that this obey the man stuff is BS. Slowly through what is essentially peer counseling the first woman comes to see that her guilt about being angry at and criticizing her husband was simply that guilt. She no longer feels guilty for judging him and having the reactions she had. She takes the kids and leaves.

That example took me one second to think of. I have thousands from my own life and from those of people I know intimately. She did not learn to repress her guilt she unlearned it. She removed it.

I am talking about over 20 years of intimate experience with this process in myself and others and I can with great assurity tell you you are incorrect.

Of course the above example is rather clear. Her guilt was a bad guilt, as I am sure you would agree. But regardless of the content of the guilt, even if it is a guilt you think of as a good one, the process is the same.

And by the way, there are other motivations for doing good than guilt. It does not mean that if one removes what you consider a good guilt one then does bad things.

For example: I knew a man who was shy approaching women. He felt guilty about sexual feelings. He did not want to be an aggressive kind of guy who made women feel uncomfortable. Over time he found the roots of that guilt. In the process he also found a lot of anger at women, who he had always been very nice to but did not seem to be their dreamprince, etc. He could see how the guilt had created this anger, by making him stifle himself. After several years he learned to approach women directly and clearly. He did not become a rapist.

Guilt just sets up a guard tower in the self. I know I don't need it.

If you are going to tell me that what I and other people I know are doing is simply repressing guilt, please don't bother. It would be rude. You simply don't know what you are talking about and you are talking about our experiences.

Granty says--"If you are going to tell me that what I and other people I know are doing is simply repressing guilt, please don't bother. It would be rude. You simply don't know what you are talking about and you are talking about our experiences."

I think that it is useful to comprehend what such domains of knowledge as psychology and psychoanalysis has to offer. They say that we have a propensity to repress that which will make us anxious. I see evidence in these Internet forums that this is true.

I think that it is useful to comprehend what such domains of knowledge as psychology and psychoanalysis has to offer. They say that we have a propensity to repress that which will make us anxious. I see evidence in these Internet forums that this is true.

Coberst,
while you were still an engineer I was twenty years into studying psychology. Have you ever been through psychoanalysis. I have. I have a Masters in Psychology and have worked as a professional in the field. You've read a few books and assume that you now 1) thoroughly understand the field and 2) can analyze others accurately. It reminds me of how some students start analyzing each other after 101. You write a lot about questioning assumptions but you draw very traditional lines in the sand.

If you knew a little bit more about guilt and respression you would know that guilt in fact serves a repressive function. That is not all it is, but for someone in the field the way you use the terms above comes off as confused.

When someone disagrees with you you have a pattern of assuming that they are in denial or have not questioned their assumptions. YOu need to realize that the books you are reading and the subjects you are fairly recently getting into, some people read long ago.

This may seem harsh. I can only hope you understand that condescension is a form of aggression. And it's tiresome. I also notice that you fail to respond to examples I give or interact with my posts in any way that shows Critical thinking. You simply restate your ideas or, as in the post above, imply that you really know more.

Given that I see no signs you can have that kind of interactive discussion and simply want to keep things on an abstract level - preferably one, it seems where you get followers - I'll put you on my ignore list.

You should be embarrassed.

Granty

You make some very valid points.

I am very recent to these domains of knowledge and my ignorance is profound. I write these OPs in an attempt to comprehend and to make others conscious of these very important ideas.

My attitude develops from the fact that almost everyone who responds to my posts about psychology and Freud respond with a negative response about these two subjects. Almost universally I receive negative responses from individuals who are completely ignorant of the subject. I get standard sophomoric responses that are all bluff and bluster. I guess every response starts out in my mind as one of these typical negative responses.

I am surprised that your's seemed to be just like all the others. I never detected from your responses that you were qualified to speak with authority about these subjects.

I am not embarrassed however because I think that my meger efforts have caused many individuals to become conscious of these domains of knowledge where before they were completely ignorant. I seek to encourage people to be come interested in these ideas that I post so that they might turn to the library in search of knowledge.

"If I do not perform action these creatures will be lost and I shall become the author of confusion, and shall have slain all these creatures.

O son of Bharata, as the unwise one acts, being attached to the fruit of action, let the wise man, without attachment, act in the same manner, striving for the world's fidelity to duty.

Let not the wise man create confusion in the minds of the unwise who are attached to action, but being himself engaged, engage them in all action.

All actions are performed by the qualites of Nature, but the heart deluded by egotism fancies that "I am the actor."

But, O mighty armed one, the truth-knower about the distinctness of the Ego from quality and action is not attached, being convinced that qualities only act upon qualities.

Those deluded by the qualities of Nature become attached to the actions of qualities; them, of dim discrimination and devoid of complete knowledge, he of perfect knowledge must not unsettle." - Bhagavad Gita

- N