Musing on guilt (second in a series)

[drwex]

Once again, this is a think piece intended both to help me record things in my head for later reference and to encourage the sharing of opinions and experiences by my readers. I found the dialog last time incredibly helpful, not least in showing how I was mis-stating things and mis-reading people.

Thesis: guilt is an illusion. There is no such thing, really. I've been fond of saying that "no one can make you feel guilty nonconsensually" and I still believe that. It requires at the very least collusion if not outright acquiescence on my part for someone else to engender feelings of guilt in me. If someone says "I can't believe you _did_ that!" and I start feeling guilty then I have at least somewhat bought into the hypotheses that (a) I shouldn't have done that, and (b) no one who behaves in the right/proper/appropriate manner would do so. And then I further buy into the judgment that the proper response to committing such a misbehavior is shame, and guilt.

If I refused a or b or the consequent I would likely not feel guilty. I might feel regret, particularly if my action caused harm, but not guilt.

So, why do I/we do this? I think it's because we're not dealing with our angers. Guilt is misplaced anger.

I may be angry with myself for behaving in ways I know I should not. I may be angry at the person who points my bad behavior out to me, or who demands I make recompense. I may be angry with a third party; for example, someone who is harmed or frightened by what I intended as a jest or prank. Because I don't admit, deal with, experience, or (yes, sweetmmeblue I'll say it) _process_ my anger properly it hides itself in clothing of guilt.

Being guilty is a form of self-punishment and we learn (I'm watching my kids learn it now) that punishing ourselves is a way of trying to dodge punishment from adults, or our superiors. Bad behavior is punished, and if people are angry or otherwise fail to be contrite after bad behavior we punish them more. The lesson we learn is to hide angers inside our guilts.

An interesting question in here is: If we _did_ learn to deal with our angers, would we be better at shedding our guilts? I think so. I think this has the potential to be incredibly productive.

Comments

[dpolicar]

I think you got it right in the next-to-last paragraph - we learn to feel guilty out of some vague sense that it will protect us from punishment. Actually, I suspect what happens is we learn to pretend to feel guilty as a defense mechanism, and then we internalize it, but I just made that up and have no evidence for it.

So I guess I'd be more inclined to call guilt (as an emotion) misplaced fear than misplaced anger - or, more precisely, to call it a usually inappropriate/unhelpful response to fear. Of course, that's different from guilt as a real-world state, or acknowledgement of guilt as a cognitive state. Also different from shame.

And yeah, in general, I think that being aware of the deep motivational emotions - anger, fear, lust, etc. - as they arise is extremely valuable, and that's true (and relevant) whether the underlying force of guilt is fear, or anger, or if it's guilt all the way down. If I know what forces are acting on me I can predict my course with greater accuracy, and maybe even compensate for them.

All that said, I'm always a little twitchy when people talk about "nobody can make you feel BLAH without your consent." In its most general sense, that kind of statement implies that there is no force component to speech, that we are pure information receivers and transmitters, when the truth is we are wired to respond to certain kinds of speech with certain emotions. If you say something that scares me, or angers or embarasses or saddens me, that emotional response isn't necessarily just something I add to your message... it might very well be, and usually is, part of your message. (Of course, there are cases where the listener hears something that isn't there. But they aren't the majority of cases... we're actually pretty good at discerning the emotional content of speech.) Sure, people can train themselves to bypass that reaction... then again, people can train themselves to dodge/block fists, but that doesn't mean I consent to your punching me in the head if I can't block you fast enough.

Of course, you weren't making the more general comment, you were talking about guilt in particular. And it's not quite so clear to me that guilt has the same property as above.
But on some introspection, it seems to me that when I say something calculated to make someone else feel guilty, there's a somewhat complicated chain of emotions being taken advantage of, at the core of which is the threat of social sanction. And if that's true, I think I want to make the same argument that I make about fear above... sure, sometimes people feel guilty for no reason we can legitimately be held accountable for. But sometimes we say things that reliably evoke guilt, and the fact that people can (in principle) achieve a state of not feeling it doesn't change the fact that what we're doing is applying cognitive force to them.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

I'm always a little twitchy when people talk about "nobody can make you feel BLAH without your consent." In its most general sense, that kind of statement implies that there is no force component to speech, that we are pure information receivers and transmitters, when the truth is we are wired to respond to certain kinds of speech with certain emotions. If you say something that scares me, or angers or embarasses or saddens me, that emotional response isn't necessarily just something I add to your message... it might very well be, and usually is, part of your message. (Of course, there are cases where the listener hears something that isn't there. But they aren't the majority of cases... we're actually pretty good at discerning the emotional content of speech.) Sure, people can train themselves to bypass that reaction... then again, people can train themselves to dodge/block fists, but that doesn't mean I consent to your punching me in the head if I can't block you fast enough.

*applause*

[drwex]

I disagree and deny the analogy. There is no force component to speech - "fighting words" and performatives aside. Physical force is a different realm.

The two do converge, though. I am certainly not denying that verbal and emotional abuse exists. A common thread is that the victim of such abuse may feel (should feel?) angry at the speaker, but may (should not?) hide that anger inside guilt.

Edge cases are tricky and I'm not ready to push this particular one too far, at least not yet. But neither am I ready to back down from my first formulation.

[dpolicar]

I don't want to go down the "what do you mean by 'force'?" path because I doubt it leads anywhere interesting.

But I'll stand by the assertion that my speech can induce state-changes in other people, including harmful state-changes. If you're disagreeing with that assertion, then we do in fact disagree. OTOH, if you agree in principle but don't think it's relevant to the situations you're talking about, I can accept that.

[drwex]

I'm agreeing in principle, but I think that the state change should be to "you are angering me" rather than to "you are engendering guilt in me."

[dpolicar]

Mm. Yeah, I can get down with that. Though, as above, I'd be more inclined to treat it as "you are threatening me."

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Hrm. interesting. I'm not sure guilt is always anger. Sometimes it is remorse. I believe it's anger in the cases where we make a conscious decision, knowing the consequences, and then

I think 'guilty' is also misused. I'm thinking about this now, so let me list things I feel guilty about:

I feel guilty that I haven't told someone something that is very important to them. I haven't told them because I want to avoid the confrontation that's going to happen, and so long as I tell this person in the next 6 months or so, there's no more or less controversy. So I'm waiting until an appropriate point in a conversation to bring it up (and there will be plenty of them). Is that anger? Anger so internalized, because I know I should do this?

I feel guilty when I eat things that are 'bad' for me. That's likely anger at myself for making a bad decision when I know better.

When I was poorer, I felt guilty for shopping at Wal-Mart. Because I knew I was contributing to an awful system, but what could I do? I needed stuff really cheap, and they were the cheapest. Is that anger? Me being resentful of class issues? I worked through some of that, feeling that I was in a different class at that point, and would move to another class once I had more $$. Then I felt guilty about not liking the class I was in, because it's not universally bad to be poor.

Am I mislabeling these things as guilt?

3 years ago, my mother bought a new car and gave me her old car. Even though I could take public transit to my job, or bike, I took the car. I felt guilty about that, because of class issues. I'm going back to a T commute starting tomorrow, at my new job, but that's because I live in Watertown and the job's at Lechemere, and I'm not driving that.

To combat that particular guilt, I give people rides even if it's out of my way. And I know I'm going to hate waiting for a bus, in the snow, etc. I will have more outright anger at bus drivers, the subway, and people who get in my way. But I won't feel guilty.

I feel some guilt leaving this job, because they don't have a replacement, and they need me. I did a thorough brain dump, gave them my phone #. Am I angry in some way? Angry at the world for putting this position in my lap 8 months too late, so now I'm leaving my job 8 months after I started?

I think you're somewhat right; guilt comes about when we do something we know we shouldn't, but do it anyway (driving to work, leaving a job after 8 months, delaying telling someone something, eating something I shouldn't).

In all these cases, my guilt is not paralyzing.

I will note, though, that guilt is one of the stages in the cycle of violence. abuse (anger, needing to feel in control) -> making up (guilt, remorse on the part of the abuser) -> calm (neutral) -> tension building -> abuse.

Hrm. From what I see, those things above, guilt, for me, is the somewhat childish desire to make a decision and not have negative consequences.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

I'd like to make some kind of distinction between "feeling guilty" and "being guilty". If, for example, I were sufficiently sociopathic to harm someone in what I felt was a justified manner, I may "be guilty" of committing the harmful act and yet not "feel guilty" about it at all.

(The sitcom "My Name Is Earl" is about a guy who's been a harmful asshole all his life, but has had an epiphany about karma, and is now setting about making up for all of the bad things he's ever done. Hilarity ensues.)

To buy into someone's accusation and "feel guilty" about it, you have to agree on some level that you "are guilty". If the accusation is unfounded (i.e. if you didn't do the act at all), you probably won't feel guilt; if the accusation is unfounded (i.e. if the act truly was wholly justified), you probably won't feel guilt.

Gray areas are usually in the realm of "side effects", where you had to perform the harmful act, but hadn't wholly considered all of the consequences.

[drwex]

Thanks. I am distinctly talking about feelings here, so "feeling guilty." The notion of "being" guilty involves a post-emotional judgement system that I'm not up to examining right now. I just want to spend some time poking around in feelings.

I agree that consenting to guilt involves a shared judgement of right and wrong or perhaps simply a sense that the other person knows more or is in a superior judgemental position.

[srl.livejournal.com]

"I agree that consenting to guilt involves a shared judgement of right and wrong or perhaps simply a sense that the other person knows more or is in a superior judgemental position."

Right; and there's a whole host of situations in which A and B were involved in an unpleasant situation where both made hard choices and did what they felt was appropriate. A feels wronged and argues that B (is/should feel) guilty. Is B actually guilty? Maybe, maybe not. Should B feel guilty? Maybe, maybe not.

[drwex]

I agree and that's why I'm simply trying to explore what the emotional reactions are, not the judgements about them. For example, there's clearly "justifiable" anger and "unjust" anger. Both are anger feelings; we evaluate them to get a label to apply to the anger.

[golux-org.livejournal.com]

I haven't read through the prior comments, so these remarks may not mesh sensibly with the current dialog. Also, I'm not sure if I use the word "guilt" in the ordinary way, or in some me-specific way.

I think guilt comes from recognizing that habits or patterns that produced inappropriate conduct remain in place, so there is a risk of repeating the error. In this sense, it is an emotion for triggering changes in those habits or patterns. Sometimes we are unaware of what behavior would actually be appropriate in difficult situations (even if we know what we've done certainly isn't it), making it difficult or impossible to actually improve those habits or patterns. In that circumstance, guilt can linger for an extended time, because the problem has not been resolved (and hence still needs conscious attention).

I know that's a weird definition of guilt, because it seems disconnected from the past event for which one feels guilty. But on reflection I think that makes sense. If I make a mistake or do something wrong, recognize the error, and change myself so I do not repeat the error in a similar circumstance, then I do not feel guilty. I may feel regret or remorse, but I do not view myself as a flawed person, and I think that sense of self-perception of flaw is an essential element of guilt. I have changed, I am no longer the person who made the mistake, and I do not carry the burden of those past errors if I am not a person who would make such an error now. But if I still would repeat them, then I recognize the seed of future error in myself, and feel guilt for still holding the patterns that led me to do wrong. That response is centered on a rememberance of the past incident that made the nature of error apparent.

I have no idea whether anyone else thinks of guilt in a similar way, or if I'm even using the word in the common sense.

[drwex]

It's a somewhat different version of "guilt" than I'm used to. It also buys into the judgement structure I talked about.