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."