lol. that's like one of those old Russian or North Korean "war heroes"/generals that show up at anniversary events littered with piles of fake medals.
lol:
Honestly don't know if this one is legit, but there is an image floating around of one of these guys with multiple war medals that would span 100 years of different wars, can't find it though:
Only the best people, right?
There was a great photoshop of Trump into that Gaddafi pic that I can't find....
- Jan 25, 2011
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Fanatical Meat
Lifer
- Feb 4, 2009
- 35,862
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I'm not sure about the science behind your assertion, but the finding that such a cognitive error is more likely in a conservative than a liberal is at least plausible. And that doesn't change my objection. Does the science say that this thinking is characteristic of conservatives and not of liberals? For example, violence is more common among black Americans, and it is clearly both incorrect and morally wrong to say that violence is a "black brain defect".
My personal experience with this kind of thinking is that it is highly prevalent and dangerous in all classes of people, thought more common among self-identified conservatives and particularly among those allied with Trump. That does not make it a conservative brain defect. But, it is a serious problem.
Yes the question was rhetorical.
And perhaps I'll be happier with throwing pebbles at random anyway.
The term I use, a brain defect, I started using because conservatives, the moment I informed them of the scientific data that identified them as more likely to alter their view of reality to protect their egos from unpleasant data, they right away attacked me and suggested my aim was to put them down. In order to demonstrate this instant defensive altering reality attempt they thus made, I decided to be more direct and actually put them down as having a defect which, of course, magnified the behavior, making it very obvious.
It is actually not a defect but is theorized to be an instant, more ancient form of a knee jerk survival mechanism. Conservatives are first to leap from the frying pan and evolution preserves that behavior in those who leap first and don't land in the fire. Logical rational risk assessment is a more recent adaption, dependent of intellect. This is one reason why liberals and conservatives should be working together and listening to each other'spoints of view.
Calling people defective is a form of demonization and at the time I did that, showing conservative reaction to it was my intention to shame. All it did was prove they are immune to that. I used to think more like agent, but I was aware that I was doing what they do. Hate is not easily overcome.
PS: you may enjoy the work of a neuroscientist by the name of Jonathan Haidt. Hope I spelled that right.
Ok. That makes sense, but I think shame is an awful tool (though not wholly ineffective) for behavior change. And I'm puzzled that you would specifically choose it since you so often harp on the pain that was given to you via the mechanism of shame.
When I was a young boy, not sure at what age I had a good friend and we went out in the wilds exploring. We found a bird's nest, maybe a swallow and in toe process of looking inside ha somehow accidentally knocked it down, eggs splattering on the ground. My friend went crazy thrashing around and crying with grief. I think that was shame, a shame I think is built in and organic to our being. Nobody shamed him, he just felt it himself. That is what I think I saw. I know it affected me somehow. For all I know the truth might be that I destroyed the nest on purpose and altered my memory, but I doubt it.
Anyway, the subject of shame is complex as there are a number of sides to it. One can be made to feel it. It can happen spontaneously with regret, it can be deserved, earned by bad behavior, or applied to the truly innocent. I think it is essentially an aspect of human morality and something that makes us want to be good, to have a favorable self image. It is a seeing of oneself as if in the eyes of others, sort of like the opposite of shame is reputation, the real metals one can pin to one's chest. Perhaps the good sheriff quit from the shame of having the pretentiousness of all his seen through.
Have more but have to go.
I suspect you have not learned to distinguish shame and guilt.
If you study operant conditioning of monkeys and other animals, you will find "shame" as the experience connected to punishment. When the same stimulus is present without the punishment, shame will be re-experienced and be aversive. When you study humans, you find the same behavior. This has led many of us to believe (falsely) that this is the only or best mechanism for human beings to learn and recognize good and bad. Humans who develop attachments to others successfully learn to draw their self-esteem from their experiences with others and learn to interocept their observations into some sense of how another may be feeling (empathy), or to project how they or others might feel should a certain choice or consequence present itself in the future. Because we are such social creatures, we are better motivated by the impact our behaviors would have on those we feel connected to. When we do things that cause negative impact that is not strongly associated to prior punishment, we do not feel shame. We instead feel guilt, the more powerful motivator and the most useful human tool for reducing undesirable behavior. Many, of course, have had bad experiences with guilt in their life. Their guilt has been unintentionally abused by their primary caregivers, where they tried to magnify the guilt in order to reinforce the lesson. Such an act produces rewards in behavioral change for shame, but instead it causes erosion of self-esteem and avoidance behavior for guilt. Or their caregivers fail to aid the child in connecting their feeling of guilt to the bad action and consequences of the action. Thus as adults, the person feels no control over their guilt and lacking ability to functionally guide their own behavior without the aid of external structure.
Although, shame is still useful. Toddlers are most often too ego-centric to utilize significant empathy to project the consequences of their actions and thus must be exposed to some degree of shame to limit their behavior. Sociopaths never learned the benefit of social connection and thus cannot feel guilt. Primitive narcissists have ego-function that is too fragile to tolerate much guilt and thus respond better to shame.
But that's a very small slice of humanity*. For the rest of us, even if the mechanism of guilt was unhealthily developed, it is still the right tool for bettering the self. Thankfully, through means of assisted self-exploration, people can learn to address their irrational or excessive guilt that was conferred to them in childhood. And they can also learn to appropriately connect their guilt feelings when their caregivers had failed to assist them as children.
*I suspect, for those who believe this slice of humanity (sociopathy, narcissism) is significantly large, this is because they are themselves trying to contain guilt feelings for their own badness which are inappropriately excessive as a product of harsher than optimal parenting.
The biggest issue in all that is when conservatives land in the fire they'll deny being there rather than re-evaluating. That's particularly true wrt emotional attachments to their leadership & issues. Kee-rist. They love guys like Arpaio & Clarke even as they gloss over the fact that these guys really are right wing crackpots of the dangerous variety.
I'd say most conservatives are at least as smart as you at figuring out what arpaio & clarke & trump are, which is rather why they particularly identify with and support that sort.
I mean, it's not as if they go around rallying behind random sheriffs.
You see the world in terms of the assumptions you make. You make the false assumption that conservatives pick the worst people because they know they are the worst people when in fact they pick what they think are the best people, but are not because the moral values they think are good in those people actually aren't good at all. You have no tolerance for the fact that people are trying to do what they think is good but can't because their moral evaluation system was ruined when they were children. The reason why you will not do that is simple. You do the same thing. You constantly evaluate people who are not intentionally evil as if they were because your moral evaluation system got fucked up. Every time you judge you condemn yourself. By your rules you are evil. Have you the courage to admit to it?
Of course conservatives think that arpaio is the "best", just like themselves, same as the nazis/klan did, rather why they consider themselves the master race. Just like you think you have the "best" reading comprehension and thinking ability.
There is no getting away from the fact that illegal immigrants are hear illegally and you know where simple thinkers are going to go with that. Whatever bigotry they bring to the table will be hidden by this simple fact, they are here illegally. We are supposed to be a society of laws and none should be immune from it, not Trump or God or somebody rolling through a stop sign. We should have never allowed the problem to fester to the state where a cure is a disaster.
Was that a yes or a no about you being evil? Sounds like you're struggling to work up the courage to say yes. You may know I have the better thinking and reading comprehension but you have no idea where that takes me.
There is no getting away from the fact that illegal immigrants are hear illegally and you know where simple thinkers are going to go with that. Whatever bigotry they bring to the table will be hidden by this simple fact, they are here illegally. We are supposed to be a society of laws and none should be immune from it, not Trump or God or somebody rolling through a stop sign. We should have never allowed the problem to fester to the state where a cure is a disaster.
Was that a yes or a no about you being evil? Sounds like you're struggling to work up the courage to say yes. You may know I have the better thinking and reading comprehension but you have no idea where that takes me.
It doesn't take much reading comprehension to see that the conservatives here call libtards the Real racists/etc. Even you can do it, right alongside them.
There is no getting away from the fact that illegal immigrants are hear illegally and you know where simple thinkers are going to go with that. Whatever bigotry they bring to the table will be hidden by this simple fact, they are here illegally. We are supposed to be a society of laws and none should be immune from it, not Trump or God or somebody rolling through a stop sign. We should have never allowed the problem to fester to the state where a cure is a disaster.
Was that a yes or a no about you being evil? Sounds like you're struggling to work up the courage to say yes. You may know I have the better thinking and reading comprehension but you have no idea where that takes me.
In the process, they'll deny that the cure *is* a disaster in order to maintain their self righteousness.
Evil? There's a little bit of it in everybody.
interchange: I suspect you have not learned to distinguish shame and guilt.
M: Do you mean I do not know how to tell one experience from the other or that I do not know the definitional differences?
If you study operant conditioning of monkeys
M: Can you tell me what the study of operant conditioning is? What is the observer seeing. What is happening to the animals. What is happening not in the abstract as words or ideas but in the environment. I hope what I am asking is clear. I think I can follow words about how monkeys act but I have trouble when described in the abstract. I am not trained to read primate studies at an intellectual level.
i: and other animals, you will find "shame" as the experience connected to punishment.
M: How so. What were the events that lead to this comment. What did the monkeys go through as experience.
i: When the same stimulus
M: What stimulous?
i: is present without the punishment,
M: What is the punishment?
i: shame will be re-experienced and be aversive.
M: What do the monkeys do to which the observers attach the concept of aversive. What does that word mean here?
i: When you study humans, you find the same behavior.
M: I get some description on the behavior on some intellectual plane but I don't really know what behavior we are talking about.
i: This has led many of us to believe (falsely) that this is the only or best mechanism for human beings to learn and recognize good and bad.
M; Monkeys have in inborn genetic heritage involving being monkeys including what they bring to a monkey society, but they do not know things as good or bad, I don't think. They can have positive or negative associations with events and remember them but their reaction will be to seek or avoid. But you can't tell a monkey he's bad without something unpleasant happening to him at that moment he can associate with pain. Only humans can create a dualistic world where words can hurt, where words can evoke the emotions of pain.
i: Humans who develop attachments to others successfully learn to draw their self-esteem from their experiences with others and learn to interocept their observations into some sense of how another may be feeling (empathy), or to project how they or others might feel should a certain choice or consequence present itself in the future.
M: I think that is our monkey genetic heritage. I used to express my sense of an undualistic world as. "have a banana".
i: Beause we are such social creatures, we are better motivated by the impact our behaviors would have on those we feel connected to. When we do things that cause negative impact that is not strongly associated to prior punishment, we do not feel shame. We instead feel guilt, the more powerful motivator and the most useful human tool for reducing undesirable behavior. Many, of course, have had bad experiences with guilt in their life. Their guilt has been unintentionally abused by their primary caregivers, where they tried to magnify the guilt in order to reinforce the lesson. Such an act produces rewards in behavioral change for shame, but instead it causes erosion of self-esteem and avoidance behavior for guilt. Or their caregivers fail to aid the child in connecting their feeling of guilt to the bad action and consequences of the action. Thus as adults, the person feels no control over their guilt and lacking ability to functionally guide their own behavior without the aid of external structure.
M: I see here that I don't draw the same distinctions between shame and guilt as you do perhaps because I have never been trained to think in that rigorous way. What I hear you saying is the mistake I think parents make between calling a child bad for doing something rather than calling the action itself bad. In this way they internalize the notion they are the one who is bad, not just some event that happened in the past. It isn't the child that is unacceptable, but the particular behavior. I hear how you use shame and guilt differently, but I don't think I actually get it. I don't know why. I see shame as a feeling and guilt as a condition. When it is remorse for being wrong is seems like shame to me, and when it is thought of as a condition it means you did something that is wrong whether you admit it or not.
i: Although, shame is still useful. Toddlers are most often too ego-centric to utilize significant empathy to project the consequences of their actions and thus must be exposed to some degree of shame to limit their behavior. Sociopaths never learned the benefit of social connection and thus cannot feel guilt. Primitive narcissists have ego-function that is too fragile to tolerate much guilt and thus respond better to shame.
But that's a very small slice of humanity*. For the rest of us, even if the mechanism of guilt was unhealthily developed, it is still the right tool for bettering the self. Thankfully, through means of assisted self-exploration, people can learn to address their irrational or excessive guilt that was conferred to them in childhood. And they can also learn to appropriately connect their guilt feelings when their caregivers had failed to assist them as children.
*I suspect, for those who believe this slice of humanity (sociopathy, narcissism) is significantly large, this is because they are themselves trying to contain guilt feelings for their own badness which are inappropriately excessive as a product of harsher than optimal parenting.
Aside from the distinctions you make between shame and guilt which I don't grasp, I think this is right. I read somewhere that 85% of children display sighs of empathy before they even learn to speak meaning to me it is genetic.
PS: What I ran out of time to add earlier was that my conclusions about guilt don't come from my personal sense that I have that problem in particular, but that it is one of the things that we acquire with self hate. It is a universal. I do know, however, what it feels like, what it is to suffer from it. I may have been especially driven by that pain to challenge it.
I remember one night when every time I closed my eyes I would see a savage wolf that would attack me, an event that would terrifyingly shake me awake, and it happened over and over again to the point where I because so exhausted I simply surrendered. I was cornered with no escape and I decided I would have to allow it do whatever it was going to do, so I closed my eyes one more time and it was gone. I went to sleep immediately.
M: Do you mean I do not know how to tell one experience from the other or that I do not know the definitional differences?
If you study operant conditioning of monkeys
M: Can you tell me what the study of operant conditioning is? What is the observer seeing. What is happening to the animals. What is happening not in the abstract as words or ideas but in the environment. I hope what I am asking is clear. I think I can follow words about how monkeys act but I have trouble when described in the abstract. I am not trained to read primate studies at an intellectual level.
i: and other animals, you will find "shame" as the experience connected to punishment.
M: How so. What were the events that lead to this comment. What did the monkeys go through as experience.
i: When the same stimulus
M: What stimulous?
i: is present without the punishment,
M: What is the punishment?
i: shame will be re-experienced and be aversive.
M: What do the monkeys do to which the observers attach the concept of aversive. What does that word mean here?
i: When you study humans, you find the same behavior.
M: I get some description on the behavior on some intellectual plane but I don't really know what behavior we are talking about.
i: This has led many of us to believe (falsely) that this is the only or best mechanism for human beings to learn and recognize good and bad.
M; Monkeys have in inborn genetic heritage involving being monkeys including what they bring to a monkey society, but they do not know things as good or bad, I don't think. They can have positive or negative associations with events and remember them but their reaction will be to seek or avoid. But you can't tell a monkey he's bad without something unpleasant happening to him at that moment he can associate with pain. Only humans can create a dualistic world where words can hurt, where words can evoke the emotions of pain.
i: Humans who develop attachments to others successfully learn to draw their self-esteem from their experiences with others and learn to interocept their observations into some sense of how another may be feeling (empathy), or to project how they or others might feel should a certain choice or consequence present itself in the future.
M: I think that is our monkey genetic heritage. I used to express my sense of an undualistic world as. "have a banana".
i: Beause we are such social creatures, we are better motivated by the impact our behaviors would have on those we feel connected to. When we do things that cause negative impact that is not strongly associated to prior punishment, we do not feel shame. We instead feel guilt, the more powerful motivator and the most useful human tool for reducing undesirable behavior. Many, of course, have had bad experiences with guilt in their life. Their guilt has been unintentionally abused by their primary caregivers, where they tried to magnify the guilt in order to reinforce the lesson. Such an act produces rewards in behavioral change for shame, but instead it causes erosion of self-esteem and avoidance behavior for guilt. Or their caregivers fail to aid the child in connecting their feeling of guilt to the bad action and consequences of the action. Thus as adults, the person feels no control over their guilt and lacking ability to functionally guide their own behavior without the aid of external structure.
M: I see here that I don't draw the same distinctions between shame and guilt as you do perhaps because I have never been trained to think in that rigorous way. What I hear you saying is the mistake I think parents make between calling a child bad for doing something rather than calling the action itself bad. In this way they internalize the notion they are the one who is bad, not just some event that happened in the past. It isn't the child that is unacceptable, but the particular behavior. I hear how you use shame and guilt differently, but I don't think I actually get it. I don't know why. I see shame as a feeling and guilt as a condition. When it is remorse for being wrong is seems like shame to me, and when it is thought of as a condition it means you did something that is wrong whether you admit it or not.
i: Although, shame is still useful. Toddlers are most often too ego-centric to utilize significant empathy to project the consequences of their actions and thus must be exposed to some degree of shame to limit their behavior. Sociopaths never learned the benefit of social connection and thus cannot feel guilt. Primitive narcissists have ego-function that is too fragile to tolerate much guilt and thus respond better to shame.
But that's a very small slice of humanity*. For the rest of us, even if the mechanism of guilt was unhealthily developed, it is still the right tool for bettering the self. Thankfully, through means of assisted self-exploration, people can learn to address their irrational or excessive guilt that was conferred to them in childhood. And they can also learn to appropriately connect their guilt feelings when their caregivers had failed to assist them as children.
*I suspect, for those who believe this slice of humanity (sociopathy, narcissism) is significantly large, this is because they are themselves trying to contain guilt feelings for their own badness which are inappropriately excessive as a product of harsher than optimal parenting.
Aside from the distinctions you make between shame and guilt which I don't grasp, I think this is right. I read somewhere that 85% of children display sighs of empathy before they even learn to speak meaning to me it is genetic.
PS: What I ran out of time to add earlier was that my conclusions about guilt don't come from my personal sense that I have that problem in particular, but that it is one of the things that we acquire with self hate. It is a universal. I do know, however, what it feels like, what it is to suffer from it. I may have been especially driven by that pain to challenge it.
I remember one night when every time I closed my eyes I would see a savage wolf that would attack me, an event that would terrifyingly shake me awake, and it happened over and over again to the point where I because so exhausted I simply surrendered. I was cornered with no escape and I decided I would have to allow it do whatever it was going to do, so I closed my eyes one more time and it was gone. I went to sleep immediately.
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All I've said is that your moral philosophy is the equivalent to racism and that the application of your morality would make racism worse not better. Naturally, if your moral philosophy has any valid real world application, you are perfectly aware that you want to be evil and are aware of the personal advantages of being evil are for you. You really can't comprehend that to judge others is to condemn yourself. You may be able to read and you may be able to think, but you have no idea what you feel.
Their notion of morality comes in the form of a sacred text or some authority who knows and can tell them the facts. They have been made to feel too worthless to know right from wrong on their own.
@Moonbeam I'll have to start over. You'd have to look up operant conditioning and understand what it means to try to digest the scientific approach.
Have you heard of the idea of the "reptilian brain"? Reality is a lot more complex, but basically I'm saying that shame is related to activity of the reptilian brain. Basic pleasure and fear kind of stuff. Guilt, however is related to empathy and higher brain function. You are right that genetics play a role in development of guilt but so does early life (like infancy) attachment. And, yeah, toddlers absolutely have capacity for guilt, but they are so self involved that they can rarely use it. Thus, basic behavioral mechanisms that work for lesser animals are usually best for toddlers.
But later on we start to understand how other people around us feel. Recognize their needs. And realize that we need them and love them and don't want to hurt them. And therefore we feel bad when we do things that hurt them (even cause disappointment over our actions). This is guilt, not shame. Guilt (remorse) happens automatically when you do something hurtful to others without having to first learn that the action is wrong. Shame on the other hand is experienced in response to punishment (which might be things like being ignored, teased, treated like we are stupid or weak, etc. instead of explicit intentional punishment) or memory of prior punishment.
Some people can't experience guilt or are so internally unstable that they can't handle guilt feelings and will lash out dangerously in response to keep themselves from falling apart. For those people, shame is the only tool that can work. Granted, some pretty important and powerful people may be in this categorfefe, so it seems like more than there really are.
For the rest of us, guilt is better. If someone recognizes that their actions are hurtful to another that they respect as human, then they will learn that they were wrong all on their own without punishment. And not just that they're wrong but why as well.
Of course, humans sometimes struggle to either recognize the harm our actions do to another or to respect in a basic way the humanity of the person we harm. Thus, we protect ourselves from guilt. This is how great people, clearly moral beings, can do things like own slaves and not come to recognize their own evils.
And that's why my idea of goodness in the world is one where all people learn to respect each other's basic humanity, even others who do clearly detestable things. If this happens, we won't need to teach right from wrong.
But here is where I take exception to attempts to categorize and shame. This promotes dehumanizing others. And if we lose respect for another, we can no longer recognize our own misdeeds. Even worse, if we feel to achieve the desired outcome of someone feeling shame, we only reinforce their own sense of being mistreated and make it easier for them to disrespect us in kind.
Have you heard of the idea of the "reptilian brain"? Reality is a lot more complex, but basically I'm saying that shame is related to activity of the reptilian brain. Basic pleasure and fear kind of stuff. Guilt, however is related to empathy and higher brain function. You are right that genetics play a role in development of guilt but so does early life (like infancy) attachment. And, yeah, toddlers absolutely have capacity for guilt, but they are so self involved that they can rarely use it. Thus, basic behavioral mechanisms that work for lesser animals are usually best for toddlers.
But later on we start to understand how other people around us feel. Recognize their needs. And realize that we need them and love them and don't want to hurt them. And therefore we feel bad when we do things that hurt them (even cause disappointment over our actions). This is guilt, not shame. Guilt (remorse) happens automatically when you do something hurtful to others without having to first learn that the action is wrong. Shame on the other hand is experienced in response to punishment (which might be things like being ignored, teased, treated like we are stupid or weak, etc. instead of explicit intentional punishment) or memory of prior punishment.
Some people can't experience guilt or are so internally unstable that they can't handle guilt feelings and will lash out dangerously in response to keep themselves from falling apart. For those people, shame is the only tool that can work. Granted, some pretty important and powerful people may be in this categorfefe, so it seems like more than there really are.
For the rest of us, guilt is better. If someone recognizes that their actions are hurtful to another that they respect as human, then they will learn that they were wrong all on their own without punishment. And not just that they're wrong but why as well.
Of course, humans sometimes struggle to either recognize the harm our actions do to another or to respect in a basic way the humanity of the person we harm. Thus, we protect ourselves from guilt. This is how great people, clearly moral beings, can do things like own slaves and not come to recognize their own evils.
And that's why my idea of goodness in the world is one where all people learn to respect each other's basic humanity, even others who do clearly detestable things. If this happens, we won't need to teach right from wrong.
But here is where I take exception to attempts to categorize and shame. This promotes dehumanizing others. And if we lose respect for another, we can no longer recognize our own misdeeds. Even worse, if we feel to achieve the desired outcome of someone feeling shame, we only reinforce their own sense of being mistreated and make it easier for them to disrespect us in kind.
shortylickens
No Lifer
- Jul 15, 2003
- 80,287
- 17,082
- 136
Moonbeam thinks all problems are caused by every human on earth hating himself.
You'd have to describe reptilian and mammalian brains in those terms.
You'd have to describe reptilian and mammalian brains in those terms.
M: Thank you for this:
interchange: I'll have to start over. You'd have to look up operant conditioning and understand what it means to try to digest the scientific approach.
M: I did but I couldn't see how the definition I read applied.
i: Have you heard of the idea of the "reptilian brain"? Reality is a lot more complex, but basically I'm saying that shame is related to activity of the reptilian brain. Basic pleasure and fear kind of stuff. Guilt, however is related to empathy and higher brain function. You are right that genetics play a role in development of guilt but so does early life (like infancy) attachment. And, yeah, toddlers absolutely have capacity for guilt, but they are so self involved that they can rarely use it. Thus, basic behavioral mechanisms that work for lesser animals are usually best for toddlers.
M: I know about the reptilian brain. I can understand what you are saying here, but I am not so sure I believe it. The separation of those two things in this way just doesn't feel right to me. To me feelings of guilt cause the reaction of shame. Guilt is the feeling and shame is the expression of it to me. Psychologists may have defined these words in ways I don't understand.
i: But later on we start to understand how other people around us feel. Recognize their needs. And realize that we need them and love them and don't want to hurt them. And therefore we feel bad when we do things that hurt them (even cause disappointment over our actions). This is guilt, not shame. Guilt (remorse) happens automatically when you do something hurtful to others without having to first learn that the action is wrong. Shame on the other hand is experienced in response to punishment (which might be things like being ignored, teased, treated like we are stupid or weak, etc. instead of explicit intentional punishment) or memory of prior punishment.
M: I think I get the idea but I would just say that shame and guilt can arise spontaneously because we are genetically programmed to be social animals, or, in the case of humans, can be caused to manifest by being put down as shameful or guilty of a crime. Not saying you are wrong but that I have never learned to separate the words like you do.
i: Some people can't experience guilt or are so internally unstable that they can't handle guilt feelings and will lash out dangerously in response to keep themselves from falling apart. For those people, shame is the only tool that can work. Granted, some pretty important and powerful people may be in this categorfefe, so it seems like more than there really are.
M: My opinion is that the feeling is universal but varying in degree and in adjustment to being sick. shortylickens stated my case if a bit incompletely: We all feel like the worst person in the world. We don't know it, don't want to know it, and don't want to know we don't want to know. It is the last thing we want to know and do become violent if forced by some means to have to confront it. This is something that can only be known by having gone very deep into ones feelings. I believe also this is the result of being put down with words, made to believe that by nature we are bad and being unable to survive if those feelings aren't pushed out of consciousness. This is a catch 22 because the feelings we were forced to deny with powerful ego armor are lies anyway. There is nothing wrong with us but the belief that there is.
i: For the rest of us, guilt is better. If someone recognizes that their actions are hurtful to another that they respect as human, then they will learn that they were wrong all on their own without punishment. And not just that they're wrong but why as well.
We were all given a breathing tube with which to survive our self hate. People can do great things without ever knowing they feel it. The religiously faithful, the yoge, the fakir, can step right over and go straight to enlightenment, freedom from the ego.
i: Of course, humans sometimes struggle to either recognize the harm our actions do to another or to respect in a basic way the humanity of the person we harm. Thus, we protect ourselves from guilt. This is how great people, clearly moral beings, can do things like own slaves and not come to recognize their own evils.
M: Exactly, many so called great people aren't so great inwardly. We live with unexamined assumptions at the heart of our moral values. Real morality, in my opinion, is only possible when duality is gone. Good and evil are conditioning.
i: And that's why my idea of goodness in the world is one where all people learn to respect each other's basic humanity, even others who do clearly detestable things. If this happens, we won't need to teach right from wrong.
M: A great aim. As you may have heard me say, I judge a person by their aim.
i: But here is where I take exception to attempts to categorize and shame. This promotes dehumanizing others. And if we lose respect for another, we can no longer recognize our own misdeeds. Even worse, if we feel to achieve the desired outcome of someone feeling shame, we only reinforce their own sense of being mistreated and make it easier for them to disrespect us in kind.
M: This is why I tell agent that when he judges others he condemns himself.
interchange: I'll have to start over. You'd have to look up operant conditioning and understand what it means to try to digest the scientific approach.
M: I did but I couldn't see how the definition I read applied.
i: Have you heard of the idea of the "reptilian brain"? Reality is a lot more complex, but basically I'm saying that shame is related to activity of the reptilian brain. Basic pleasure and fear kind of stuff. Guilt, however is related to empathy and higher brain function. You are right that genetics play a role in development of guilt but so does early life (like infancy) attachment. And, yeah, toddlers absolutely have capacity for guilt, but they are so self involved that they can rarely use it. Thus, basic behavioral mechanisms that work for lesser animals are usually best for toddlers.
M: I know about the reptilian brain. I can understand what you are saying here, but I am not so sure I believe it. The separation of those two things in this way just doesn't feel right to me. To me feelings of guilt cause the reaction of shame. Guilt is the feeling and shame is the expression of it to me. Psychologists may have defined these words in ways I don't understand.
i: But later on we start to understand how other people around us feel. Recognize their needs. And realize that we need them and love them and don't want to hurt them. And therefore we feel bad when we do things that hurt them (even cause disappointment over our actions). This is guilt, not shame. Guilt (remorse) happens automatically when you do something hurtful to others without having to first learn that the action is wrong. Shame on the other hand is experienced in response to punishment (which might be things like being ignored, teased, treated like we are stupid or weak, etc. instead of explicit intentional punishment) or memory of prior punishment.
M: I think I get the idea but I would just say that shame and guilt can arise spontaneously because we are genetically programmed to be social animals, or, in the case of humans, can be caused to manifest by being put down as shameful or guilty of a crime. Not saying you are wrong but that I have never learned to separate the words like you do.
i: Some people can't experience guilt or are so internally unstable that they can't handle guilt feelings and will lash out dangerously in response to keep themselves from falling apart. For those people, shame is the only tool that can work. Granted, some pretty important and powerful people may be in this categorfefe, so it seems like more than there really are.
M: My opinion is that the feeling is universal but varying in degree and in adjustment to being sick. shortylickens stated my case if a bit incompletely: We all feel like the worst person in the world. We don't know it, don't want to know it, and don't want to know we don't want to know. It is the last thing we want to know and do become violent if forced by some means to have to confront it. This is something that can only be known by having gone very deep into ones feelings. I believe also this is the result of being put down with words, made to believe that by nature we are bad and being unable to survive if those feelings aren't pushed out of consciousness. This is a catch 22 because the feelings we were forced to deny with powerful ego armor are lies anyway. There is nothing wrong with us but the belief that there is.
i: For the rest of us, guilt is better. If someone recognizes that their actions are hurtful to another that they respect as human, then they will learn that they were wrong all on their own without punishment. And not just that they're wrong but why as well.
We were all given a breathing tube with which to survive our self hate. People can do great things without ever knowing they feel it. The religiously faithful, the yoge, the fakir, can step right over and go straight to enlightenment, freedom from the ego.
i: Of course, humans sometimes struggle to either recognize the harm our actions do to another or to respect in a basic way the humanity of the person we harm. Thus, we protect ourselves from guilt. This is how great people, clearly moral beings, can do things like own slaves and not come to recognize their own evils.
M: Exactly, many so called great people aren't so great inwardly. We live with unexamined assumptions at the heart of our moral values. Real morality, in my opinion, is only possible when duality is gone. Good and evil are conditioning.
i: And that's why my idea of goodness in the world is one where all people learn to respect each other's basic humanity, even others who do clearly detestable things. If this happens, we won't need to teach right from wrong.
M: A great aim. As you may have heard me say, I judge a person by their aim.
i: But here is where I take exception to attempts to categorize and shame. This promotes dehumanizing others. And if we lose respect for another, we can no longer recognize our own misdeeds. Even worse, if we feel to achieve the desired outcome of someone feeling shame, we only reinforce their own sense of being mistreated and make it easier for them to disrespect us in kind.
M: This is why I tell agent that when he judges others he condemns himself.
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zinfamous
No Lifer
- Jul 12, 2006
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