What is guilt?
Does it exist?
It could, but from the way people act, it is more likely that it doesn't. At least it doesn't cause the kind of behavior that people think it does. The myth of 'deathbed repentance' is so rare that is just that--a myth.
Slade probably will never blog, how much the better for the world if he did, but we have between ourselves been talking about cultural myths that are widely believed and perpetuated--perpetuated by thinking that those types of ideas that are the case 'just because'--actually make sense for logical reasons. We use a form of logic, so to speak, but deny the power thereof, by making a logical argument for those things that we really have come to only assume make sense because we always hear them and probably always will.
So because Slade and I love the 'aha moment' we get from popping bubbles of cultural myths in our brains to make room for the other stuff, I will talk about a few of them, even though this is probably not the only way Slade and I are different. But to introduce the concept of cultural myth I need for a mythical concept that really isn't that big of an idea and that nobody really cares too much about believing one way or another. I will gradually move on to bigger stuff as I get some practice not making simple concepts into very very long ones. Which I obviously need more of.
Here goes, myth of guilt:
The fact that people end up feeling bad about and eventually changing their behavior is something that gets the kind of play of a common occurrence with the rarity of a miracle. I actually don't know why, because most people, I assumed it was more common. What happens instead? What do people really do on their deathbeds? I am sure that people can get better explanations of the whole psychological theory of cognitive dissonance than mine, but basically very few people end up thinking that ANYTHING they do, at any time down the road, was wrong. Instead they make final Herculean efforts to justify what they have already thought in the first place. Both in smaller time frames and in lifetimes. So ti anyone spends time fervently repenting in some religious sins or omissions it is likely because they have already done much of that.
Even in situations where people do something that is obviously a 'no brainer' in most respects and bring about the disaster that everyone knows they will, they don't end up sorry. Teenage girls who run off with total creeps, that in five years yell the loudest about how big of a creep it was that they ran off with, are perfect examples of what I am talking about. All of us (but the particular teenage girl in question) know exactly what a creep they are running off with, but admitting 'I told you so' ends up closer to something like a 'well there was no way for me to have known, and it was probably natural given the circumstances.'
In fact most of us think we are exceptions to rules, it is in our nature--even the kinds of rules we would freely expect others to follow. Navigating emotional and personal decisions, such as how to behave in cases of love, marriage, and family, particularly don't mesh well with any kind of statistical calculating on our own part, and certainly not just like advice of we hear from others. That never ends up like anything we are willing to lend credibility to.
Most drivers know that it is obvious that you shouldn't run a red light. But in life when we really want to do something, and then when we have done it already and seek to explain ourselves, it becomes much more persuasive or illustrative to talk about that story we all heard about someone who has run a red light and come out just fine. I ran a red light once when I was a teenager (talk about teenage girls) I remember the night distinctly. Apparently it didn't take long for me to have my license and break one of the worst rules of all, and metaphorically speaking we probably all do that in a lot of contexts.
But in big life decisions, it doesn't seem to make sense, for whatever reason, to actually just make solid, reasoned choices based on what makes sense or what would be safe. 10 times greater likelihood of crashing in driving somehow is strong enough to restrict us but in something much more profoundly dangerous like love, the 90 percent that squeak by doing something reckless seem to compel us to follow their example.
And thus after the fact, are we sorry that we judged a light to be a different color and crashed? Not usually. Isn't really an opinion of mine. There are plenty of boring psych studies--and I promise never to get into those--it ends up for whatever reason not being what people do. People aren't sorry. Mostly if I were to guess why, they end up over their lifetime schooled in the benefits of the road they have travelled. This familiarity is comfortable, and much more so that the path less so, conveniently remains wary enough to justify what we didn't do.
Does it exist?
It could, but from the way people act, it is more likely that it doesn't. At least it doesn't cause the kind of behavior that people think it does. The myth of 'deathbed repentance' is so rare that is just that--a myth.
Slade probably will never blog, how much the better for the world if he did, but we have between ourselves been talking about cultural myths that are widely believed and perpetuated--perpetuated by thinking that those types of ideas that are the case 'just because'--actually make sense for logical reasons. We use a form of logic, so to speak, but deny the power thereof, by making a logical argument for those things that we really have come to only assume make sense because we always hear them and probably always will.
So because Slade and I love the 'aha moment' we get from popping bubbles of cultural myths in our brains to make room for the other stuff, I will talk about a few of them, even though this is probably not the only way Slade and I are different. But to introduce the concept of cultural myth I need for a mythical concept that really isn't that big of an idea and that nobody really cares too much about believing one way or another. I will gradually move on to bigger stuff as I get some practice not making simple concepts into very very long ones. Which I obviously need more of.
Here goes, myth of guilt:
The fact that people end up feeling bad about and eventually changing their behavior is something that gets the kind of play of a common occurrence with the rarity of a miracle. I actually don't know why, because most people, I assumed it was more common. What happens instead? What do people really do on their deathbeds? I am sure that people can get better explanations of the whole psychological theory of cognitive dissonance than mine, but basically very few people end up thinking that ANYTHING they do, at any time down the road, was wrong. Instead they make final Herculean efforts to justify what they have already thought in the first place. Both in smaller time frames and in lifetimes. So ti anyone spends time fervently repenting in some religious sins or omissions it is likely because they have already done much of that.
Even in situations where people do something that is obviously a 'no brainer' in most respects and bring about the disaster that everyone knows they will, they don't end up sorry. Teenage girls who run off with total creeps, that in five years yell the loudest about how big of a creep it was that they ran off with, are perfect examples of what I am talking about. All of us (but the particular teenage girl in question) know exactly what a creep they are running off with, but admitting 'I told you so' ends up closer to something like a 'well there was no way for me to have known, and it was probably natural given the circumstances.'
In fact most of us think we are exceptions to rules, it is in our nature--even the kinds of rules we would freely expect others to follow. Navigating emotional and personal decisions, such as how to behave in cases of love, marriage, and family, particularly don't mesh well with any kind of statistical calculating on our own part, and certainly not just like advice of we hear from others. That never ends up like anything we are willing to lend credibility to.
Most drivers know that it is obvious that you shouldn't run a red light. But in life when we really want to do something, and then when we have done it already and seek to explain ourselves, it becomes much more persuasive or illustrative to talk about that story we all heard about someone who has run a red light and come out just fine. I ran a red light once when I was a teenager (talk about teenage girls) I remember the night distinctly. Apparently it didn't take long for me to have my license and break one of the worst rules of all, and metaphorically speaking we probably all do that in a lot of contexts.
But in big life decisions, it doesn't seem to make sense, for whatever reason, to actually just make solid, reasoned choices based on what makes sense or what would be safe. 10 times greater likelihood of crashing in driving somehow is strong enough to restrict us but in something much more profoundly dangerous like love, the 90 percent that squeak by doing something reckless seem to compel us to follow their example.
And thus after the fact, are we sorry that we judged a light to be a different color and crashed? Not usually. Isn't really an opinion of mine. There are plenty of boring psych studies--and I promise never to get into those--it ends up for whatever reason not being what people do. People aren't sorry. Mostly if I were to guess why, they end up over their lifetime schooled in the benefits of the road they have travelled. This familiarity is comfortable, and much more so that the path less so, conveniently remains wary enough to justify what we didn't do.
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