Guilt and Fear

Oh the irony!

The root of guilt is the root of the brain.

Amygdala.jpg

The amygdala is invovled when guilt occurs because it is scary and emotionally unpleasant to think you have grounds to hate yourself or be socially considered bad. But the amygdala is not the source. You have to have a strong social cogntive aspect to guilt, and that is what the amygdala is reacting to.

Guilt is not like rage or fear. It is a complicated phenomenon where parts of the brain are triggering other parts. As if parts of you brain have taken over the voices of the church or parents or peer groups.

from…
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3288150/

Where there is guilt, you once had social threat, which became internalized. People are so fucking scared, and tend not to look at that, because if they knew what guilt was, they might slowly drop it over time. And even considering that is scary. Religions knew how to push buttons with visions of eternal damnation, though there are secular ways of getting the more lobal and advanced parts of your own brain to torture you and your amygdala.

Guilt is the subconscious criticizing the conscious ego when one realizes/understands the intricacies/full implications and extent of damage one may have done through ill intent or even sometimes not even with intent depending on how connected one is to subconscious and self awareness.

It’s the eternal judgement already dormant and embedded into the psyche, instead of it being a place after death it may be a place one creates here for the self, a realistic subjective hell.

This is why a child is “innocent” because they cannot fully understand the intricacies of their actions and Ill intent and so the subconscious cannot judge them because they have no grasp or conception of that topic of ill intent of conscious identity/ego. A child until a certain age is the closest thing to the embodiment of the subconscious outside of animals/nature I believe.

The brain is merely the physical receiver needed to communicate between subconscious, archetypes and personal ego/identity. If one does not have guilt internally embedded naturally, it could still be due to issues of the brain which is where psychopathy stems from, a lack of this system of internally embedded judgement of self, possibly trauma or the consuming of self by the “negative” archetypes, a lack of understanding or being able to due to psychological entrapment in ignorance and method.

People indoctrinated can easily be tricked into what to feel guilty for as well as society surely does. Through knowing self one may determine true morality and justice which is through true balance and equality.

Or in Freud’s schema, it is the superego telling the self that it is bad or did a bad thing.

Agreed. Though I don’t think it has to be present.

I agree, though one can be conscious of one’s actions and the consquences without guilt. One can via empathy not do certain things and regret having done them without guilt.

I do think one can, through knowing oneself, disentangle oneself from guilt and make choices one wants to make.

Shame is the acceptance of guilt.

Remorse is the intention towards restoration.

Humanity is not just guilt for violating the social contract, but also pride for endorsing it.

Of course, psychopathy stems from this disengagement from guilt or the “integrated judgement complex” it could be due abnormalities in the brain and not being able to “receive/process” it as normal or perhaps even become a wholesome version of the tyrant through the ego with no regard to others, a lack of empathy, guilt, self awareness. Psychological entrapment into the dark thoughts instead of a balance. A psychopath finds relief in murder or unjust thinking/action due to this iabnormality. All in all, another form of coping, just a shallow and negative side.

Shame, ones conscious understanding of judgement(guilt) agree.

Do agree, for on a collective level of humanity.

I think it is a good thing to treat guilt and shame as two different things, just as anthropologists do when they refer to guilt vs shame based cultures

Psychopaths have no empathy, lacking guilt is not the problem. They literally do not care about what other people experience.

We think guilt is necessary, but it’s not. However it seems like if we had no guilt we would be psychopaths. Well, not if we have empathy.

And it’s not a good person who does good things and avoids bad things because of guilt.

There is no love or care in that. It’s a form of negative self-obsession. Sort of the opposite of a pompous ass.

Guilt is about what you are and what might happen socially (and legally). That aint love, but most people cannot feel the different, so trained to think guilt is a must.

I suppose that does make sense then and is true, if empathy may exist detached from guilt then I suppose guilt may not be needed at all and overcome. But does empathy cause one to reflect on the past? Or does it imply that one only can relate to another’s pain in the present moment? Guilt may be necessary in order to reflect/become humble, if one doesn’t feel judgement or guilty, (criticism of self by self) then wouldn’t becoming humble be more difficult and a possible delay for learning?

If my act caused someone pain and I feel empathy for that person - and there were no overriding reasons why I needed to do whatever it was, this would make me reconsider my future actions and reevaluate my previous action.

I think guilt actually freezes learning. One can, yes, stop doing certain things - including good things - due to guilt. But you have not resolved the issue. You have what seem like bad urges and you have guilt, and maybe you create rules to control those urges. That’s no real solution. Remorse and empathy however can allow for real learning, rather than a bunch of rules. Guilt is basically like having an internal condemning priest inside you. YOu are still a sinner, just one who has control of the beast. You are still evil inside, but trying to behave well. Not out of love, but out of fear of being a bad person and all that entails.

Of course we’re not amygdalas on a stick, although some make me wonder.

Idk man, there’s a connection. Religious, dogmatic, scared, republicans, amygdala. Guilt fits in there somehow. Whichever environmental stress that causes the one, causes the other, I’m sure.

Guilt man, there is so much guilt on the left, in fact I think that is part of what bothers the right about the left. And certainly they both have guilts. And sure, I did acknowledge that the amygdala is involved, but man you gotta light up the whole brain including a lot of the ‘higher’ parts to feel guilty.

Is it guilt, laziness or ignorance? All of the above with the masses of everyday common Joe’s.

I look at it from an unbiased throne. I am the embodiment of chaos and order, nature. So why must I fully convert to order or chaos? I will be chaotic and fight when I need to without guilt or remorse or I will Love, be kind and orderly when not aggravated or my freedoms poked. Of course they already are extremely limited by this society of illogical, unreasonable common folk, ignorance is bliss but what you don’t know may kill you.

Most already “live” the epitome of death for and of themself.

I don’t know what the ‘it’ is exactly in your first question. But even if it is all of the above, guilt is a big factor. There are people coming out and saying they are bad and trying to role model others to do this. That to me is guilt. The guilt can certainly be fed by lazy thinking and ignorance and also not trusting one’s own feelings.

But are the higher parts missing? Or in addition?

I know for a fact that the insula is missing in the republican case. (Well, not missing, but attenuated)

Watts said the church institutionalized guilt, then the audience uproared in applause. We sinned against god and should feel bad for it.

FWD to 33:19

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdnZiv24fLc[/youtube]

So what happens is this: we are delivered therefore a gospel which is in fact an impossible religion; it’s impossible to follow the way of Christ. All right, many of Christian has admitted it: “I’m a miserable sinner, I fall far short of the example of Christ”, but do you realize the more you say that, the better you are because what happened was that Christianity institutionalized guilt as a virtue. [Applause] See, you can never come up to it. Never. And therefore you will always be aware of your shortcomings and so the more shortcomings you feel, the more, in other words, you are aware of the vast abyss between Christ and yourself.

How is this mirrored on the left?

It’s a tool to keep ignorance abundant. Depends on how one looks at it, I look at that “sin against God” quote as if it means that one does not let their subconscious guide them on their path to learning and this is to live in death already, to avoid self and their uniqueness. in terms of how the public masses interpret it is more along the lines of; “We need to have faith in God and reject any other information” because they believe knowledge and diversity is a sin, I shit you not. Systematic religion, the philosophy of ignorance to the common man who does not attempt to understand but only adopts, it was cleverly put together. I do not know it’s intentions… If it was meant to enlighten or control. I’d assume control since that is what it more so does.

I think you are correct Artimas.

Matthew 11:25

KJV At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.

NIV At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.

CEV At that moment Jesus said: My Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I am grateful that you hid all this from wise and educated people and showed it to ordinary people.

CJB It was at that time that Yeshua said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you concealed these things from the sophisticated and educated and revealed them to ordinary folks.

AMPC At that time Jesus began to say, I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth [and I acknowledge openly and joyfully to Your honor], that You have hidden these things from the wise and clever and learned, and revealed them to babies [to the childish, untaught, and unskilled].

MSG Abruptly Jesus broke into prayer: “Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You’ve concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people.

You get the idea :wink:

During guilt they are working hard, drawing in blood. And I think you should be able to feel this also. There is feeling sad or scared and there’s no higher cognitive stuff going on in some active way. As opposed to say, worry. And as opposed to guilt. Guilt is complicated. You can feel the thoughts coming down on the emotions.

That’s lovely. You think Republicans feeling guiltier the Democrats. You seem to keep trying to reflect guilt to them, with little success. in any case, we talking about guilt, not republicans.

And dnow we have a lot of secular guilts too. A cognitive self-hatred triggering emotions.

But it’s often the case that a cognitive process results in fear, whether it be by guilt or some other mechanism. Right?

Person A perceives stimuli, initiates processing, result is diverted to amygdala.
Person B perceives stimuli, initiates processing and is terminated due to reasoning.

Obviously the problem isn’t in the amygdala itself, but lack of mechanism to rationalize the fear response before it is triggered.

Republicans are associated with amygdala and guilt, so there must be a connection.

Well, leftists can be pissed about climate change, but not feel guilty because they’re doing their part and demanding others also. The rightist should feel guilty once he realizes the damage he may have done.
The leftist can be pissed about trickle-down policies, but not feel guilty.
The only thing I can imagine that leftist may feel guilty about is slavery because slavery was associated with the democratic party, but even that is not really true since only a faction of the democratic party defended slavery.
The leftist homosexual may harbor guilt, but only because of retained rightist impurities that haven’t been purged (ie religion).

I hate to seemingly put the left on a pedestal, but the right seems to contain all the problems: fear, guilt, ignorance, authoritarianism. I’m a prisoner of the facts here. What am I supposed to think?