Knowledge begets responsibility which begets guilt

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Knowledge begets responsibility which begets guilt

Guilt is both a curse and a salvation. I conclude that guilt is perhaps one of the few internal mechanisms that can prevent human self-destruction.

Rational analysis and recognition of self preservation can drive us to correcting problems that have immediate and visible impact on our life but it is this internal friction we call guilt upon which we must depend for avoiding long term consequences resulting from our behavior.

Guilt is difficult to analyze because it is ‘dumb’. It is a feeling of being blocked and frustrated without knowing why we feel that way. This develops when embraced by powerlessness while clutched by the unknown. Guilt is a bind of life.

A feeling of guilt emanates from our peculiar ability to apprehend life’s totality but unable to move in relation to it. “This real guilt partly explains willing subordinacy to his culture: after all, the world of men is even more dazzling and miraculous in its richness than the awesomeness of nature. Also, subordinacy comes naturally from man’s basic experience of being nourished and cared for; it is a logical response to social altruism.”—Ernest Becker.

Stewardship-- the conducting, supervising, or managing of something… the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care…

Stewardship is a word used often in the Bible and was at one time used often in England. It was used in England because the youth of the landed aristocracy was taught that they were responsible for the care of the family properties in such a way that they passed on to the next generation an inheritance equal to but more appropriately larger than that received. Each generation was not the owner but was the steward for the family estates. Any individual who squandered the inheritance was a traitor to the family.

I am inclined to think that each human generation must consider itself as the steward of the earth and therefore must make available to the succeeding generations an inheritance undiminished to that received.

In this context what does “careful and responsible management” mean? I would say that there are two things that must be begun to make the whole process feasible. The first is that the public must be convinced that it is a responsible caretaker and not an owner and secondly the public must be provided with an acceptable standard whereby it can judge how each major issue affects the accomplishment of the overall task. This is an ongoing forever responsibility for every nation but for the purpose of discussion I am going to speak about it as localized to the US.

Selfishness and greed are fundamental components of human nature. How does a nation cause its people to temper this nature when the payoff goes not to the generation presently in charge but to generations yet to come in the very distant future? Generations too far removed to be encompassed by the evolved biological impulse to care for ones kin.

How is it possible to cause a man or woman to have the same concern for a generation five times removed as that man or woman has for their own progeny?

I suspect it is not possible, but it does seem to me to be necessary to accomplish the task of stewardship.

Guilt may be our only hope for human acceptance of the responsibility of stewardship.

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This post was totally retarded.

It’s like saying slavery is the only way we can get black people to work.

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Could you develop a syllogism to allow us to comprehend your conclusion?

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no, not retarded… guilt is a wonderful tool… it helps control the herd into doing that which priests (in this case socialist tyrants) demand from the slaves…

the problem is that people can see past the demands of guilt (and not everyone buys into the premise of guilt) and react accordingly…

it is ironic that the new brand of socialist tyrants is trying to use the same tools that they decry the christians for using…

read nietzsche…

-Imp

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We shouldn’t have to feel guilty, but we should definitely analyze our wrongdoings and learn from them.

I honestly believe there is no said apology that’s sincere in this world. The only apology that should accepted is a response to the problem.

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Guilt is an effective tool as long as there is the possibility of redemption.
Without redemption, guilt obstructs life. And where do you find redemption these days?

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Regardless the insertion of politics, for which there is no good cause, coberst’s proposition would be made valid in application;

If each generation accepted responsibility, and held accountable, those of their generation.

He is most certainly correct that seeing five generations removed, the consequences of today, is not plausible. Most humans have an average 30 to 01:30 span of attention.

Although, from a purely personal perspective, the preference would be for direct retributive action, as opposed to guilt, especially as so many groups of individuals claim entitlement, and no longer regard remorse as a responsibility.

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Guilt is difficult to analyze because it is ‘dumb’. It is a feeling of being blocked and frustrated without knowing why we feel that way. This develops when embraced by powerlessness while clutched by the unknown. Guilt is a bind of life.

A feeling of guilt emanates from our peculiar ability to apprehend life’s totality but unable to move in relation to it. “This real guilt partly explains willing subordinacy to his culture: after all, the world of men is even more dazzling and miraculous in its richness than the awesomeness of nature. Also, subordinacy comes naturally from man’s basic experience of being nourished and cared for; it is a logical response to social altruism.”

There are many ways in which we feel this “bind of life”:

  • When ill or injured we are cared for by a cultural system
  • Not achieving all one can be
  • Recognition that we are the source of a serious accident
  • Inability to meet responsibility to family
  • Displaying certain accomplishments
  • Evolution’s bounty to me
  • Fate’s bounty to me
  • Sticking out in a crowd for some biological reason
  • “There, but for the grace of God, go I”

Social organization helps the individual expiate guilt by sharing guilt and a symbolic confession of it. “This is why the main general characteristic of guilt is that it must be shared: man cannot stand alone.” Primitives seem to be more honest about these things, probably because they were more realistic about our desperate situation vis-à -vis nature. You cannot fool Mother Nature. Modern man seems more arrogant as regards nature.

Hubris is another word signifying a forgetting from whence real power comes. We seem like sophomores, not yet comprehending the source of real power; imagining it is in our self.

Quotes and ideas from “Escape from Evil”—Ernest Becker

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Shame and its derivative, guilt, is a socially produced emotion.

It is a combination of fear and sadness.

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I can’t, but you can, therefor you are guilty of not being responsable enough to undo the retardedness of your own post. You wrote it and it’s your fault.

You don’t even know what “life” is, so how can you say that guilt binds you to life?

Guilt is only for the capitalists, for it entails both ownership and debt.
The most “guilty” are the most blamed, and most indebted, thus impoverished and ranked as lower-class citizens, which must then struggle and sacrifice themselves to the demands of the person[s] whom made them feel in debted. Did you know that many of the fundy capitalist theists feel that they do not even own their own life? They feel that God owns their life and the universe, and that they have an unrepayable debt to their “God”; so, they set themselves at a very low class [sinful], trying to repent and grovel [service, obedience].

Guilt does not bind you to life at all, it takes away your life!

The morality which contains debt: that morality claims to own the absracts of life itself. After which, after it takes away all freedom, and all life, it gives some back and calls those “gifts”, “rights”, etc. And the crazed capitalist claps his hands, feeling as though he is finally recieving something for free, though he has already had every square inch of land, air, water, trees and food taken away from him.

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Guilt is a wasted emotion.

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Dan

Guilt is the bind OF life.

Knowledge begets responsibility which begets guilt. Ignorance leads to bliss. To live is to accept guilt. To gain knowledge is to add to guilt.

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Alright mr.robot-man.
It’s great that you could not compute what I just said above.
Here’s more:
A fresh battery, some crude oil, and a longer memory-chip.

What animal other than the capitalist man is guilty?

Capitolism is a highly wasteful system.
The most difficult items to produce automatically gain the highest price, and inefficiency is always compensated by higher prices [see prices of hand-made items compared to factory-made items] Water is free, gold is expensive, etc. It’s an insane price-system, because actual need is not a factor in it, yet it controls human life and human necessities.

Nobody could feel guilty if they did not so strongly believe in debt and revenge, which is the back-bone of the capitolist worm. It always wants more blood.

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Of Esoterica

The rabble have no rights to the rarest truths - they twist every truth down to the core to serve their own purposes. He who knows a few more things would rather keep his treasures from them.

Rare people are first and formost rare from the heart - an altogether more exquisite type from the lightest of thoughts to the depths of the deepest instincts.

Knowledge, however, multiplies the rarity of he who posesses it.

You consider yourselves the deciferers of all things esoteric and ask yourselves ‘What do I know that only a handful do?’ and truly, such a test is worthy of purple honours.

But distance is increased by every step forward in your knowledge. He who knows the most is furthest away of all. Truly, one must love solitude to become a man of knowledge.

As does Zarathustra, I exalt man to love of the most distant. Thereby I am unashamed to love you, you pickers of every lock and solvers of every riddle. I exalt you thus: dare to know!

May I add that knowledge can make you feel guilty and ashamed. This may occur when one discovers certain truths about oneself or about that which one loves. But knowledge in itself shouldn’t make one feel guilty. He for whom it does, lacks the fortitude of a man of knowledge.

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Guilt is just a tool for learning. Like any tool it can be abused or neglected. Making guilt into anything other than a tool for learning is just like saying " I didn’t do it Mikey did it" and of course Mikey is not around to defend himself.

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Bullshit.

Punishment and Guilt are co-dependant.

That’s not a teaching or learning tool, that’s a mind control tool, turning people INTO tools.

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Most people build their minds upon foundations and fragments of other people and other ideologies that were neither real nor ment for their inner-self. The result is a heartness shell, the inner sacrifices and remakes itself for the sake of the outer. Utilitarianism becomes cannibalism, then, and “knowledge” simply reformats reality down below and within a matrix of utility, in which it all must be controlled and used somehow by these possessed and mythical “people”.

Making the paraconceptual into knowledge is allot like eating an apple then making a poop.

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Most hominids are just that, mindless tools. Fools, charlatans, cretins, plebeians … that is your majority social hominid. Bereft of character and discernment, that being the “norm”, I rather find coberst’s position a “breath of fresh air” in the macroscopic sense.

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Guilt may be our only hope for human acceptance of the responsibility of stewardship.

A person called upon responsiblity by guilt may not have the freedom to actually act responsible.

Example:

Police : Why did you give that homeless man a $100 bill? All he did was buy lots of beer and then start a fight with us.

Answer: “I felt bad because I have more than him.”

Camus argues we’re all guilty. So does much of Christianity. If true then my line of logic would mean no one can ever be fully responsible. Indeed, we almost never are. Who can control the future?

In the story above the police wouldn’t be able to hold the rich man to account other than some mean looks. He was only responsible in choice not outcome. But then sometimes we do hold people to account-

Police: Why did you hide this felon in your basement?

Answer: He was abused as a kid and he only made it to the 5th grade. The system labels him something he is not.

Police: You will be arrested along with him.

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The questions I would like to ask everyone are:

  1. Do you agree that the acceptance of stewardship responsibility for this planet is vitally important?
  2. Do you think that this human characteristic of guilt can be important for stewardship to happen?
  3. Do you have a different idea whereby this stewardship might develop?
  4. Do you give a damn?