On Aug 1, 8:30Â pm, "tooly"
bellsouth.net> wrote:>> On Jul 29, 9:36 pm, turtoni
fastmail.net> wrote:>
>>> On Jul 30, 12:16 am, Shrikeb...@
gmail.com wrote:
>
>>>> On Jul 29, 6:00 am, "tooly"
bellsouth.net> wrote:>
>>>>>
gmail.com> wrote in message>
>
>>>>>> There is no reason an honest person should ever feel guilty about
>>>>>> their choices, regardless of the outcome of such choices. Doing
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> best you can with what you had at the time means acting honestly,
>>>>>> leading to growth.
>
>>>>>> Doesnt stop the consequence of your action, but sure as hell takes
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> sting away.
>
>>>>>> We put a break on growth if we associate such growth with pain,
>>>>>> and
>>>>>> that becomes extremely painful, akin to being allergic to water.
>
>>>>>> BOfL
>
>>>>> I disagree with all this. Guilt is an exercise of empathy...a taking
>>>>> on
>>>>> some sense of another's existence as your own. I feel 'guilt' just
>>>>> seeing
>>>>> someone on the street less fortunate than I am.
>
>>>> That's not guilt, it's pity. If you felt as though you were so
>>>> filthy rich through injustice, that might be guilt.
>
>>> In relation to the mentally ill homeless person on the street we are
>>> "filthy rich".
>
>> That's true. It is not generally the case that the homeless guy's
>> condition was caused by you, however. So there is nothing to be
>> guilty for. Likewise, when you meet the guy who has no feet,
>> legs, or arms, it is not guilt you feel. Just being luckier than
>> someone else is not a cause for guilt. You may feel guilty for not
>> giving the guy a ten-spot with which to buy some fortified wine. If
>> you felt obligated to do that.
>
> "Collective guilt, or guilt by association, is the controversial
> collectivist idea that a group of humans can bear guilt above and
> beyond the guilt of particular members, and hence an individual holds
> responsibility for what other members of his group have done, even if
> he himself hasn't done this. Advanced systems of criminal law accept
> the principle that guilt shall only be personal. This attitude is not
> usually shared by other systems of law. Assumption of collective
> responsibility is common for feud. Such systems tend to judge the
> guilt of persons by their associations, classifications or
> organizations, which often gives rise to racial, ethnic, social and
> religious prejudices. Collective guilt is regarded by some as
> impossible because it seems to presuppose that collections of humans
> can have traits, such as intentions and knowledge, that strictly
> speaking are claimed to be truly possessed only by individuals. The
> principle of collective guilt is totally denounced in libertarian
> social thinking. However, there are those who consider such judgements
> on collective guilt to be overly reductionistic and accept the
> existence of collective guilt, collective responsibility, etc.
> Sometimes the idea of collective guilt can be a form of association
> fallacy. Humans seem to have a natural tendency to attribute
> collective guilt, usually with tragic results. An example would be the
> denounced idea that Jews are responsible for the death of Christ or
> that whites today should feel guilty for slavery. History is filled
> with examples of a wronged man who tried to avenge himself, not on the
> person who has wronged him, but on other members of the wrong-doer's
> family, or ethnic group, or religion, or nation, or tribe, or army.
> Likewise collective punishment is often practiced in different
> settings, including schools (punishing a whole class for the actions
> of a single unknown pupil) and, more transcendentally, in situation of
> war, economic sanctions, etc, presupposing the existence of collective
> guilt.
>
> It has been suggested by Werner Cohn that the accusation that others
> apply "guilt by association" is itself a fallacy, for two reasons: 1)
> the term "guilt" is ambiguous. Sometimes it applies to criminal guilt,
> which requires a very high standard of proof ("proof beyond a
> reasonable doubt"). But more often, "guilt" refers to various
> shortcomings that require lesser standards. 2) "association" is also
> ambiguous. Sometimes "association" may be totally innocent, such as
> the association of fellow travelers on a train. But other kinds of
> association, for instance criminal conspiracy, are not at all
> innocent.
>
> The idea of collective guilt became popular in Western World since the
> 1960s, as many historical injustices, including e.g. slavery in the
> United States, has been perceived by intelligentsia as faults of the
> society requiring retribution on behalf of those who had nothing to do
> with them (see e.g. Reparations for slavery and White guilt).
>
> Terrorism is commonly rationalized by its practitioners on ideas of
> collective guilt and responsibility. Many nations have laws holding
> corporations, but not the individual decision-makers within them,
> responsible for certain kinds of acts. For example, in the United
> States corporations can be fined for violating pollution laws, but the
> individuals who actually ordered and directed the polluting activity
> may not themselves be regarded as having broken any laws, since they
> act as corporate officers on behalf of the shareholders. This is
> generally known as the "corporate veil"."
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt
>
> ---------------
> This one is going to seem strange perhaps. Â I don't hang onto my guilt for
> sake of the guy under the bridge. Â Empathetic reach is a real thing to
>
me...concrete...part of what I am. Â I suppose it IS my capacity to feel in
> fact...and I 'want' to feel the deepest I can. Â I feel no 'obligation' in my
> guilt however...unless I have actually done a wrong to someone else...which
> is never since there is NO intent as other's have mentioned. Â The object
> becomes an anchor...a stay...a point for which to cast off emotional content
> toward something else.
>
> One felt however, to CARE has a magic all it's own I suppose, and it may
> move me in fact to do something to help the object...or not, depends upon my
> rational mind. Â I'd love to help the homeless for example, but often my
> rational mind kicks in and assesses 'risk' to be too high.
>
> I scare myself at times since I seem to carry a large capacity to CARE, and
> yet, also this coldness of rationality. Â I'm not sure which should lead
> which....though to date, my irrational side has won out [easy to for the
> most part, for it often rationalizes out of fear, ha].
>
> My point now is that retracting one's capacity to care by erradicating
> things like guilt, shame, pity etc, is akin to cutting one's own dick in
> half I think. Â One can still function perhaps, but 'potential' is thrown
> away. Â Not a good thing, LOL. Â So...revel in your guilt and realize that it
> means you still CARE.
One way i deal with it is to imagine that my taxes should be helping
the less fortunate.
Other ways are to work in our sparetime by directly helping the less
fortunate via various organisations; like for example working in a
soup kitchen.
> Charles Reese, conservative columnist, has said for some time we are
> creating a society of sociopaths however.
Perhaps those types of disorders are biological..
> Rationality without it's tether to our human conscience is madness I'm pretty sure.
"The German sociologist Max Weber proposed an interpretation of social
action that distinguished between four different types of rationality.
The first, which he called Zweckrational or purposive/instrumental
rationality, is related to the expectations about the behavior of
other human beings or objects in the environment. These expectations
serve as means for a particular actor to attain ends, ends which Weber
noted were "rationally pursued and calculated." The second type, Weber
called Wertrational or value/belief-oriented. Here the action is
undertaken for what one might call reasons intrinsic to the actor:
some ethical, aesthetic, religious or other motive, independent of
whether it will lead to success. The third type was affectual,
determined by an actor's specific affect, feeling, or emotion - to
which Weber himself said that this was a kind of rationality that was
on the borderline of what he considered "meaningfully oriented." The
fourth was traditional, determined by ingrained habituation. Weber
emphasized that it was very unusual to find only one of these
orientations: combinations were the norm. His usage also makes clear
that he considered the first two as more significant than the others,
and it is arguable that the third and fourth are subtypes of the first
two. These kinds of rationality were ideal types.
The advantage in this interpretation is that it avoids a value-laden
assessment, say, that certain kinds of beliefs are irrational.
Instead, Weber suggests that a ground or motive can be given – for
religious or affect reasons, for example — that may meet the criterion
of explanation or justification even if it is not an explanation that
fits the Zweckrational orientation of means and ends. The opposite is
therefore also true: some means-ends explanations will not satisfy
those whose grounds for action are 'Wertrational'.
Based on the premise that 'feelings of worthlessness' are a
maladaptive byproduct of the evolution of rationality, Phil Roberts,
Jr. has proposed a theory in which the rationality of an end is
presumed to correlate with the comprehensiveness of its underlying
considerations, and in which no concrete objective is presumed to be
rational in any but a relative sense of the term. In addition to its
ability to explain what morality is (a shared subconscious theory of
rationality), Roberts has also demonstrated how his theory can be
employed to address a number of rationality paradoxes, including the
paradox of rational irrationality, cognitive versus practical
rationality conflict, the "rationality debate" (Cohen vs. Kahneman and
Tversky) and the paradox of the Prisoner's Dilemma"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationality#Theories_of_rationality
