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Originally Posted by Dannyboy1  Once you realize your ego caused you to do something wrong, if you can do something to rectify it, you should. ... It serves no purpose but to punish you for something you already realize was wrong. |
How exactly do you decide what's right or wrong anyway? What form does the realisation take? Emotion. A feeling which you associate with either rejection of that which is wrong or approval of that which is right. One of those emotions is guilt. Something more might also be involved, and we're certainly capable of thinking rationally about morality, but emotion is primary.
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Originally Posted by Dannyboy1 You should not feel guilty. |
The feeling of guilt is often the very first identifiable sign that you've done something wrong. In that case what do you think will happen if someone accepts the advice that they shouldn't feel guilty? More guilt. That's what happens, their initial guilt is compounded by the thought that they shouldn't feel that way, sending them down a spiral into anxiety over their inability to prevent what they don't understand is a natural response.
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Originally Posted by Dannyboy1 Even if there's nothing you can do to rectify the situation guilt serves no purpose. In fact, it just makes things worse. It causes you to feel bad and pass on your negativity to others and be unproductive. |
You do kinda have a point. When there's nothing you can do to change the situation there's no point feeling bad and it doesn't help to pass on those bad feelings to others.
The problem is you've associated the experience of guilt with the common reaction to it and concluded that since the reaction is negative, guilt itself is a bad thing. Your final advice, to "apologize and learn from your mistake" shows that at some level you know that's not the case, that it is possible to not let the guilt be a negative influence. Unfortunately it's not a simple matter of choosing to stop feeling guilty. We can't just say, "goodbye ego, I'm never going to feel guilty again." We humans simply don't work that way, and demonising our natural responses won't change that.
Guilt is unpleasant, and it can lead to unnecessary problems for ourselves and those around us. But the guilt itself is
not the cause of those problems. The cause of problems is mismanagement of guilt. The guilt is a signpost and we should pay attention to it so that we know which way to go in the future, a way which won't lead us towards more pain. You can call that path 'freeing yourself from ego' if you want, but labeling guilt 'wrong' is like blowing up the signpost before you've had a chance to notice which way it's pointing.
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Originally Posted by SirBishop What personal benefit would come from guilt? |
If you stop doing what makes you feel guilty because it feels so bad, isn't that a huge benefit? And if you don't stop doing it and bad things happen, isn't that a negative result of
not paying attention to the guilt? And if you don't feel guilty and nothing bad happens, isn't that a sign that what you did wasn't wrong in the first place, and
not a sign that guilt itself is bad?
Can you think of anything negative that would come from the feeling of guilt itself as long as the guilty feeling was appropriate for your beliefs about the morality of your actions? In other words, can you think of any reason to suggest guilt is the problem, rather than what you try to do about that guilt?