The Answer

[The Cloud]

I have the Answer to human unhappiness. The implications are too astounding for me to have fully understood as of yet, but I can give to you the basics necessary to discover these implications. Once you have the Answer, you're a rock rolling down a hill and it's only a matter of time before you get to the bottom of things.

Humans are unhappy because of guilt. Everybody knows about guilt, so this isn't entirely surprising. The surprising part is that your guilt does not operate the way that you were taught it was supposed to. It has gone haywire, as it necessarily had to, and has gone out of control. What was supposed to be a limiting factor in very specific instances has now become the fundamental way that most people perceive and achieve their lives.

This is the way you were taught that guilt works:
1) You have a good thing that you are supposed to do.
2) You don't do it.
3) You feel guilt because you're being bad.
4) You do the good thing.

The guilt makes you a better person. This good thing can be anything from not stealing, to getting good grades, to loving your family, to being happy. Anything good. Some of the more conscious among you may understand that this is dysfunctional, but you probably have not been able to find a fully satisfactory reason why.

That is because guilt does not operate the way that I just described. Here's how it really works:
1) You feel guilty.
2) You think about a "good" thing that you're supposed to be or do.
3) You generate guilt in order to make yourself do the "good" thing.
4) You do the "good" thing.

Notice how you start out by feeling guilty. Why would this be? Why wouldn't you start out with something to feel guilty about? Here's why, near as I can tell. Criminals are supposed to feel guilt as a deterrent from crime. Feeling guilt is virtuous, because this assumes that guilt is the thing preventing criminals from being bad people. A person that does not feel guilt after doing something bad is considered inhuman.

So feeling guilt must make you virtuous. Thus guilt is actually what makes you virtuous, and you stop needing actual virtue because all you have to do is feel guilt. Virtue without guilt is an inhuman evil. Guilt without virtue is human good. Guilt is now human nature. It is no longer necessary, and even bad, to be virtuous. Virtue is no longer human nature, within this construct.

Of course, your living mind and body rebel against this construct, but more often than not they lose because your mind and body have had their best turned against them. You strive for virtue, but since guilt has become virtue, your striving is for guilt. It is not your worst that is turned against you, but your best. If you try to improve yourself and overcome your guilt, the tool you use is the most virtuous one that you know of; guilt. You have been set in reverse against yourself, so your cure for venom is to drink poison.

Guilt being virtue, and virtue being what all humans constantly strive for in one way or another, guilt becomes omnipresent. And virtues must be shared, mustn't they? So external expressions of guilt must be found. Let's say that you have been taught to associate guilt with chores. So now, feeling guilty, you cast about for ways to express your guilt and think about the chores you are supposed to do. Your true inner virtue cannot be thusly coerced, so you don't do the chores right away. In a powerful effort to become more virtuous, you ramp up your guilt until guilty virtue overwhelms your apathy in the absence of true virtue, and you do the chore.

It doesn't have to be chores, either. It could be something like loving your mother. You're supposed to love your mother. However, you can't guilt yourself into feeling love. You can't accept that your "virtue" isn't actually virtuous, so you do the next best thing; you fake it. You show some hollow display of affection, not even allowing yourself to know how hollow it is. In return, you get the hollow displays of affection that you deserve. Your true virtue will have no part of this, and so you wonder why your relationships cause such internal and external turmoil, but since you haven't seen the truth of the "virtue" that you are sharing with these people you're supposed to love you keep giving the guilt that they have learned to desire. Guilt becomes the basis of your relationships with the guilty, and any real relationship becomes corrupted as guilt undermines any real love or virtue being shared.

The core message that you should take away from this is that you have been programmed to generate guilt in place of true good and happiness. Guilt is not in opposition to the "good" that you are trying to achieve, it is that good. And I guarantee that this is true for all but the very very most conscious amongst you who are reading this. This isn't a periodic or occasional guilt. This is a constant unrelenting guilt, so constant that you probably cannot recall a time where it was not present, thus depriving you of a frame of reference to know that it does not have to be.

So what do you do about a problem such as this, since trying to fix it will just make it worse? The only solution is to recognize what you are doing. Once you recognize the false virtue that you are sharing with the people and the world you love, you will be unable to continue. Understanding is the only tool that your guilt will be unable to withstand. Pay attention, and don't accept "virtue" that is anything but.

*Edit: It bears mentioning that people that are used to the bond of guilt between you and them will likely heartily rebel against any attempt on your part to withdraw guilt and incorporate honesty, integrity, and love into the relationship. Without guilt, you remove their mechanism for controlling you, which they mistook for love.

[Michael Chui]

Epicurus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[180]

I think you have the root of it,

I think other emotions and feelings are somewhat connected or wrapped up in guilt, some way or another.

While some people don't feel guilt in the social sense of the term ie. feeling guilty for jilting my lover. Guilt manifests into things like jealousy... ie. I feel guilty because I SHOULD have 1 million dollars instead of him.... (A sort of self entitlement and obnoxious version of guilt.)

I think you are proposing a buddist version of solving this problem with acceptance. I agree, it can lead to a life of happiness truly.

But the problem with most of us is that we would prefer to have the version where we HAVE everything versus giving it up. It's our... problem. Social and psychological.

Personally, I feel guilty I can't always lead or take the fearless action. I think if I felt more guilt, I would be motivated to do it more.

I think that's kind of the paradox. Guilt can push us but at the same time it makes us unhappy.

Great reading your post OP I enjoyed

[Eric L]

You're' saying we conditioned ourselves to beleive that guilt is a bad feeling when it is, in fact, a good one.

The feeling should be interpreted as "I should be doing this, I will do this and I will be virtuous because of it. I will not do it to be virtuous, I will do it because I should do it. It is just."

It is a normal way for our subconsciousness to tell us what to do based on our current moral views.

I could very well define this as our subconsciousness' intelligence and moral center talking to us.

This is a good read. Very positive way of thinking IMO, and very applicable in every day life.

Basically, emotional mastery and acceptance of our own emotions. Own your guilt and express it and act on it.

[Eric L]

No, IMO, it does not make us unhappy.

We conditioned ourselves to beleive that it makes us unhappy or feel bad. It is made to make us feel happy. But we got to listen to it. We got to act on it.

Guilt makes us happy. If we listen to it.

If we resist it, it will keep steering us and pushing us, morally, until we listen.

We all hate nags! Make the guilt stop nagging you and listen to it.

Guilt is good.

[The Cloud]

Originally Posted by 180

I think that's kind of the paradox. Guilt can push us but at the same time it makes us unhappy.

Then the real question becomes where is it pushing you, and do you want to go there?

Originally Posted by Eric L

You're' saying we conditioned ourselves to beleive that guilt is a bad feeling when it is, in fact, a good one.

You actually have it perfectly backwards. Perhaps I should have been clearer about the difference between perceived good and actual good. Guilt is a perceived good; it isn't actually good.