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C O N T R O L S Y
S T E M S
The Guilt System
Written
by Marie Fraenkel, Psy.D.,
exclusively for Anxiety Culture
Most of the unpleasantness of the “real world”
– the competitiveness, hostility, resentment,
anxiety – can be traced to the guilt system.
In a sense we each created our own version of
Hell from our first encounter with guilt. The
fall from grace occurred during infancy when
we received the message (usually from our parents)
that we’re “bad” or “not good enough”. This
led to our first “bad” thought, resulting in
the Nightmare of Guilt from which we’ve
been running ever since.
The depth of this guilt shouldn’t be underestimated.
Relative to the infant’s previously innocent
universe, doing something “bad” was equivalent
to murdering all good. Not knowing how
to dispel this gnawing sense of guilt, we eventually
entered “normal society”, which functions essentially
as a guilt-projection system for recirculating
undigested guilt.
How does the Guilt System work?
We each carry a burden of unresolved guilt
from our childhood. We repress it (ie hide it
from ourselves, deny it) and we project it onto
others. This projection takes the following
form: We see ourselves in a competitive, threatening
world, but we’re not guilty of creating
this world; it’s them out there – those
bastards – who are guilty of creating the unpleasantness.
Competitive society – with its constricting
fear, pettiness and suppressed rage – can hurt
us psychologically only if we participate
in the guilt system. Our own repressed guilt
makes us vulnerable to the system’s effects.
We’ve become unwitting receptacles for the rebounding
projection of our own guilt at a social level.
The guilt we hide in ourselves creates an attenuated
expectancy of punishment, which makes us feel
insecure and defensive, leading to irritability,
resentment, hatred... and more guilt.
A simple solution exists: to reject the idea
of guilt as meaningless. What did your
first “guilty” thought mean? It meant nothing
(except in your agitated mind). Neither did
the next, or the next... Yet by accepting guilt
as real, you created a personal Hell. “Society”
is the name we give to the guilty Hell we share.
Society’s most popular pastime is comparing
oneself to others in ways that make us seem
good-by-comparison. This is just a desperate,
unsatisfying attempt to compensate for our hidden
feelings of “badness” and guilt.*
You can undo guilt by seeing your true innocence.
Not in the sense of an arbitrary moral judgement
on your past, but unconditional innocence
in the present moment, which means always.
In truth, you cannot “be” guilty. You
can accept the guilt-programming in your personality
if you want life-long misery, but to believe
that you – a unique being in unique circumstances
– can “be” guilty seems insane. In fact, anything
but a perception of your unconditional
innocence leads to insanity. Unfortunately,
the socially-programmed personality rejects
this perspective as “immoral”. In other words,
it can’t escape its evaluation of its own guilt:
it judges rejection of guilt as the ultimate
guilty act.
Guilt originally developed as a “religious”
social-control mechanism, used for keeping the
slaves and peasants in line. We can do without
it.** But, I hear someone asking, how
will people stop doing bad things if they don’t
feel guilty? Guilt probably never stopped
anyone doing “bad” things. Intelligence, compassion
and democratic laws seem better candidates for
that role.
But, but...?! I know, it’s blasphemous,
irresponsible, dangerous, etc, to think in this
way, and God will strike you down for it. Or
at least that appears to be the belief of the
“guilty” and the insane. This article isn’t
a licence to be stupid and callous, but a
licence to stop being guilty; to undo the social
fiction of guilt; to wake up from your socially-programmed
guilt-trance and feel the serene invulnerability
of your innocence.
Your innocence cannot fail
Another way to undo guilt is to stop projecting
it. We all follow destructive social programming
to different degrees, occasionally leading to
tragic consequences and large-scale suffering.
To regard people “out there” as the guilty parties
will only keep you enslaved to your own
guilt (since it reflects your decision to accept
guilt as an absolute reality). Better to innocently
unravel and expose the faulty social programming.
So entrenched is the guilt system, that it
will take more than one moment of sanity to
undo its effects. The guilt will return – as
will the projection of guilt. But every moment
of remembered innocence weakens the guilt system
and reduces its insane consequences.
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