What good is guilt?

You might say you feel guilty because you feel you wronged others. Guilt encourages you not to wrong again or even to rectify that wrong. So guilt serves to punish, to rehabilitate and to restore. It is your internal penal system.

Also, guilt deepens our sense of belonging to others by forcing us to consider others’ perspectives.  Paradoxically, guilt bonds us together by forcing us to confront the bitter loneliness of our own singular conduct.

But what if you were wrong to feel guilty?

Then you are inflicting pain on yourself unnecessarily. You are a masochist. What’s worse, the sadistic pain-inflictor is also you, yourself. Moreover, rather than binding you to others, your guilt is driving a psychological wedge between you and them that need not exist.

So the questions remain:

Should I feel guilty?

Must I feel guilty?

The questions guilt asks of us are difficult to confront directly. Consequently many view others’ ethics as perverse. If we err too much towards guilt, we never take risks, or indulge in ultimately positive behaviours. If we err too much away from guilt, we exonerate ourselves from behaviour the reasonable man considers blameworthy.

From the banker to the mother, this dilemma faces us all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4b0HYxOSvI