HUMM POSTED :he guilt Jason is speaking of has to do with his hostility toward sex and towards any of us who freely admit to enjoying sex. For too long people were told to feel guilty for having sex for any other reason than procreation

RESPONSE And right that they should feel guilty .We ought to bring back that sort of societal climate---for it fosters decency , refinement .

HUMM POSTED :(Jason takes this a step further and says that even reproductive sex should not be enjoyed.) There is no place for guilt where consensual sex is involved. Where I agree one should feel guilty is if they are involved in act of sexual violence such as the rape of a woman or a child.

RESPONSE: Even if simulations of rape (as in play acting for sexual kinks ) is repulsive and should be dissuaded with guilt. That "to each his own" or "to each her own" canard is trash .

HUMM POSTED :If one masturbates or has sex for pleasure with a consenting adult there is no moral question involved.

RESPONSE : On the contrary, there most certainly is . Fellatio, drinking menstrual blood, bondage and other kinks debase a person . Those activities are coarse , vulgar, seedy, contrary to dignity and complentely antithetical to a nurturing and/ or contemplative approach to life . There is a foetid tenor to such activities that is inherently *contrary* to a sensibility of a noble,idealistic or generative sort. Yes, indeed it most certainly is an either /or there is NO both and with such matters. Granted , consenting adults have a right to do that if they choose ...I certainly don't advocate stopping them with violence or arrest --however, they should feel guilty .

One way to rid yourself of any lingering guilt is to get validation from other sex positive people. Sex Talk Tribe is one good starting point:

tribes.tribe.net/bigsmile

Bruecke,

There is another area that there must be the strongest of caveats .

In the above post, you posted the following statement ,

'People who are run by guilt out of balance are better off than those run by shame, but not much better. One can take anything good too far.'

I do *NOT* present the following objections with a tenor of the acerbic, nor acrimonious, my friend , for you are a thoughful fellow and the posts you post here are, on the whole , quite thoughtful , but I'm obligated to take umbrage with that statement that purports ,

'people can take anything too far' .

Here we come to a mater of meta-ethics which is key ...that is at the crux of all matters of ultimate concern : the Crux .

The following is the perennial insight, to which all thought and contemplation should eventually, sooner or later , return . Intrinsic virtue should be always taken to extremes .

The essence of mediocrity (mediocrity of a deliberate sort) is moderation and balance .

Excellence , in contrast, is that which goes to extremes . Excellence is fanatical/ grandiose, single-minded, rigidly
NON flexible in preciousness . The very worth of virtue itself ---meta-virtue, if you will, is predicated on striving to be *maximal* about virtue . Not balance , but, instead, maximal virtue ---let that be the dictum .

The weird temptation to practice even the cultivation of an inherent virtue in moderation , (along with the ownership fallacy) is the worse notion to be ever touted . There is NO worse notion ever in all of history worse then the doctrine of the golden middle . An intrinsically virtuous quality when taken to extremes , does *not* and *never* could become any vice .

With *physical* matters only--- balance and moderation are well taken. With ethical and esthetic qualities balance and moderation are NEVER well taken . I must exhort you , my friend , to avoid that semi-inchoate temptation towards balance / towards a middle ground ...that is reticent to take a maximal one-sided stance on concerns of value .

The more maximal the cultivation of a virtuous quality the better .

Here is a good quote apparently from Thomas Paine ,

'A thing moderately good is not good enough . Moderation in temper is always a virtue . Moderation in principle is always a vice. '

It is right to maintain a single-minded perspacity about dotting the i's and crossing the t's when it comes to the ethics of thought as well as action ...so single-minded , that the flexible would be likely to call such single-mindedness "anal-retentive" . Such so-called "anal -retentive" single-mindedness about even the most subtle distinctions of value is good .

We ought to seek *maximal* virtue , NOT the well rounded mediocrity of balance/ moderation and the middle ground.

Just making an observation about the limits of guilt's capacity to change behavior, not even a pro or anti guilt comment this time Hummingbird.

Consequences do not follow all actions.

They say that what comes around goes around, but this is only true some of the time.

They also say no good deed goes unpunished, but that is also true only some of the time.

If some people are immoral, and others amoral it is because consequences for doing negative behavior do not always follow. If it did, we'd all be like good little soldiers. In fact in some cases negative behavior is rewarded.

However guilt has some power. If one can actually benefit rather than suffer harm for doing negative behavior if there is no guilt it stops there, the behavior is re-enforced, no need to change. If however there is guilt, well that counts as a consequence. Feeling like you are not the person you are trying to seem to be, feeling like a fraud, feeling like if people really knew the real you they wouldn't really love you at all is a consequence of guilt. Some people just get used to feeling it, dismiss it, learn even how to effectively rationalize to conquer guilt, even revise the ideal of what kind of person they'd like to be utterly to fit their behavior so that they can go on reaping the benefits of negative actions minus the guilt. But for some, that feeling guilt creates is enough to make any rewards from negative behavior gotten away with rather like the metaphor of fine wines turning to vinegar in their mouths, unable to enjoy the benefits anyway, guilt might be enough to prevent them from further negative behaviors. It may even in some cases cause a person to take responsibility for the damage done with the negative behaviors and suffer for them.

Years before me, in the very unit I work in, there was an employee who beat a very difficult and sometimes dangerously violent mentally retarded adult resident. The beating caused internal hemmoraging. He covered himself as did his superiors and they listed the injuries from a seatbelt where the van stopped. The injuries caused serious trauma and even effected the resident's cognative ability further, hurting his independence. The mother desperately wanted to find out what really happened, she got smokescreens everywhere.

The employee was covered.

Years later the mother tracked the employee down. He had a new life in California. A new job, he was doing well, he was "born-again" and had been away from what happened and what he did. He was off drugs. He could have moved on with his life sticking to his story.

Instead he confessed to what he had done, feeling ashamed. Met with her Lawyer in Texas to make a recorded statement of what really happened, and was arrested at the meeting and charged. He is in jail now, and on interviews he is actually content to serve his sentence and have his life disrupted because the guilt of what he had done had taken all of the pleasure out of what he had done to fix up his life all those years later. He doesn't feel sorry for himself, he feels he is getting justice, perhaps it will help assuage the pain of feeling the guilt he felt that he is paying for what he did now, perhaps it will never be enough for him and he'll regret what he did for the rest of his life.

But acting out of guilt to make amends in that case was a hard road, and one that most people would not willingly choose. Some might have advised him to just go on with his life, that there had already been enough tragedy from his actions, that he didn't need to make it even more tragic for himself, that it can't undo the damage. I am sure he thought those things and a side of him told himself to keep his mouth shut.

So guilt can have some power.

And unfortunately people can do some things in a state of mind (drug effected in his case, he was doing coke on his shift) where they feel not a twinge of remorse or regret for what they are doing in the heat of the moment, where nothing inside of you says "stop, don't".... and even immediately afterwards there is no feeling of guilt, only fear of being caught. It sometimes takes years away from a situation for guilt to really hit you and have some power, one thinks guilt gets weaker with time but sometimes with time it gets stronger. This is a problem sometimes for war veterans who in the madness of war do things they find difficult to live with later.

do the mossad feel guilty about:
9-11
GAZA
etc

<< Guilt is an inner vigil, that reminds us of the Value of value . >>

ROCKSTAR POSTED :Fortune cookie sentiments are fine enough, but no substitutes for being able to learn and adapt, Jason.

RESPONSE: Adapt ? You mean sell out ! That is the bottom line with the talk of social adaptation when you demystify it...selling out the diluting of integrity...giving up a little integrity for the sake of mere adaptation !!!

What about seeking virtue for its own ultimate value and manifesting it ? !!!

<< Well that I should always feel guilty for people in late childhood ,which I played pranks on and frightened . >>

ROCKSTAR POSTED :Dear me. You hate yourself for being human.

RESPONSE: Well, I feel guilty and maintain that guilt because of principle .I don't hate my guts in a fervent sense , but I do chastise myself righly because the principle which in the past I went against . A person has a duty to try to transcend what is dubbed "human nature" . To accept crass and sordid deeds that one did in the past as all just part of being human is a crappy way to go. ! Pardon me sounding acerbic , you are an amiable fellow , and I don't take the acerbic tone merely for the sake of being acerbic---but , instead, to emphasize principle at stake .

ROCKSTAR POSTED :Kids *do* things like that! I can't remember any permanent damage don't from scares and pranks I was involved in as a boy.

RESPONSE: Perhaps there is a near permanent damage operant in a way that you don't realize yet ...
The trauma from pranks , betrayals , ect can interfere with a sense of trust ...it can cause a lowering of the sights of expectation in ways that are not understood at a quick glance ....

ROCKSTAR POSTED : Hell, the ones I suffered either taught me humility

RESPONSE : Yes, but what about pranks visited upon people which are already humble/meek to begin with ? If they are already humble then such a prank certainly isn't going to teach them that .

ROCKSTAR POSTED :or gave my weird imagination scope in engineering the payback.

RESPONSE: Yes, but to what ultimate end is that ? That certainly isn't an end in itself...That has at most mere extrinsic *strategic value* , not intrinsic axiological value .

ROCKSTAR POSTED :The ones I initiated gave others the same glad opportunity.

RESPONSE: But, again, that has only mere extrinsic strategic value, as its windfall, NOT intrinsic value .

And what is the legacy of people gaining that strategic talent at devising revenge --even if the revenge is not lethal or agonizing for those it is visited upon ? The adage attributed to Mahatma Gandhi comes to mind here, that 'an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind ' . A state of affairs based on escalations of revenge and counterrevenge which fosters *cultural entropy* is the legacy .


ROCKSTAR POSTED :It's a consequence of being born a boy and not a churchmouse.

RESPONSE: It would have been better had I been the sort of boy who was more like unto a "churchmouse". The youngster who has a later age child (not as a toddler, mind you, but as 10 to 12 year old who did know better) .

I think of poor Steven (who when I was 10 was about 7 or 8 yrs of age) a boy in the apartment development where I lived , me showing him a frightening illustration on a book I had depicting the devil , putting the illustration right up to his face and him asking me to stop doing that, and me continuing to that despite the protestations of that scared boy, and tears running down that boy's frightened face. What a reprehensible act that was to terrify , to traumatize that little boy named Stephen...to mar even for a moment the sense of trust in people...and in the universe .

There are those will assert , 'Oh, Steven's probably allright now, and claim that kids are resilient..yada yada ya . Yet that marginalizes that the sense of an innocent trust in people might have been marred . And no sooner to I type those words I fear the retort will be , its a dangerous world and maybe the stunt I pulled somehow would make him be more on guard about people so as not to be taken advantage of . The counterarguments to that are as follows.

For one , he could have been told in a non-traumatic way without actually being traumtized what to watch out for and so not to be ambushed or taken advantage of .

Secondly, the value of that sort of "lesson" is at most extrinsic . Yes, it is a dangerous world , but it *should not* be so . As much as I treasure much of the writings of Alfred North Whitehead , he was mistaken when he apparently wrote that it is the business of the future to be dangerous . If Stephen learned from the experience that not everyone is to be trusted , that is best an extrinsic sort of insight , inasmuch as the value of said insight is only good in terms of helping one to surmount situations that ought NOT to be , in the first place .

Moreover, there is other detriments that may have befallen him --even if he is alive today and not suicidal , nor suffering from ulcers--more latent possible detriments ...such as a lowering of the sites of expectation ...tendencies perhaps of patterns of internal affect developing into "triggers" which may , given asociations with the traumatic stimulus remembered, or half remembered , interfere with a clean framing of concepts and concerns in the lifeworld in which he lives as an older perswon. It is hard to guess at what a tangled web some act or mischief or other intentional careless might weave , even if the weaving of that tangled web is not seen right away .

<< It would far better had I not and had not marred those moments of the past ! >>

ROCKSTAR POSTED :There IS that kind of reprobate who gets more mileage out of his/her sins by regretting them extravagantly.

RESPONSE: Though you weren't necessarily (as far as I know , unless you state you were) ascribing such a proclivity as what you just described above to me, let me state (to make the record clear) that I do not make a show of contrition so that I can then think of myself as a great person for being so contrite. Though that sort of dynamic can be operant in people, it is not the case with yours truly. Woe betide me if I were to become the sort of person who makes merely a show of contrition, without manifesting genuine contrition !

What follows is the crux of the matter / the bottom line ....I do seek to vehemently regret the acts I intentionally did wrong in the past NOT so I can be the person who can later be the sort of person that later feels good about themselves...for concerns of reputation of the talk "can so and so look themselves in the mirror if they did such and such" so VITIATE how to discuss what is at stake with ethics . What is it stake is virtue for its own sake, NEVER so I can later feel good about myself, nor so I can feel proud of formerly being contrite ..for if pride in self were to creep in and I never want to let that happen , then contrition would be pushed out . Rather Duty requires that I maintain the vigil of guilt for the sake of affirming the importance of virtue itself . To affirm the meta value of virtue ...that intrinsic value is itself valuable . That is not a pointless redundancy , by the way .

<< As for terrorists like the Ft. Hood shooter, more discussion and debate ought to be presented to explore whether such person who do such acts with horrific results are people who earnestly believe that the acts of doing such grisly violence are right based on a sincere misconception , or whether they are individuals who know that the interpretation of the religious texts that they may give lip service to are rather dubious interpretations and that they may be aware that they are swept up by vindictive passions of rage wherefore they have some inkling of that they are wanting to release a rage through physically violent means and do so in the name of religion ? >>

ROCKSTAR POSTED :Don't neglect the rather strong likelihood the shooter is simply koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs.

RESPONSE: If that shooter is earnestly delusional and, hence, has the earnest misconception that he was acting agaisnt marauders in self defense or to protect others (though it would have been better if that act of killing had never been done...I must emphasize that...to avoid being misconstrued ...) then a dispostion of leniency should be shown him . If on the other hand he was not mentally disturbed and acted according to mere impulse where he intentionally disregarded self control, or acted out of sadistic malice then we would dow ell to regard him as among the most repulsive of people .

However, let us NOT *marginalize* what the insight that I was trying to highlight was: that we should not rush to presume as relativists are wont to do, that people like him who do such atrocities somehow earnestly beleive what they are doing is right . With the nazis there is often the glib presumption made by relativists also that somehow supposedly that we are suppose to think they were sincere zealots convinced of the value of what they sought , but that presumption at the very least is far too quick and undemonstrated an assumption .. Furthermore , plausible arguments could be advanced quite to the contrary that they were merely infatuated with lure of power and avarice...Machievellian thinking ...and NOT sincere zealots at all .

Concurrently, many of the so called religious warfare gives presentations of being motivated by crass desires for power in the name of religion , *instead of* an earnest and abstract zealotry .

<< the suffering causes the change in behavior whether it is to no longer do the bad thing... or get better at not getting caught, or no longer a willingness to play the hero. >>

ROCKSTAR POSTED :First off, playing the hero isn't the worst thing one can do. If a man off the street rushes into a burning building to save a child because he sees himself getting a medal and a parade, so what? The child is either saved or we have one more dead hero on our hands.

RESPONSE: Though the last excerpt you posted above was with another respondent , I will share
some comments . As Immanuel Kant noted it is important that people have the right pure motives for doing good , and NOT be motivated by a desire to get the acclaim of others or even oneself inwardly . It is important that they do what is heroic, not to be thought a hero , but instead out of an intrinsic love of the Duty to show kindness altruism to others including the altruism that is manifested through acts of courage . Granted the windfall is still benefical in terms of external circumstances if they did it for an ulterior motive, yet if they do what is heroic with NO ulterior motive it better exemplifies and serves the principle at stake .

ROCKSTAR POSTED :Someone better at not getting caught (a career check forger, big-volume drug dealer, contract killer) is either so far gone in selfishness as to be unteachable (save by direct divine intervention, like St. Paul) or the kind of antisocial mutation those who support capital punishment always produce to telling effect.

RESPONSE: Capital punishment is bad in a number of ways . However, it is possible that a seared conscience could
unsear and the person could have a change away from unselfishness . It is a possibility.

Take Vincent and Jules in "Pulp Fiction". One saw a miracle while the other said "freak occurrence" when none of the bullets hit. In Tarantino's universe, God exists, so we know which interpretation to trust. Jules has just had the Bible he's always quoting turn around and bite him on the ass, while Vince (far gone in smack, worried only about not having brought a shotgun and the asshole who keyed his car) barely blinks over almost getting killed. Who was in a better position to apprehend the miracle they both saw?

Indeed, only one of the two thieves crucified next to Jesus saw Him for who He was.

RESPONSE: Interesting to think about . Perhaps the other thief later repented maybe to a lesser extent ...

ROCKSTAR POSTED :It seems to me there's likely more to a sudden turnaround than simple aversion to lousy consequences or even fear of Hell.

RESPONSE: And that other factor to the turnaround can be a guilt that comes from seeing , witnessing in introspection how ontlogically paltry the crass goals the selfish chaotic person has been chasing ...seeeing it in full light and deciding that they aren't going to mentally run from that awareness any more .

ROCKSTAR POSTED :Guilt and shame play close to no part in it.

RESPONSE.: On the contrary, guilt has the deciding role . See the notes immediately above .