Guilt

So, I have labored for a while under the belief that guilt is basically evil. In the sense that guilt is a feeling. See, guilt is this kind of weird thing that isn't all that well defined - it is really a status, in the guilty or not-guilty kind of way, but we somehow associate it with an emotion as well.

Guilt has caused me no end of difficulty in the past, and I think I'm starting to see why - not because guilt is a feeling we shouldn't feel. There are appropriate and even good times to feel guilt.

The problem is with
1. the expectation society, relatives, friends, or ideologies create to feel guilt at a certain time, or in a certain way.
2. the utilization of guilt to control - ourselves, our relatives, a people group, an organization...

I think both of these things are an abuse of an otherwise healthy feeling. I think hypocrisy often is born from a habit to try to make ourselves feel guilty when we really don't. We do that because we think we are abnormal or screwed up if we don't feel guilty about something, and we do that because we think if we just make ourselves feel terrible enough, we will stop wanting what we think we shouldn't want.

Let's just stop that. It only causes problems.