2.1 Essay Two “Guilt”, “Bad conscience” and related matters

Humans can promise; to be able to promise we must forget to create space for new promises. If we didn’t forget there would be no present; we must forget some of the past to know the present.

When we promise we actively form a memory of the promise. This requires three things: “I want” to make the promise, a will to form promises and a will to act on the promise. This is predicated on the ability to differentiate between necessary and accidental, causality, anticipating a possible future and fixing a goal. Therefore, humans must be calculable, regular, necessary and future.

In pre-history humans became regular, lived like among like and were predictable; thus, forming the “morality of custom”. This process eventually led to the sovereign individual as the standard of value and a burden of responsibility called conscience.

2.2 Essay Two: “Guilt”, “Bad conscience” and related matters

How are memories formed? Something is burned into the memory; those things that give pain are most readily remembered. Torments are included in religious rituals to make the teachings unforgettable (e.g. the idea of hell).

2.3 Essay Two: “Guilt”, “Bad conscience” and related matters

“I will not” is the promise an individual makes to society to benefit from that society. For those who break the promise: justice as punishment of the criminal started as anger over an injury suffered; but anger held within bounds as the equivalent to the injury: even if it’s the equivalent in pain. Only later was justice based on the idea that a criminal could have acted otherwise.

The equivalence between injury and pain is based on the contractual relationship between creditor and debtor. The debtor pledges to the creditor by contract something he possesses in the case of non-payment; ultimately this can be the debtor’s body and life, which the creditor can subject to pain. The creditor is allowed a feeling of satisfaction as repayment, to vent his power as inflicting suffering.

The debtor/creditor relationship is the basis of guilt, conscious, duty and is drenched in blood.

2.4 Essay Two: “Guilt”, “Bad conscience” and related matters

The indignation of suffering is its lack of meaning. Gods had to be invented to conceal meaningless suffering. “Free will” was invented so the Greek gods were forever interested in human life; determinism is boring. Free will made humans interesting!

2.5 Essay Two: “Guilt”, “Bad conscience” and related matters

With the development of the debtor/creditor relationship a person measured himself by another person. Making prices, valuing, contract, guilt, right, obligation, compensation formed the first “communal complexes” or society. A moral canon of justice formed along the first society: “every thing has its price, everything can be paid off”. “Justice” was reaching an understanding among equally powerful individuals and forcing a settlement on those less powerful.

A criminal breaks his contract and society as a whole expels him from its protection and advantage. The criminal becomes an enemy. However, the more powerful a community becomes the less an individuals transgression will threaten the community so the general anger is not allowed to vent itself against the transgressor; the criminal is protected from this anger. Justice ultimately ends in mercy. Justice becomes impersonal and therefore is the partial restriction of the true will of life (i.e. violence).

2.6 Essay Two: “Guilt”, “Bad conscience” and related matters

The origin of a thing and its actual usefulness are totally apart; ideas are again and again reinterpreted, transformed and rearranged. Things are overpowered. The form is fluid, the meaning even more so…

 

2.7 Essay Two: “Guilt”, “Bad conscience” and related matters

Punishment contains two things: the procedure (which is relatively permanent) and the purpose of the procedure. “Punishment” is a complex synthesis of “meanings” which is indefinable today. Only that which has no history is definable.

Punishment is supposed to cause feelings of guilt in the guilty person. But punishment makes the criminal hard and cold.

 

2.8 Essay Two: “Guilt”, “Bad conscience” and related matters

Bad conscience grew from the biggest change humanity ever experienced: being enclosed in society. Humanity could no longer act instinctively, causing all instincts to turn inwards and reducing humans to consciousness (which was later called the soul). Individuals turned against themselves and, within the narrowness of society, tore themselves apart.

The instinct for freedom was forcibly suppressed and vented itself upon itself. Bad conscience is the cruel pleasure in saying “no”; and provides the value of the inactivity in the unegoistic.

 

2.9 Essay Two: “Guilt”, “Bad conscience” and related matters

The debtor/creditor relationship has been applied to those living now and our ancestors. We must repay our ancestors for the achievements that made us possible; it’s a debt that continues to grow. The greater the power of the current society the more fearful we are of our ancestors. The ultimate ancestor is God (God is created from fear!).

Humanity has inherited still unpaid debts to God and therefore we feel guilt.

Christianity’s stroke of genius was to invert this: the creditor sacrifices himself for the debtor, thus making the debtor even more guilty and fearful.

 

2.10 Essay Two: “Guilt”, “Bad conscience” and related matters

Guilt before God becomes an instrument of torture of bad conscience. The “no” of bad conscience becomes a “yes” before God. This is madness! Humanity feels guilty to the point where they can’t pay back the debt of the creditor sacrificing himself! The creditor has disappeared but will return at an unspecified date to free us from our debt. Here is self-inflicted sickness.