Why is guilt such a large part of western culture?

[MikeBogina]

Careful not to cut yourself on all that edge.

uhh ohh I offended an SJW

[Katie N]

Imagine a bunch of feminists or gays marching in a non western country for equal rights... they'd be dead within hours.

Wtf? xD No.

Trans people don't even exist in most of the non-western world, besides like Thailand or Taiwan(can never remember which one it is) and that's probably because of rich old white dudes.

Wtf? xD Where do you even get this from?

[Elegiac]

uhh ohh I offended an SJW

Yep, I'm an SJW. What of it?

[Demontjuh]

To forget your history is to doom yourself to repeat it.

history of war goes back so far and yet people never learned anything, if anything they looked back to see how they could better screw others over.

[MatadorMedia]

Because western culture is built on Christianity. The entire religion relies on guilt, that humans are inherently flawed and must 1) be forgiven for those flaws and 2) do everything they can to make amends to those flaws.

[Violent]

This is something that always struck me as a bit off but why does guilt seem to play such a large role in the history of the west? From Canada with its Indian schools to Americans with slavery, and Europe with the holocaust.

Why is it that these issues seem to press so heavily on the mind of so many especially when the grand majority of people alive had nothing to do with them? Looking around the world this sort of culture seems to really only exist in the west what makes it stick around so long?

Because we want someone to blame for something.

[Adam Jensen]

It pretty much seems that way when something like "It's ok to be white" is called racism and pretty much anyone standing against anti white racism is a white nationalist or nazi. Nobody sane is saying nazis are good people. However, saying "there were bad people on both sides" in Charlottesville, which was true, somehow means that nazis are good people....

Lets break that down. One side was chanting Nazi slogans, anyone there who didn't decided to leave when the Nazi slogans started were therefore okay with the Nazi slogans. The other was countering the side with the Nazis.

So no, there weren't fine people on both sides. If you don't want to be associated with fucking Nazis, then leave or speak out in protest when people start chanting Nazi slogans and carrying Nazi flags. Stand and chant with them? You may as well be one.

[Noxx79]

Because we want someone to blame for something.

That is the opposite of feeling guilt.

[PACOX]

history of war goes back so far and yet people never learned anything, if anything they looked back to see how they could better screw others over.

War has definitely changed over the last decade.

Trade and diplomacy has taken the place of wars in the modern era.

According to wikipedia there's only 4 major wars going on right now.

The Afghanistan war, which is a perpetual shoot out with one side taking most of the casualties.

Mexican Drug War - not a traditional war but a war on crime.

Syrian Civil War

Yemen Civil/Saudi War.

Everything is is relatively minor disputes, small insurgencies, or sectarian.

WW1 and WW2 shook they way countries deal with other countries and how wars are fought. Major powers avoid fighting each other like the plague
Third parties are brought in before rockets fly. A lot of countries don't even see to build up a large military beside what's necessary for internal conflicts.

- - - Updated - - -

Because western culture is built on Christianity. The entire religion relies on guilt, that humans are inherently flawed and must 1) be forgiven for those flaws and 2) do everything they can to make amends to those flaws.

Most people here are coming from a US/UK Protestant POV. The whole guilt thing is more of a Catholic thing. Catholics were seen as second rate in the US for a little while. I would say that theory is what's going on.

[omeomorfismo]

christianity?
we basically are influenced by a religion with original sin as one of the most important dogma...

[Zython]

it's a liberal/leftist tactic to sow dissent into the white populaces of western countries.

it works, because Western countries are the most progressive, open minded people in the world and it will work on them... which is ironic, that the most open minded people in the world are being subjected to guilt for things that most of the rest of the world still do.

Western countries are the most progressive when it comes to treatment of women, gays and people of color aswell. They're also the most targeted by those groups, because they allow it. Imagine a bunch of feminists or gays marching in a non western country for equal rights... they'd be dead within hours. Trans people don't even exist in most of the non-western world, besides like Thailand or Taiwan(can never remember which one it is) and that's probably because of rich old white dudes.

Take another modern technological country that is probably above most Western standards like Japan. They're racist, sexist and probably homophobic... a very conservative country and yet they don't suffer guilt... or liberals/leftists. Paradise! xD

Anyways, guilt is stupid. You ever own a slave? No? You ever beat a women or treat them like an object? No? You ever stone a gay person or treat them like they're worse? No? Then you have no guilt and any PC/SJW that tries to make you feel like you do, isn't worth your time.

Not all liberals/leftist do push guilt, the more intelligent ones seem to understand how stupid and hypocritical that is.

Have...have you ever talked to anyone from those countries? Or read a newspaper from those countries? Or done any research whatsoever?

[dunkl]

I have been guilty for my entire life, or at least since I was 9-10ish, and in a state of such complete and heightened alertness every second of everyday, because of it. Growing up with a gut that's always curdling and sending shrieks of nervousness throughout my being, through to my fingertips, with a deep worry and shame that forms a heaviness, a solidness yet it floats inside me, like countless wings of dread. I felt and still feel that way for so very long that the anxiousness, nervousness, worry, dread and guilt, and though it would never be normal, was in a way normal for me.

Getting off the bus to walk home was such a sickening and fearful event (going to school I was also struck with severe unhappiness and even inner panic, but because society was public and home was family and both groups and places were alike in their disapproval.) And guys were supposed to me macho and not afraid of anything nor be in tune with their inner feelings either. I didn't know until years later, recently, when I woke up (metaphorically), that I had been living, no, existing every second of everyday in my own head, in my own feelings, as if it were a normal state to be in, with only the most harmful and negative emotions - all bottled up together in a wretched conglomeration that took up every space, every thought, every possible glimmer of relief and replaced what would have been normal or relaxing with me being undeserving of not only my life, but life itself. Can you think of what that feels like for a kid to deal with, and up until adulthood and sometime later in life when reflected upon? A constant state of fear, disgust, sorriness.

Every time I was awake, I feared - without even knowing I was being afraid. Living in constant stress-fullness without knowing that what I was experiencing was a thing called stress, to just exist with stress, AS stress, and never knowing that there could be a life without this severed stress. When any happiness or moment of relief could creep in, I quicker than quickly blew it out, out of instinct, that it wasn't real, it wasn't real because I was born and meant to suffer with the secret that was I was a boy so forbidden to be the way I was, I shouldn't even be alive, so why let that flicker of relief in when I deserve nothing but awful feelings to experience until I die?

That ill-causing, gut curdling, nervous tingling worry woke up a second or two after I did each day - as soon as I opened my eyes and felt that flicker of excitement to start the day, as you did as a kid, and wonder what adventure the day was going to hold - then the shadow sleeping inside me, right along with me throughout the night, made of everything wrong with me, opened it's eyes inside of me and remained with me throughout the day. Upon waking, in that briefest moment when you don't know who you are, I would be afforded the a single clear moment of calm, in which the future looked bright and exciting and I was without pain or torment or responsibility. That small but refreshing moment lasted during the first inhale and exhale of the day, then the darkness would find me, remind me it was there, and the weight of world as I knew it accompanied me throughout the rest of the day never missing a moment to keep my senses heightened and alertness sharp, to hide and hide and exist forsaken until I die - at which point I can exist in whatever state was decided for me, not a pleasant one, which only added to the fear. I prayed to talk it over with god, that if I could communicate with him one-one one and not just through imagination, belief or through ether, that I could explain that I was not in control on how I was. I asked him for forgiveness. When thoughts about hell leaped into my head form time to time, I begged. I asked him to change me. To give me another chance. I think this is a lot to constantly be in a kid's head, and would hope I would never allow a kid to suffer like that. And while I'm describing all this, keep in mind that I didn't really know I was miserable - I WAS miserable, but wasn't actively knowing that being miserable wasn't also being normal. It's hard to explain that part of it.

All this worry continued forever, because 10-17 is forever, and all those years I was not aware that the feeling was that which we call guilt and worry - it was a normal day to day way to experience life. Accepted. Conditioned to agony. A lifetime of not knowing that how you are feeling is not a normal way to feel, at least not to feel and think that way every single second, and from it to come from parents and religion and by extension society..I feel like if only I was smarter or figured things out sooner, I wouldn't have wasted of a lifetime of guilt and shame and being apologetic and always, always in a dizzy state of deep dark nervousness. Adults didn't know, no one did, because I kept it a secret, I was a secret. No friends knew a thing, partly because as I moved around so much that it was difficult to have and keep friends, but I couldn't have told them anything anyway because kids my age didn't understand that I was a monster, and my living with emotions they probably haven't even experienced yet or could understand. How do you tell another 11 year old or 14 year old or heck even some 16-17 year olds that you are going to hell when you die, and that knowledge plagues your every waking moment, not to mention the head trip of knowing you are a sin and don't know how to deal with these feelings, and eventually the very reason causing those wretched feelings of guilt, regret, shame, would be the reason you'd break your parents' hearts if they ever found out truly.

I prayed for god to accept me or fix me, to make me correct in his eyes, in what I was raised to know to be, and in the only way to get into heaven. I prayed for him to fix me or to not punish me when I died, I apologized for being the way I was, and wondered sometimes why he made me that way if it was a sin. I was also confused because I didn't have a choice, or did I? There wasn't any comfort because I knew that even if one day family or friends or society changed their views and accepted people like me, that in the end that didn't even really matter, because when I died I would still be going to hell. I never let anyone know. It's tough for kids to keep basic secrets, but what about life and death, heaven or hell, break your friends and familie's hearts secrets? Kind of a lot for a kid, I think. A life time of that guilt piled up, I'm sure. Things got really bad, everything internal, to this day never told anyone. This is a lot for a kid to deal with on top of everything else, never living in one place for more than 2 years, always in my own head, never fully awake or aware or able to see things from outside my own struggle due to the gripping nature of guilt and consuming nature of regret, apology, shame. I think it's messed me up for life. I'm older now, twice the age I was when the first half of my lifetime was torture, and a day doesn't go by that I don't think or feel the way I did for so long, it's always a part of me, "like a bad habit,'' as Clarice Starling said about Hannibal, years later. I know we all have our own stories and struggles, our own sadnesses and plights and trials and challenges. But I think, without blame, to have been raised in a way for all my forming years, to be reminded at church and ccd twice a week every single week since I was born, by religious parents and family members and disapproving and oftentimes intolerant/violent society, (it's odd but even though I never told a soul ((not even the priest at confessions which were scary because my confessions weren't that I pulled my sister's hair or lied to a teacher, it was more of having to consider eternal damnation vs. my father finding out, and my own disgust as well)), I was still constantly reminded about how sinful the thing that was causing my guilt was) and being host to the deepest darkest secret any kid could have at that time, to be a thing so forbidden, without the tools or knowhow to navigate those emotions and thoughts or co-exist with the terrible floating weight, I think it may have messed me up a great deal on into my current life as an adult. Like, I think I must know better now, but I can't escape the way I used to be, none of us can, really. To refer to the op, could be religion, family, society, they're all linked. I don't know, but being made to feel guilty can ruin a life, end it short or mess it up for the rest, at least when it's not deserved. when it's not deserved, it's almost like a manipulation. wish I was smarter. I don't know what my guilt got / is getting me.

[Violent]

That is the opposite of feeling guilt.

Placing blame other than it's rightful place is the epitome of trying to avoid guilt. Aka, forcing it upon whatever one can.

Some people interpret that, especially in today's world, that they are then by the sheer amount of blame going around must be guilty of something.

[Adam Jensen]

You know what is funny about the right claiming the left wants everyone to be guilty of their past?

Hypocrisy. The hypocrisy is funny. Because which side keeps wanting to remind everyone that Democrats were the party of slavery, racism and the KKK? You know, bullshit things that happened 100+ years ago that are completely irrelevant to the modern Democrat party?

Pot - Kettle.

[Stelio Kontos]

I don't feel guilty about things some things *I've* done, why would I feel guilty about things that have nothing to do with me?

And I don't know anyone from the Balkans or Western Europe who feels collective guilt for anything the colonial powers did abroad, since we were sorta busy at that time trying not to be colonized/enslaved/genocided by outsiders. Or in my country's case, trying to free ourselves from said situation. So what does any of that chatter have to do with me?