The Origins of Guilt

 

The Origins of Guilt

a fable by Catherine Maven

Copyright © 2009

 

Once upon a time, the creators created a blue-green world of incredible beauty. They populated it with life of all kinds, from the microscopic to the stupendous. They gave whales and dolphins all the great oceans to play in, and otters and people wonderful lands and rivers to play in. They bestowed rainbows and butterflies, flowers and bird-songs, and billions of other miracles upon their creation.

To protect the perfection of their design, however, they knew there needed to be some controls. So it was that every animal on the planet knew its place in the cycle of life and death, and operated from instincts too powerful to deny, instincts which protected not only each species’ existence, but the existence of all other species around them.

But because they had created the world out of the pure joy of their being, the creators desired that at least one intelligence on the planet should be free from the constraints of instinct, should be free to play in the world as creatively as the creators had created it. To people, therefore, they gave the special gift of free will.

In their wisdom, though, the creators realized that intelligence plus free will would place this one group outside the controls they had woven into the natural world. They knew that all growing creatures make mistakes as a part of learning. So within all people, they planted a seed of conscience that would bother them only when they did something that hurt themselves, their fellow species, or the planet.

They hoped that the seed of conscience would grow into the ability to learn from mistakes, which would grow into a desire to protect one another and the planet, and from that desire would grow wisdom. They hoped that people would outgrow this need for a reminder to do no harm, and become truly free, as the creators themselves were.

It didn’t take long, however, for some people to realize that the seed of conscience could be used to control others. Parents would activate it when a child did something the parents did not approve of (whether or not there was actually harm done): “I’m very disappointed in you,” they would say, and children’s conscience would bother them even when they didn’t see what was wrong with their actions.

At some point, bullies (calling themselves leaders, chiefs, kings, emperors, or whatever) used their free will to silence their own conscience, and began to use other peoples’ conscience to manipulate them: “We must protect ourselves and our land from (insert name of desired enemy). If we don’t act, they will come and kill our children, and steal our animals and land.” The desire to protect from harm was eventually thus perverted into justification for aggression, and then war.

Religions, springing up originally from a reverence for the miracles of nature and a common desire to express gratitude for the beauty and abundance in people’s lives, also grew polluted. Bullies, calling themselves priests and other names that signified their superiority over their fellow humans, eventually convinced people that the very natural seed of conscience was actually “Guilt” for some mistake made by their ancestors, and were thus able to control their parishioners and maintain their position of superiority and greed.

Despite how preposterous the notion of being responsible for the actions of long-dead predecessors sounded, it felt enough like harm to activate the conscience of the listeners, and people became willing to obey any rule, no matter how insane and even against their own well-being, if it might alleviate their sense of Guilt.

In time, Guilt became a common dis-ease among the peoples of the world, used to control them almost from birth. Parents, teachers, and even older children; politicians, religious leaders, other bullies, and even employers, all used conscience turned against one another till its original protective purpose was lost in the cesspool called “Guilt”.

For some time, the creators allowed this situation to continue. They hoped their children would learn from their mistakes and outgrow these childish power games. But finally, they could stand their people’s suffering no longer.

‘If we show them that they are forgiven, that there is no need to punish themselves or each other for mistakes made in the past, then they will let go of this ridiculous notion of Guilt and be able to go back to playing in the wonderful playground we have created for them,’ they mused to themselves.

So they created a ‘savior’, and sent him into the world to tell people they could be ‘reborn’ without the Guilt of some ‘original sin’. However, when instead of emulating the enlightened one’s freedom and innocence, people began to worship him and ask him for miracles to entertain them, the creators realized stronger action was needed.

With the enlightened one’s consent, they caused him to be sacrificed as a great symbol of forgiveness; as he ‘died’ with great drama, he told them he was taking all their mistakes upon himself, and they should now be free from Guilt. Concerned less anyone feel Guilt even over his death, the creators and he even arranged that everyone should know he hadn’t really died at all.

Imagine the creators’ dismay when people, instead of breaking free of the shackles of religion and its Guilt-mongering, used the enlightened one’s death as a new reason for Guilt, blame, slavery, torture, and war. More people were manipulated out of their common sense and freedom in his name than ever before.

Two millennia later, people are still being controlled and manipulated with Guilt. New groups, with the instinctively-right desire to protect the planet from the rape of those whose conscience has long-since been stilled, are now using Guilt to elicit money from one those who have lost touch with the true nature of conscience.

Self-help gurus are getting rich offering programs which promise to alleviate Guilt, while their very existence encourages people to see themselves as ‘broken’ and needing to be ‘fixed’. Encouraging people to listen to them rather than the dictates of their own conscience gives these ‘helpers’ the same power over others that religious, political, and military bullies also have.

The creators are perplexed. They originally made free will stronger than conscience, because otherwise it would have been just another instinct preventing people from being truly free.

They want their creations to awaken; to recognize that Guilt is only the ugly manipulation of a worthy instinct for protection. But without imposing this awareness over our free will, how can they set us free?

 

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