Friday, October 26, 2007

Just back from replacing somebody's dead router, on the way over was thinking about the notion of guilt-tripping. Unlike a lot of the other things I've been accused of doing/being, it's not even untrue, I think the whole idea is a lot of nonsense. It seems to me that when someone tells you you're behaving irresponsibly the cases are basically these, you disagree and therefore don't feel guilty; you agree and try to act responsibly, here you might feel a bit guilty, but probably not very much, especially as the behaving responsibly would probably involve making amends in some way for your prior behavior; you agree, but are determined to continue acting irresponsibly. This last case is the only one of the three that I think would bring on accusations of 'guilt-tripping' and the thing about it that makes it so is something the accused person does. Basically, the most the accuser can be said to have done is to have drawn attention to something both parties think blameworthy, hard to see what's so awful about that, particularly in cases where responsible behavior is really called for.

Don't think much of guilt generally, more of a stumbling block to acting responsibly than anything else, though I guess it's supposed to be a spur to that, haven't found that to be so for the most part, seems usually to be treated as an end in itself. A similar relationship seems to hold between shame and clear moral thought.

Went to Look after job, delicious burger, saw beautiful brownie ala mode being served on the way out, no time to have one, got a cinnamon roll to go instead. Very sugary.

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