Guilt vs Shame: Why Some Guilt Is Good

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“A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny [...] It allows for care of one’s reputation”. [1]

Now, I realise this quote by Nietzsche isn’t quite in-keeping with the festive season so let me explain. Tis the season of spending time with family which, combined with eggnog or whatever your choice of beverage, can produce some messy moments, where a social line is crossed and inadvertently or advertently someone gets offended. What I’m interested in is the accidental, specifically the moments when we mistakenly breach the host’s boundaries and fall short of their standards of etiquette. If you make up for these mistakes in the moment or shortly after, you’ll be able to stay on top of your guilt, keeping you empathetic, humble and respectful of other people’s boundaries.

Whether you’re at a bar or a restaurant, or at a friend’s house, respect the host’s boundaries

Say you go to a party at a friend’s house and they have a rule of no shoes in the house. Although you might not have this rule in your own house and you personally find the rule absurd, this is irrelevant the moment you step into someone else’s home. Now don’t get me wrong, there are limits and I’m not saying to hand over your free will at the door and become an obedient robot to the host like you’re their Alexa. it should also work both ways with the guest being treated with respect and never lectured to. The Ancient Greeks have a word for this level of hospitality, “xenia”. As the myth goes, the Greek God Zeus would reward or smite those based on how they treated their guests, with the one-eyed giant Polyphemus’ decision to eat Odysseus’s crew, leading to Zeus stepping in and helping Odysseus escape. [2]

Moving past the myths and looking at the Ancient Greek people, it was customary to provide any stranger that knocked on your door with shelter and food. It was also the etiquette at the time for the stranger to supply the host with a gift as a token of appreciation.

The Greeks realised the importance of upholding the social contract in order to maintain the civility of their society. Nowadays, if a stranger were to knock on our door, we might not even answer, looking at our ring camera from another room, waiting for them to leave.

There is a growing lack of respect and tolerance in social situations brought about by an assumption that other people should accommodate your own way of life instead of you respecting the place you are in.

With everything being convenient with the freedom of indirect contact when we make decisions (i.e. the ring camera), we can now bypass any feelings of guilt.

To use another example of tipping a delivery driver, this is no longer solely a physical act; we can do it after they leave on an app. However, once they leave, the food is already there and the person is onto the next job and so we are less inclined to tip. This is an example of how an absence of guilt and an increase of convenience can lead to a less charitable society.

Differences between Healthy, Unhealthy Guilt & Shame

However, there is a difference between healthy and unhealthy guilt. For starters, if the latter builds up, it can develop into a complex feeling of shame. In other words, shame is an accumulation of unresolved guilt, when guilt becomes a habit, something which erodes your self-perception.

Guilt Vs Shame

Guilt comes from doing something wrong which goes against your good nature whereas shame comes from an inner discomfort about your character which has evolved over time. Say we start at a point of awareness of our good nature and we start committing acts that produce guilt. If you don’t rectify these moments, the further along you go down the suppressive road until it becomes unpacked shame. If you feel too much shame then you haven’t unpacked the individual moments which made you feel guilty and some reflection is needed.

Imagine that the road to unpacking your guilt is a line graph where awareness is the y axis and complex shame sits at the bottom left on the x axis moving towards simpler guilt further on the right. When we become aware of our shame and begin to unpack the moments in our past and present, making up for them with whom we harmed and forgiving ourselves, this can move us to the top right where we have unpacked our shame into manageable guilt freeing our mind up to stay on top of when we inevitably fall short of perfection.

Closing Thoughts

Returning to the quote I started with, “a man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny”. The man who has been on the receiving end of feelings of shame and wants to be better, understands the direction he is heading in as he not only understands himself better through overcoming these feelings and rising above them, he is also motivated to mould a better version of himself, one that is polite in social situations and understanding of others.

Take your feeling of shame as a sign that you need to do better and re-cultivate a greater sense of duty. Once you get to this state, shame will fade away as you are living in accordance to your best self, leaving you with manageable guilt.

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Thanks for reading,

Brandon

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Source:

[1&2] Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil – Chapter 2

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