Some definitions of guilt:
You feel you must apologize to sb
You feel blamed by somebody
You feel you owe somebody
You feel you must give them something back emotionally
You feel responsible to them for something
It's a tool (used by person A) to make another person (person B) do what the tool user (person A) wants them to do.
Guilt is used to motivate people to cooperate.
There's two kinds of guilt:
you can make someone feel guilty
you choose to feel guilty
A Question: If making someone feel guilty means you don't respect them, does choosing to feel guilty mean you don't respect yourself?
Using guilt means you've run out of tools to get someone to cooperate with you
It decreases your relationship with the other person.
Feeling guilty puts you in debt, or one down to the other person, it gives them a kind of power.
If you pay the 'debt' back is the case closed?
Is it possible to pay them back?
Guilt can be used as a tool to cancel emotional debt. E.g. I feel bad that I was late so I make you feel guilty to choose such a difficult time/place to meet.
Guilt is a tool to make people conform to social expectations.
Does it work on today's young people as well as it did on us?
Social relationships are less close now, so guilt is less effective?
Do people care less about social relations working smoothly than before?
There are postive control systems, and negative ones, guilt is a negative control system.
