(sorry for the double typing on part 2)
Part 3 - of guilt and shame
Guilt and shame
Shame is the narcissistic affect par excellence. All at once, one’s self-image and the image one wants others to believe in is proven false. Such shame cannot be managed or controlled. That is how it differs from guilt. Guilt presupposes freedom: a choice between what should be done and what has been done, between duty and desire, between good and evil. Guilt is the correlate of a free decision that turns out to be wrong. Guilt is related to actions, to what one does. Shame, however, is linked with vision and perception, with self-understanding and self-presentation, with the whole of one’s existence. Shame is related to the feeling of being wrong. Developmental psychology sees shame and doubt as part of that early stage of life in which children attempt to confirm their autonomy, when to the amusement of their loving, doting parents they try to stand alone and instead demonstrate their impotence by falling down. When the child has made a fool of itself, little is left of a still uncertain self-esteem. Shame results when one fails to achieve one’s ego-ideal and is forced to accept one’s own inferiority, in particular so when a personal faux pas, perhaps innocent in itself, has been noticed by somebody else.
Guilt always concerns the violation of rules designed to protect the common good. These rules are necessary as a social guarantee and a safeguard of order. Guilt is also part of a later phase of childhood development which manifests itself when the child, in the pursuit of its own interests, does not consider the common good and the rights of others in the collective welfare.
When one is overwhelmed by shame, guilt seems the lesser of two evils. After all, guilt assumes some level of control over a situation that made one powerless and ineffectual. Guilt as the result of bad choices and wrong actions is always limited and finite, while shame is total and all encompassing. Because shame engulfs the entire person, people generally prefer the partiality of guilt, as did Kiara. In order to survive, to avoid drowning in self-depreciation and to escape the sudden futility of existence, Kiara killed her kouhai. For it was Ollie’s glance that determined the inescapability of Kiara’s worthlessness. The killing of Ollie does indeed appear to be an example of meaningless violence, although to Kiara it was an attempt to come to grips with a situation in which he felt lost and the world appeared to be without meaning. Kiara would rather be actively guilty than passively ashamed. Guilt reduces the universal to the partial; guilt implies punishment and possibly forgiveness; guilt can make life better. Felix culpa. Thank Yagoo for guilt.
