| From the Archives |
| SUMPTER ON BASIC GOODNESS AND NATURAL GUILT Page Two |
| The material in the archives was not originally written for a website, but is nevertheless well worth reading. It was all written in New Zealand, and you will occasionally notice this. |
| 6. THE ADMISSION OF NATURAL GUILT IS ENOUGH, PUNISHMENT IS NEVER NECESSARY. (In this section, Sumpter speaks out very directly against all forms of punishment. Since many people will find this unreasonable, and unworkable, I would like to add some comments here, by way of preparation for what he has to say. First, I would like to make it clear that if anyone is hurting because of the bad behaviours of others, they have my utmost sympathy, and Sumpter's too. The idea of not punishing people is not in any way an attempt to lessen the importance of every victim's right to receive help, support and healing. It is also very important that everything possible should be done to keep others safe from similar offences and to stop reoffending, we are in full agreement with you on this, however, we do not think punishment is the way to achieve it. We understand the anger the victims and those who care about them feel, and their desire for revenge, however punishing the offender won't help their healing, it turns them into an abuser in turn, it seldom has the desired effect of forcing the offender to behave better, and is even less likely to convince them that they should behave better. We know that in society as it is today, there are some offenders who would still need to be in supervised care for their own sake or the sake of others, however this should be done in a caring way, not as a punishment. We agree that society would need new effective programmes of proven value, both for healing the victims and ending the offenders' unwanted behaviours before people would be willing to give up the system of punishments.) I wish all my friends would make a stand against punishment of every kind, and revenge, and banishment, and all the embellishments humankind has wrought to emphasise guilt's message. They are not natural, they are not necessary. A person who is in touch with their natural feelings will get the natural message, "That was wrong and I must not do it again." They do not need further disincentives, nor is revenge, usually in the form of a punishment, and often a violation inflicted in turn upon them, ever necessary. A person who is not in touch with their natural feelings will not be helped either by these means. In all normal terms punishment is counterproductive, for it gives the one who is punished, or who will be punished, if their wrongdoing is found out, a compelling reason to deny guilt. Why own up to it, if it leads to punishment? Instead, the admission of guilt should be accepted, and no further action taken, and the faith of all in the wrongdoer's basic goodness reaffirmed. The animals show greater wisdom; for example, although the zebras and other animals are constantly chased and killed by carnivores, and might be forgiven if they branded these animals as a danger to society, ruthless killers without remorse, they do not do this, nor do they lock them up in prisons, nor gang up to kill them off. A dog, jumped upon for the zillionth time by her playful pups, will communicate her annoyance with a sharp swipe, or a nip, but she will not upend her pup and spank it, nor will she shut it in the kennel for an hour, to calm down, nor make it go without its supper! I admit these are far-fetched examples, I merely present them to make a point. Human society is different from animal society, but it is no more necessary for humans to punish each other than it is for animals. Animals do not fear that without the checks and threats of punishment the world would not be a safe place, and neither need humans. This is true even though humans can violate and animals cannot. Punishment is intended to hold the badness in a person in captivity, hence the locking up of offenders, or it is intended to drive the badness out, as in all spankings and floggings, but in basic terms there is no such badness to be so dealt with, so punishment is a misunderstanding, and unnecessary. Punishment as revenge is also a misguided action. Education of both perpetrator and victim as to how to avoid a recurrence is the appropriate response. Finally there is punishment that has arisen out of what was originally conceived of as the barter system, and is now usually an exchange of money for goods and services. This kind of punishment in which the offender is expected to "pay for their crimes" either with a fine or with other punishments, did not exist before people began valuing everything according to its exchange, now monetary, value. When the barter\exchange system was put in place, people quickly realised that an offence frequently led to a loss in value of one kind or another to the victim. Originally that led to the insistence that where a loss of goods or their equivalent was involved, the offender should make good that loss, should "pay for their crimes". This later became a general ideology, such payment being seen as punishment which all offenders should undergo, and not just a restoration of goods, etc. Fines, in particular, were seen as an attractive way of making offenders pay even for offences which did not cause any loss of value to anyone, as in speeding tickets, for example. Since the exchange system still exists, it is particularly hard to remove the idea of punishment in the form of fines or compensation extracted. What, you might reason, would there be to stop people burgling and defrauding others with abandon and delight, if they did not have to pay back in either money or loss of other kinds, usually loss of freedom, to themselves. The answer is that the exchange system is itself at fault, it is not natural, and must and will be challenged, and eventually done away with. In the meantime, the proper solution is not to insist on an eye for an eye and a dollar for a dollar, to misquote the Bible, but to help the victim deal with the symbolic meaning of their loss, and help the offender find more socially acceptable ways to get what they want. A society which operates an exchange system, yet does not train and guide its citizens continuously over their entire lifetimes in how to get what they need and want out of this system, and your society does not, is an idiot society, which is not making proper use of its exchange system or the potentials of its members, and will suffer, as a society, accordingly. In particular it will have much trouble with offences which seek to outwit the system for the sake of the individual, and your society obviously has this problem in abundance. Where there are no victims, as in the speeding ticket example, again education and appeals to the cooperative, social side of the offender is required, so they fully understand and agree with the value of the rule or law they have broken, and so society can work upon the agreement of all as to the value of keeping such a rule or law. It is slower, but the effects are longer lasting. 7. NATURAL GUILT, LIKE ANY FEELING, CAN BE DENIED, AND THEN THE LESSON IT CONVEYS IS NOT LEARNED. The objectivity which is so necessary a part of human consciousness, enables people not only to consider themselves apart from the Earth gestalt, but even apart from aspects of themselves. They can therefore separate themselves from their feelings in a way which animals cannot. When an animal has a feeling, it is that feeling in a way you can only imagine and not fully experience. In contrast, humans have feelings, and know themselves as separate from them. An animal cannot deny its feelings, it cannot deny itself, the evidence of its existence is too obvious. Humans can deny their feelings and still have a sense of existence. As I have said, this ability is a necessary, and natural, part of the human consciousness. It allows for conscious thought to be inserted between the person and the emotions, it allows thought and belief to be the cause and source of many feelings. It allows you to become co-creators at a conscious level with the Original Creator. It is meant to allow you to choose among your thoughts and beliefs, and to change them. However this ability can be misused to deny feelings, both feelings arising from thoughts and beliefs and also feelings arising from what we will call here "natural causes", feelings such as love, compassion, guilt, and biological fear. Our interest here is specifically with the denial of guilt. Again, it is natural, natural and proper, for living beings to move towards pleasure and away from pain. Guilt is undeniably an unpleasant, painful emotion, and here is our human consciousness with a new way to move away from pain. Deny it exists! All very understandable in its way. However, guilt denied causes further problems, the lesson is not learned, the person may continue to violate and build up denied guilt upon denied guilt, until there is an inner eruption of sorts, and the guilt must be finally faced. The proper way to deal with natural guilt, it goes without saying, is to recognise it when it first hits home, and to avoid further pain by refraining from repeating the action that caused the guilt. 8. BEGINNING WITH NATURAL GUILT, HUMANS HAVE BUILT UP A RANGE OF ARTIFICIAL GUILTS FOR VARIOUS PURPOSES, AND FURTHER COMPLICATED THE CLEAR MESSAGES OF NATURAL GUILT. There is a high and splendid drama taking place as humans meet the world and see what they can do with it. In every kind of human development, people take what they find naturally available and use it creatively, forming those special and spectacular human achievements found everywhere throughout history. If a cave can provide natural shelter from the weather, then what human equivalents of the cave can be created? All manner of buildings then come into production from hovels to skyscrapers. If a leaf or a shell can hold a few drops of water, then what containers can be created to hold what contents, as the human mind plays upon the idea of containers. If love is a natural and primary emotion (as it is), then what varieties of emotional experience can be created from it? From that primary natural source come the multitudinous varieties of love's expression which are uniquely human, such as poetry, birthday gifts, and funerals. I begin with these examples to demonstrate that it is natural, natural and good for humans to create from the natural sources, an abundance of human expressions of creativity. Now let us take another naturally occurring emotion, natural guilt, and look at how human creativity has played upon its powerful impact for various reasons, with results that are not, generally speaking, as happy as those resulting from the creative expressions of love. As I have said before, natural guilt naturally occurs in response to an act of violation and is a powerful, unpleasant feeling. In the natural game of life, it is the natural result of breaking the rules. Now, upon the natural game of life humans have imposed other games, structures which, like buildings, express human creativity. They want their games to work, and they want the rules of the games kept by all the players, so, borrowing from nature, they insist that breaking their rules shall be wrong, and a reason for guilt. These are artificial guilts, however, as buildings are artificial caves. These artificial guilts do indeed work to keep the players in line, an obvious example is the old rule that sex is only right within marriage. While that rule was vigorously enforced, it was held to be wrong, and a reason for guilt if couples expressed their love for each other in sexual intimacy outside of marriage, and, following that rule and that belief, those people did indeed feel guilty, and some, of course, still do. Nevertheless, that is an artificial guilt, not a natural guilt, loving sexual intimacy was a fact of life long before marriage was invented! There are a very great many artificial guilts, for the games have multiplied, just as villages have grown into cities. On more shaky psychological ground are the game structures which require of the players that they ignore natural guilt. The most obvious example of this is the denial of natural guilt involved in the fighting of wars. For one human to kill another is almost always a violation, and results in natural guilt. This is recognised in all societies, and where laws are in place, murder is always regarded as a crime. Yet the very same atrocious act is applauded when it is the act of a soldier, killing the enemy. It takes harsh, and often even brutal training to force the soldier to ignore this violation, to ignore the natural guilt involved, and to commit this violation over and over again. Good and evil, the wickedness of the flesh, humankind's fall from grace. These creative misinterpretations of the human condition have brought about the worst excesses of artificial guilt. If natural guilt is an instant and temporary response to a bad action, what a huge permanent artificial guilt can be built upon the unnatural idea that a person has a permanent wickedness within them, just because they are alive in the flesh. This becomes a reservoir of guilt, ready to be triggered into emotional pain at the least infringement of law or custom. With such a permanent artificial guilt to deal with, the additional idea that any wrongdoing should cause feelings of guilt which last over a short or long period of time, is easy to sell to the people. Then it is also easy to persuade people of the necessity of punishment. At this point the games become self-defeating, like containers meant to hold water, but stuck full of holes. It is at this point that a return to the natural condition is highly recommended, to begin again, knowing the games for the constructs they are, and not losing sight of the natural condition. With this sane return to nature's values, new games can begin, which add human creativity to nature's values instead of spoiling them. 9. THE INDIVIDUALS YOU MEET HAVE, THEN, NO CLEAR GUIDELINES FOR KNOWING WHEN GUILT IS NATURAL, NOR HOW TO HANDLE EITHER NATURAL OR ARTIFICIAL GUILT, AND SO WILL DO THE BEST THEY CAN, WHICH IS AT LEAST SELF-PROTECTIVE. The people you meet everyday, indeed you also, have to find their way among a bewildering array of complex systems, or game structures, many of which include artificial guilt, and almost all of which begin with the misunderstanding that there is badness in everyone, that human nature is somehow tainted, and if not entirely evil, is not wholly good either. Natural guilt becomes but one painful guilty feeling among many, and some of these guilty feelings must be ignored if the person is to act at all. People try to find a system of beliefs, a religion or philosophy, which will tell them, from the outside, when to feel good and when to feel bad, but unless that system is closely aligned with natural values, it will not stop the pain, and will only add to their confusion. No wonder, then, that they simply do the best they can under these circumstances. If they get it wrong, they should be forgiven, because they are trying to look after themselves amid the confusion, and that is a healthy and natural response to the difficulties. It does mean that following whatever system they have learned or devised for themselves, they will decide what is in their terms a violation and what is not, no matter how it makes them feel, and this will cause them inner conflicts and difficulties they will find hard to recognise. The way out of the dilemma is to listen first to the natural inner feelings, and then test the systems against them. But this, too, is difficult if there is any acceptance of the belief that there is something bad inside, which obviously cannot be trusted. And so we are back to the beginning of our understanding about guilt. In order to feel natural guilt clearly, you must first believe that which is indeed true, that you are a good person, and there is no badness in you. Then the messages of natural guilt take their rightful place as proper guidelines to cooperative behaviour in which violations occur only rarely, and are not repeated. Continued on the next page Copyright © Z Smith 1993, 1995 (edited in 2004) Unaltered copies may be made for free or non-profit distribution All other rights reserved |
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