GUILT CULTURE VS. SHAME CULTURE.

I love how well Dr. Sanity gets to the underlying psychological differences between the right and left. She has a wonderful new post on the differences between guilt culture and shame culture that illuminates so much that we experience in politics From the piece:

Guilt is an emotion that rises after a transgression of one's own or cultural values. Guilt is about actions or behavior; while shame is about the self. There is an important psychological difference in saying to someone that their behavior is bad; as contrasted with saying that they are bad. The former leads to guilt; the latter to shame.

The purpose of guilt is to stop behavior that violates a self, family or societal standard. Guilt keeps score on excesses or deficits of behavior deemed undesirable and is expressed in regret and remorse.

But many Democrats and certainly most leftists are completely shameless in the sense that they will never ever, for as long as they can possibly get away with it, going to admit to bad behavior. And in those rare cases where they simply cannot wiggle and maneuver and lie and deceive; or self-righteously tell you how wonderful they really are and all the wonderful things they have done; they will simply pretend they are still virtuous and have been victimized in some way.

This is, of course, typical of most narcissists; and without a doubt, narcissists and liars and cheats exist on both sides of the political aisle. But a narcissist in a guilt culture behaves somewhat differently than a narcissist in a shame culture.

If you recall, the other day I quoted a very perceptive thought of Siggy's while talking about the neo-Marxist economic modus operandi:

"Conservatives believe they have better ideas. Leftists believe they are better people."

I remember so well thinking this way for most of my life. I never needed to seriously consider any ideas from conservatives because I knew that they were bad people. That was all that mattered. Nothing they could say made any difference, and when I would (inevitably) loose an argument with one I would resort to calling them fascists, nazi's, racists, homophobes....because of course, from my perspective of the world, those were arguments! Ideas did not matter, what mattered was my emotional need to believe myself good and they bad.