What I Do and Don't Believe

• A Favor-----Please by Doug W., 12/5/98
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    • Clarity by Vic Comello, 3/20/99
      
      

I do not believe that you assert that guilt necessarily accompanies growth initiatives. I understood you to mean that guilt may accompany growth initiatives. But more importantly, I understood you to mean also that even if guilt accompanies growth initiatives, it does not follow that the guilt necessarily operates as an impediment.

I believe (1) that some variation of survivor guilt often, but not always, accompanies growth initiatives associated with behaviors that are "stuck" and (2) that when such guilt is present it is almost certainly a major impediment to growth (but not necessarily the only impediment) and (3) that the presence of such guilt is elusively hard to recognize and easily misconstrued as something else. I furthermore believe that the major reason this guilt is so hard to correctly identify is that we participate in a cultural ideology dominated by the economist's principle that self-interest in the most basic undergirding human motivation and the corresponding widespread minimization of the power of the human need both for secure interpersonal relationship and for expressions of altruistic other-interest as well as self-interest.

• The Causal Force of NOTHING by Jim Duffy, 4/18/99