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No. I do know I harbor too much guilt and regret so I would like to reduce it but to completely eliminate it nah...don't think so.
It begs the question if I don't feel regret or guilt it's unlikely that I'd feel love and love is a beautiful thing when it is real. Almost all feelings are important. The only one that isn't is feelings of being depressed. Now that would be nice to get rid of.
The question isn't 'do want to feel that' but what would you do if you did feel that.
If you could steal, lie, cheat, murder, etc without getting caught and also not feel any remorse while doing it or in the future looking back on what you did, would you live a life without morals and doing whatever benefited without thinking if its good or bad?
I think there wouldn't be any reason to be a nice/moral person anymore. I wouldn't steal because it would be illegal and i would go to prison and also because i would feel bad doing it, but what stop me from stealing if i would never get caught and i didn't feel bad about it?
Speaking strictly for myself, I don't conduct my personal affairs based on whether or not I think it likely I'll be punished. That's for authoritarians to engage in. I understand that in order to function in society there's this thing called social reciprocity that needs to work well. That involves imagining how others experience you, and of course you also want people to imagine how you experience them. This allows people to coexist and cooperate while being kind. The kind of civil society that I find compelling to live in is one in which people have empathy and compassion for each other and live that out consistently.
The threat of punishment is depicted in the Bible as sort of like moral training wheels (the law) as over against compassion and empathy (grace). It's one of the few things the Bible gets right about what it is to be a morally mature adult as opposed to a moral midget. Unfortunately there is so much cruft in there about eternal perdition and even temporal torments as just deserts for misbehavior, that most people lose sight of it. Which leads to questions like the OP, where people fancy that without the strictures, proscriptions and threats provided by religion, people would go wild in the streets and pillage and burn everything to the ground.
It's also a pessimistic view of people. Yes, particularly in these dark times, it's easy to despair of your fellow man. But I still believe that people mean well and try their best to do well, all things being equal. And as such, they respond best to trust, being treated like adults, and having the best assumed of them. Treat someone like a miscreant and they are more apt to behave like one.
Of course there are sociopaths and borderline personalities and the like, but they are a minority. Yes, sometimes people act out of fear and desperation and those aren't generally their best decisions. But even then the answers to those kinds of issues are education, moral leadership, good examples, etc.
No. I do know I harbor too much guilt and regret so I would like to reduce it but to completely eliminate it nah...don't think so.
It begs the question if I don't feel regret or guilt it's unlikely that I'd feel love and love is a beautiful thing when it is real. Almost all feelings are important. The only one that isn't is feelings of being depressed. Now that would be nice to get rid of.
What if you could feel no guilt or remorse and still be able to love
There's always a payback. May not be called revenge but we all at some point face the consequences of our actions.
That's unavoidable no matter how many if's you present.
What i propose is a hypothetical scenario. There is no payback, you will not be caught. You dont feel bad about doing it, what reasons would you have to not cheat, lie, steal etc
Im sure there are a lot of evil people who never face any punishment for their actions, the only consequence they may face is feeling guilty/remorseful and probably some of them dont even feel that.
Interesting question, but I think you already answered it. People who are immoral DON'T have that guilt most of us would have.
On the other hand, I do know that I have some regrets about being too darn nice sometimes. I can't help it, but it certainly hasn't served me well in some situations.
What i propose is a hypothetical scenario. There is no payback, you will not be caught. You dont feel bad about doing it, what reasons would you have to not cheat, lie, steal etc
This has been answered by several people. "Do unto others"... it's not about feeling guilty or fear of being punished... It's because I don't want someone stealing from me or killing me for no reason or because they simply can...
What can you not wrap your head around here???
No way to know. I would not be me, so it is not possible to determine what some other person would do.
If I did not feel guilty or have regrets, it would only be because for some reason I did not think it was wrong. In other words, I would be like a three year old who does not understand it is wrong to take things form others, hit others ect. Would I then take things from others? Yes. I am sure I did when I was three. Pretty much all three year olds do. You could answer this by asking people to ask their mothers whether they took things form other people when they were three years old. If the answer is yes - you have your answer. I am pretty sure the answer is yes for everyone. I will see whether my daughter knows. She studies this.
While the scenario may be hypothetical, in reality I just took yologuy01 off my Christmas party invite list.
dont you dare..or else...
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