True Freedom 2
by In Part One I gave consideration to those people who choose to make their friends circle from those who are “other people”. How by doing that they consciously set themselves up to become psychologically imprisoned, that this only adds to their fears of failure.
People who feel ‘they have no chance of success’ often never try instead ‘playing it safe’, thus their belief becomes a reality, not in actual fact because they cannot achieve their goal/success, simply because they were always too afraid to try. Often the price of the fear of failure is much higher than any failure could be, by having the fear many opportunities are missed. In it’s most extreme, fear of failure is a phobia (atychiphobia) generally caused by the experience in early life of demeaning parents or siblings. Such experiences when they are continuous or very intense bring a lack of self-respect often resulting in self-contempt. Self-contempt disables self belief, without self belief there can be little chance of success.
Embarrassment and guilt can be dangerous weapons, they destroy the self-conscious and cause psychological suicide. Shame, guilt, pride and embarrassment are emotions founded in social relationships, relationships that see people evaluating & judging themselves and each other; people become embarrassed or guilty because they assume that others are making negative judgements about their activities or characteristics (when in reality, people are often too busy, shallow or self consuming to even notice the actions of others). The constant concern of external judgement breaks down self belief, makes you begin to think you are of a lesser quality than others, less able to achieve or that in trying you will make a fool of yourself.
Guilt is our awareness that we have fallen short of the standard, but who’s standard is it? Societies (lying & cheating) or what we have perceived as acceptable (parenting skills & work ethics), actual (the knowing an action was wrong) or imagined (when we were not actually responsible for the action). According to Freud guilt served to regulate social behaviour, there are theories that guilt is about punishing ourselves for the harm we have done and conversely that we correct our misdemeanour’s only to make ourselves feel better. While Amodio and Harmon-Jones argue that both these theories are combined, that guilt acts to punish us into repairing the harm we have done. Guilt comes from within an emotion of the soul, one which will show through regardless, the body has it’s way of letting the outside world know what is felt inside.
Everyone lies at sometime or another, but it is the severity of that lie that affects the liar. It is when the liar finds themselves suffering ‘mens rea’ (guilty mind) that the problems begin; a white lie carries no real or harmful deception and therefore the liar is free from guilt. The bare-faced lie however is designed to create a given result and is as guilt ridden as stealing. It is suggested that on arrest and placement in custody the guilty man can finally rest/sleep for he no longer has the fear of being caught. By putting yourself in a position of ‘mens rea’ to live with the self created guilt of lying, stealing or hiding from being caught is to create ones own psychological suicide.
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