From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Jun 28 2003 - 22:00:26 MDT
On Friday 27 June 2003 00:54, Alex Ramonsky wrote:
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
> >On Thursday 26 June 2003 21:04, Spike wrote:
> >>Brett Paatsch:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>Surgical removal of guilt feelings would be a wildly
> >>popular application of such a technology, were it
> >>to become available. Of course one would suffer
> >>condemnation from *every* major religion, this
> >>being their jealously guarded line of business,
> >>in which they would not welcome additional competition.
> >
> >Really, such butchery to produce an artificial relief rather than facing
> > and dealing with the feelings does seem rather contemptible.
>
> Oh, hasty judgement! ...have you ever _had_ PTSD? : )
You know, you are right. That is a hasty judgment. However, I have been
subject to doctors being all too happy to hand out a pill to make any
difficulty go away rather than teaching real-life tools for handling at least
some of those problems. I worry that we may reach too often for a seeming
technological fix that makes the symptoms go away without really
understanding or dealing with the actual issues and other causes.
>
> > Not that I am
> >saying guilt is a good thing but rather that getting done with it is an
> >important part of growth and self-responsibility.
>
> It's not removing guilt, it's removing _the ability to feel guilt_. In
> my opinion 'guilt' is a symptom of mental disorder due to malfunction.
> There is no reason for an intelligent, neurologically healthy person to
> ever feel it. If they have done nothing deliberately that they know to
> be bad, what is there to feel guilty about? Mistakes should not invoke
> guilt; mistakes happen to everybody and we all know that and accept it.
> And if someone is being an a-hole on purpose, they're unlikely to feel
> guilty, because they're an a-hole...
> Where does that leave a place for guilt, apart from filling you full of
> hormones that make you sick and shortening your lifespan?
> Also, let's not mislead people... TMS is not surgery...d'you think we
> should change the subject title?
>
While I don't consider longterm guilt at all optimal I think some sense of
remorse over misdeeds is not necessarily a bad thing. Clinging to that
indefinitely isn't healthy.
> >It has nothing to do with
> >religion to disapprove of such misuse of technology.
>
> Yes I agree. However, wiping 'guilt' is not, for me, a misuse of
> technology but part of the cure for a malfunction, so perhaps it is
> hasty to use the word 'misuse'? ... a lot of people think stem-cell
> cloning is 'misuse'...you know what I mean?
>
It is certainly subject to misuse though.
> [re: guilt]
> No, it doesn't. Not if it is dealt with intelligently.
>
>
> ...That's why I asked about the PTSD...ever-increasing guilt about your
> inability to cope, and your inability to stop experiencing horrid things
> against your will, can utterly destroy your life.
But this is a bit more than your run-of-the-mill guilt over some actual
wrongdoing.
- samantha
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