THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
GUILT, GUILTING, AND GUILE
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
Preached May 31, 1998,
at the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu
In San Francisco there is a little fly that regularly lives and mates and bears its young out on the mudflat of the bay. It's a fascinating little fly, kind of a wasp-shaped little beastie. It goes through a rather strange procedure: It flies into town, bites a hole out of a particular kind of leaf, flies back to the mud at the edge of the Bay, lays the piece of leaf to one side, digs a hole down into the mud, piling the dirt in an exact pattern around the top of the hole, laying eggs then in the bottom of the hole, puts a small insect in for her brood to eat, stung so that it doesn't eat Mommy's eggs, puts the leaf in, puts the dirt back in, and flies away. She never sees her young'uns again.
However, if at any point in her process you disrupt the slightest thing, she quits, leaves, starts all over again from the very beginning.
Pieces of leaf, dead bug, hole covered up; the whole process. She can only do that process in exactly one order. Move anything, disrupt her process the slightest bit, and she has to start all over again.
Why is that not characteristic of human beings?
That seems a weird place to begin a sermon about guilt. But, keep her in mind; keep that image of consistent, regular, dependable, reliable behavior clearly in mind.
This morning I want to talk about guilt. Not the technical legal term: whether the accused did or did not commit the alleged act, but the FEELING of guilty. The feeling of guilt that comes whether caught or not, condemned or not, convicted or not; the personal experience of FEELING GUILTY.
It seems to me that some place in our evolution as a species, there came a fork. If we were to be successful as a social species, and thereby multiply our power and our possibilities, there needed to be a mechanism for increasing cooperative behavior and decreasing deviant behavior.
Our species might have gone the way of the bay fly and the ant, and evolved hard-wired social behavior. We could have evolved the restraints on individual behavior by incorporating them into the hardware, right into the synapses of the nervous system. But that would have produced very rigid and therefore very fragile and inflexible behavior patterns.
Perhaps that alternative for humanoid sorts of primates was tried. And failed. I can't prove it, but I suspect that it was. I see various pieces of behavior in the human species that look to me to be vestigial remnants of those instincts--a kind of social appendix.
Our obsession with enemies seems to me to be one of those. At any experience of threat or thwart, our typical pattern is to immediately look around for an enemy who is "out to get us," the target which, if vanquished, will rid us of the problem.
That response is so basic that one is tempted to see it as "wired in." It comes so often irrespective of the nature of the REAL threat, so apparently unaware of much more appropriate, more reflective and responsible responses. It looks like part of an instinctive response pattern.
But, despite such possible vestiges from the past, we are capable of much more flexible and thinking responses, for our species has taken the OTHER fork. Our survival and success as a species is based, not on social control built into the very tissues of our being--instinct fashion--, but on software, on learning.
This is one of the distinctive features of home sapiens. So many more of our perception and response patterns are not wired in, but have to be learned. The result is a potentially infinite repertoire of human possibilities. We have substituted an instinct to learn for specific instincts to behave in particular stereotyped ways.
But, that means that much LESS comes naturally to us. Let's come back to guilt.
For all the crazy distortion that guilt produces in our lives, it's necessary. At least, the function that it purports to serve is necessary. We really can't have people running around a complex society doing just as they darn well please. Without that little twinge of guilt when you see the car with the blinking lights on top, you might be tempted not to stay on your side of the white line. And that white line is pretty necessary if we're going to be able to get to and from town without smacking into each other all the time.
But at the same time, we can't have those little blinking lights watching us ALL the time to keep us obeying the rules, so society has evolved a mechanism for producing socially acceptable behavior, We quite literally teach our children a code of behavior, and then we give them their own little internal "cop" to enforce it. It doesn't come naturally. It has to be taught.
The result is a marvelous flexibility and adaptability, but the process is very, very messy.
The moralists in our midst would like it to be done very efficiently, so that EVERYBODY obeyed the rules. THEIR rules, of course. They would have us all be just like the ants; all think alike, act alike, all mate alike, in the correct positions and with the correct partners. The moralist would have us all behave exactly correctly.
Now, unfortunately for moralists, life is less tidy than that. Fortunately for us, life is less tidy than that. Rigid rules can never apply exactly to every possible occasion. The moralists can never tell you what you OUGHT TO DO in every situation. They can only tell you what you OUGHT TO HAVE DONE, which is a very different animal.
It often looks like they'd like to try to tell you what to do each time, but it's a lost cause. Life contains too many surprises. Rules just keep breaking down in the face of the new, the novel, the unprecedented,
In fact, that's one way of looking at a nervous breakdown. You're familiar with the little T-mazes that they use in training rats so that they can teach psychology students how people learn. If you put food at one end of the T and not at the other, the little rat will run through the maze, and sure enough, he will pretty quickly figure out how to make the right turns to end up where the food is. If, however, you put an electric grid at one and food at the other, so that he gets a nice shock over here, he'll get the idea that he's not supposed to go that way. He's supposed to go this way. Then, if you put an electric shock grid at BOTH ends of the T, you will fairly quickly have a mouse that will run down his maze, reach the last choice point, and begin exhibiting exceedingly bizarre behavior.
When humans, seeking what they've been taught to seek, find all their learned behaviors DON'T WORK, they often have a nervous breakdown. They begin exhibiting rather bizarre behaviors, and we put them in padded rooms and nice safe places for them to get over this problem.
Indeed, the ritualized, repetitive, bizarre behavior of many schizophrenics is merely a caricature of the behavior they were TAUGHT was supposed to work.
I remember working at Patton State Hospital when I was in college. There was one gentleman who constantly walked up and down, counting on his fingers. We finally found out what he was doing. His mother had always told him, "Think before you do it. Think it out ahead of time." And he spent twenty-four hours a day thinking of more things that he kept counting off on his fingers.
When the behaviors we have been taught don't work, we get crisis.
Okay, the moralists can't give us the answers. So, what have they done ? Rather than accept the more ambitious but ambiguous task of teaching us effective, thoughtful, flexible, problem-solving responses, they have chosen instead to instill guilt. To get us to spank ourselves after we goof, after it's too late. For most of us, the conscience that we are most familiar with is a GUILTY conscience.
There once was a young man who took a young lady out in a car, and ran through that classic traditional routine of getting themselves lost. He said, "While we're out here in this nice lovely piece of woods, would you like to go fox hunting?"
She said, "Fox hunting ?"
He said, "Yes, I have the equipment in the trunk."
She said, "Well, I've never been fox hunting. I suppose I would." So he got the blanket out of the trunk, and they started across the grass, away from the highway and through a little bit of woods. They came to a fence, the kind with the little sharp things on it?
(Voice from the audience): "Oh, you mean barbed wire?" Oh, you've BEEN fox hunting!
When I was a kid, the barbed wire fences were often not merely barbed, but electrified. And those electrified fences were fascinating, We local folk could always tell which fence was electrified and which was not. It was very simple. You simply had to look inside the fence. For about six feet inside the fence, all the way along, would be these little pieces of chewed up, slobbered on grass. There would be bunches of them, all along the inside edge of the fence. Those were cuds, from the cow having bumped the fence and gone Burp, and spit the cud out. It was a surefire giveaway that the fence was electrified. But the electrical box was always near the farm house quite a ways away. So, as kids, when we were wandering across the fields, heading for the irrigation ditch to go swimming , it was sometimes a little awkward to get past the electrified fence. We found, however, that the electrified fences work in pulses. Farmers are stingy and don't want to keep electricity going through there all the time. It came in pulses of electricity like that: snap, snap, snap. If you're quick, and you're only twelve years old, and you're a little crazy anyway, you can actually jump over the electrified fence by grabbing hold of the wire and vaulting over . . . in between pulses.
It worked for the dumb cows and kept them on the correct side of the fence. It did not work for human kids, to keep them on the correct side of the fence. Nor does GUILT.
Who are the moralists? Who are the electrified fence builders? We all belong to that August fraternity to some extent. I have shifted the word on you a little bit this morning--my title was GUILT, GUILTING, AND GUILE--because I think it's appropriate for us to think of the phenomenon of guilt not as an abstract noun, but rather as a verb. As something in which we participate very actively,
Because guilt is, first of all, something that we do TO each other. GUILTING is one of the major ways we try to change or to control each other. We keep GUILTING each other because we really don't believe that people will change without it. We keep GUILTING each other because we are afraid they WILL change without it. And, because it's used on US so often, we're familiar with it.
But does it work?
I think if you look at your own experiences of guilt in your own life, you'll come to the same conclusion that I did, that it does not work. GUILTING happens like this: I try to seduce you into a particular role; a set of expected behavior patterns with an electrified fence built around it. My approval of you depends upon your willingness to stay inside that fence. If I'm successful, I convince you that you really are SUPPOSED to stay inside that role, that set of behaviors. It may work to control some of your behaviors that I find offensive, but it locks you into an image--a rigid, brittle and false identity.
One result is that, for you to grow and change, you have to break that brittle identity open at each change point. A part of the process of social GUILTING is that we condemn ourselves to have to grow by crises. From crisis to crisis to crisis. You can't just expand the fence a little bit on side, and then later a little more on the other side. You have to jump over fences.
I have noticed in my counseling over the years that I'm often teaching people how to jump over electrified fences between shocks like I did as a twelve-year-old down in the Imperial Valley.
In religion, GUILTING also is counterproductive. It increases egoism, It increases the focus on oneself. One's religious identity becomes an image, an ego, a role. It becomes a fragile, brittle thing, to be saved or defended. Whereas, that's NOT YOU. (But that's another sermon.)
It's interesting to me that those who do the most GUILTING, the most trapping of other people into rigid little boxes, complain the loudest about people being false, about people being hypocrites. They are busily creating that which they thoroughly enjoy complaining about. (Now there's an interesting two-handed game.)
So what do you do when you find yourself feeling guilty? Did you ever notice that when somebody comes up to and says, "Mike, I didn't like what you did. That offended me. I expected you to A, B; C, and instead you G, F, and Ded," I don't know about you, but when I experience that, I usually don't feel guilty. I may get very assertive and tell them that they can go D, E, and P on their own time, thank you. I even less frequently feel guilty when somebody takes responsibility for their own expectations and gives me some straight forward information about the effect my behavior had on them. Because that's dealing with the specific pieces of behavior that I actually did or didn't do. It may be a problem that needs resolving and cleaning up between us, but it does not become a value-judging identity crisis.
We permit ourselves to buy into guilt, to be guilted, by identifying with that image, with a whole emotionally loaded complex, rather than owning a simple piece of behavior.
There is a world of difference between "I'm a thief!" and "I took that;" between "I am insensitive," and "I didn't do what you expected;" between "I'm a pervert," and "My tastes differ from yours." A nymphomaniac is one who wants to one more time than you do.
"I am a sinner" may only be the confession that I am not omnipotent and omniscient.
GUILTING is a two-handed game. It cannot be played as solitaire. I can't get you to feel guilty unless you provide me with the button to push. Unless I can seduce you into dealing with that big abstraction about you rather than your specific piece of behavior, I can't get you to feel guilty. You are not required to live up to contracts you never negotiated nor to keep commitments you never made.
My specialty when I worked for the probation department in California was incorrigible families. Those are families with children where the children have committed no crime except the refusal to obey their parents. The hardest part of that was getting the parents to look at actual behavior.
"He's incorrigible!"
"Oh, what does he do?"
"He doesn't respect me,"
"Oh, Do you respect him?"
"Heck no, how can you respect a defiant little twerp that does stuff like that?"
"Oh. Like what ?"
"He never does what I tell him to do."
"Oh. What do you tell him to do ?"
"Do what I say. But he won't."
"Oh."
And almost invariably, when one has finally spent the hour and a half that gets parent and kid to begin talking about specific pieces of behavior, they are frequently a bit sheepish about which insignificant, mickey-mouse pieces of behavior finally got built up into this whole huge complex of incorrigibility. Only when you get finally down to specific expectations, the implied contract, does the insoluble become resolvable.
If you get sucked into the contract that says you are responsible for somebody else's happiness (which is the contract that slips into marriage), then you are guaranteed an endless game of GUILTING. You have bought a field with an invisible electrified fence that is constantly being shifted unbeknownst to you.
One way to set someone up for a contract they didn't negotiate, of course, is to wrap yourself in authority. Parents are very good at this. Flags work very well for this. Wearing a uniform implies you have bought into all of my contract. That's one of the reasons why people are so uncomfortable with ministers' backward collars. I was once weekend chaplain at a boys' prep school. The previous chaplain had worn the collar there. So for the first few weeks that I was there, I wore the clerical collar. I began to notice that it was getting in the way of my relationship with some of the kids. It was amazing to observe the differences in behavior of the kids toward me with the collar on as opposed to toward me with the collar off. The implication I guess is that, when you've got the boss's collar on, the boss is always right.
Another way to set you up is to put you in a class, and demand that you behave accordingly. Children SHOULD. A minister isn't SUPPOSED TO. Liberals OUGHT TO. I want a T-shirt that says "Don't SHOULD on me."
Whenever you feel guilty, you know that you have permitted someone to manipulate you for their own end. You have capitulated out of your own fear of being exposed. You just ran into the electrified fence. But you have been helping hold it up all the time.
How does one get out of that mess?
Well, I have some suggestions about how to deal with it. I suggest them not because they are a solution to the problem, but because I think they help open up a part of the problem that we lay on ourselves.
The first way out of being GUILTED is to own what you've done, thought, felt, desired. Yeah, that's me, those are the things I did. The attempt to disown is what GUILT is. Let me say that again: GUILT is the attempt to disown your own true self. I OUGHT to have done; I OUGHT to have known; I OUGHT to have seen; I OUGHT to have been someone else that I'm not. The first step out of GUILT is owning your own behavior. Not "Oh Golly, I'm terribly, terribly sorry that I did what I did," but rather, owning YOURSELF. Not, I SHOULD BE SOMEONE ELSE; but YES, THIS IS ME.
The second step out of being GUILTED is to read the fine print. Peter Pantheists have several basic principles of the universe.
The FIRST basic principle of the universe is EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE.
The SECOND basic principle of the universe is THERE'S NO FREE LUNCH.
The THIRD basic principle of the universe is ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT.
The FOURTH basic principle of the universe is THERE IS ALWAYS SOME MORE FINE PRINT.
But read the fine print. Examine the contract you allegedly breached that made you feel guilty. Did you ever accept that contract? If the answer is "Yes," then confess, and renegotiate. If the answer is "No," do you want to accept that contract? If you do, take the blame; what the heck ! You're big enough. But don't take the guilt. And do clearly negotiate that contract.
If you never accepted it, and still don't want to, the verdict is NOT GUILTY ! Where do you want to go from there? That's up to you and the relationship.
Examine the image that you allegedly breached. Is that really you? Is that who you want to be ? And just what was the part you played in permitting the other to GUILT you? No one could do it to you without your help. If that image they had of you is not you, show them who you are. Expose yourself. Reveal yourself. People just might like the real you a whole lot better anyway. Most of us do.
Thirdly, if your GUILTING partner is still available, say, "Yes," to them, as a person. Say, "No," to the manipulation, and either Yes or No to their implied request, but IN THAT ORDER.
How can you avoid being GUILTED at all in the first place ? The first basic principle of avoiding playing into the GUILT game is that we have to own our own behavior. You always do what you want to do. I have lived with that one for years and years. Every time I say it, I want to say, "Not quite !" I want to try to find examples of "Yes, buts." Every time I run down those "Yes, buts," I come back to the same conclusion. I always do what I want to do.
Oh, what I do doesn't always accomplish what I intended. That is certainly true. And I'm not always as good at what I do as I wish I had been. I don't always get the outcomes I wanted, but I always do what I want to do. I can, therefore, change what I do if I don't like the out comes. But, to make those changes--to even have the chance to make those changes--I have to own my own behavior.
I don't have to own the "spin" the GUILTING one put on that behavior; the attributing of intentionality, arrogance, insecurity, whatever. But, if I want the possibility of different outcomes, I have to own my own behavior--what I actually DID.
SO, first, always OWN your own behavior.
Second, accept your lack of OMNIPOTENCE AND OMNISCIENCE. You always do what you want to do, but it does NOT always accomplish what you wanted.
Third, you are either still growing and changing. Or, you are dead. Which do you choose? You are NOT those roles and abstractions you and others try to contain you with. You are not a mother, father, child, son, daughter, minister, saint, sinner, butcher, baker, lawyer, thief, tinker, tailor, Indian chief. None of those roles or images is you; and you can PLAY any of them. Can take them and transform them TO FIT YOU.
To those getting married I often say, There is no such thing as marriage.Each life shared is unique.
As the two of you are each unique,
That you may remain alive and open
And your lives never close.
True of marriage, it is true of every relationship.Somewhere back in the mists of time-past, our species chose a different way than ants. We chose not to encode propriety into our genes, but chose instead a more untidy form of community. We still need one another. Still need one another's behavior to come not ALWAYS as a surprise. Still need gentleness, consideration, compassion, sharing. Need them maybe MORE. But we do not need the tight little rows to march in that the moralist in each of us wants in every other. Our glory is not the ordered sameness of the ant hill, nor the sure predictability of the bay fly; but the quest of new, unprecedented flights of sharing. Our music is less a 4/4 marching military beat, than extemporaneous jazz, ad libbed.
Adam and Eve and Original Sin.
Now don't blame others for what you do. When you do, you take away your own chance to change and do better.
And don't blame Adam, or Eve, or even the snake.Adam and Eve had their own problems. And blaming the snake won't do. Blaming a talking snake just makes you look dumb.
There is no original sin.