Guilt and Pride, Nothing More

Man only has two things in this world, his guilt and his pride. Our guilt is our guide, a moral compass, and what keeps us on the ground. Pride raises us up and gives us legs to stand. They are a part of a duality that keep one another in check, we must learn from guilt or succumb to it and suffer from the absence of pride.

Humanity is not an autonomous species, we are social. The balance between our sense of guilt and pride depends on one’s group. If a group is unbalanced then the group will suffer social turmoil, excessive guilt, and excessive pride. There’s nothing scientific about this observation except in how it follows the logic of certain brain functions such as dopamine and likely many other biological processes as well.

If one can accept that man’s existence can be largely defined by the interplay of these two emotions then by what logic do we group all of our most mentally unstable or threatening members together? Why do we group our schoolchildren together by age if they too experience a unique balance of these two universal human emotions which are integral to a group’s homogeneity?

The reason is simple, to do so is easy, not counter-intuitive, and expected to be expensive because the very nature of the individuals in question have been deemed by society needing of help or formal education. We are grateful to have someplace for these people, a place to put them or even a place that masquerades as helping them. It doesn’t matter the cost because we have to do something to try to better special populations, be they the mentally ill, criminals, or children. This is so because our guilt and pride demands that it be so, not just as single cultures anymore either but more and more as the human race.

So then why don’t we make these systems as productive as our greatest thinkers have imagined they could be? Or at least try…