When I was still a neophyte, working within mainstream education, sharpening
my skills and gathering my intellectual arsenal in Special Education, I
took a couple of seminars on the concepts of both guilt and shame.
The pedagogical theory in vogue - I think it's still in vogue! - was that
parents of handicapped children lived wretched lives soaked in both guilt
and shame because their "future" had been killed symbolically.
Bruno Bettelheim was our guru, and I'm ashamed to say we all bought into
it.
Parents, it was held, just needed to "accept" what happened to
a loved one, and all would turn out well. Without "acceptance",
went the theory, there could be no real healing.
In our videotaped and one-way mirror practicum seminars, as we were counseling
some tearful parent, we were frequently urged by our supervising "pros"
to ". . . do an S-C-Triple A" - a "Sack-Cloth-And-Ashes Approach."
But even in those days, not having gathered yet the tools of thought I have
amassed since then, I felt that it was wrong and arrogant on our part to
dare impose such heavy trips of guilt in wounded parents by asking them
to be "accepting" when they had every right to hurt and to resent
what happened to their child. In fact, I thought it was sadistic and totally
unnatural - I KNEW they were entitled to their grief. I never thought, and
do not to this day, that it was "good for them" to be confronted
with both guilt and shame in therapeutic sessions. The only value I could
see was that it made manipulation possible. "Accepting parents"
did not confront the system as angry parents did.
Therefore, with more than casual interest, I read the following in Alvin
Gouldner's, "The Hellenic World":
"Shame rests on a concern with one's competence; potency or power; it is expressive of a desire to avoid an appearance of failure, weakness or dependency.
Guilt rests on a concern with one's goodness or rectitude; it is expressive of a desire to feel right. Guilt is felt when the individual, defining himself along a good-bad axis, appears to himself as bad; shame, when the individual, defining himself a strong-weak axis, appears to himself as weak."
Why am I telling you all this? Just bear with me - I'm getting there.
Here's Nietzsche, my next stepping stone:
"The two sets of (axes) have waged a terrible battle on this earth, lasting many millenia; and just as surely as the second set has for a long time now been on the ascendant, so surely are there still places where the battle goes on and the issues remain in suspension. . .
The watchwords of the battle, written in characters which have remained legible throughout modern history, read: "Rome versus Israel; Israel versus Rome." No battle has ever been more momentous than this one." ("The Genealogy of Morals" 1, 16)
Here comes my punch line now: I have a perfect specimen. I have a mercenary
to serve up who's pimping for the Shadow Government by peddling guilt and
shame.
His name is Gottfried Wagner, great grandson of composer Richard Wagner.
Wagner has been speaking in various locations in California, among them
in San Francisco in the State of the World Forum sponsored by the Holocaust
Center of Northern California. He is a rising star among the Holohuggers.
He has prodigious things to say about his gifted ancestor, such as:
"Richard Wagner was a negative genius, an erratic moment in the history of music, important, but ultimately evil", he says. "The Ring' 'Die Meistersinger' and 'Parsifal' and even 'Lohengrin' are evil creations."
He delivers himself of lectures such as "Confronting German and
Personal History After the Holocaust." He feels some Jews are too forgiving.
He is going to have a TV documentary "Wagnerdaemmerung" which
will air in Germany next year.
He has also written a book. Its title is "Never Ask Who I Am and Where
I Come From" because someone might want to know. He feels sorry for
all the Wagner Societies who trudge ritually to Bayreuth ". . . like
pilgrims," looking for salvation.
"Wagner has replaced religion for them," he opines. "They're
fanatics."
Even more profound, he believes in contemporary Germany's inability to mourn.
Says Wagner Jr. Jr. Jr: (borrowed!)
"This is typical of my generation, the first after the war. It is our big neurosis. Guilt cannot be inherited. The wartime generation could not talk about it. But, at least we can work through their guilt and shame, step by step and patiently, to learn how it happened. To think that Nazis were only the bad guys for a short period is hypocrisy. Repression and falsification of the facts sicken a society."
It is no accident that Germany was made to buy both guilt and shame when
it was wounded at the core in 1945 and left with very few defenses.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell."