CONSCIENCE AS A BODY OF BALANCE IN RELATIONS

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Whenever we enter a relationship, we are governed by some kind of inner feeling that automatically reacts when we do something that could damage or threaten the relationship. That is, just as we have an internal organ responsible for balance, there is also something like an internal organ responsible for systemic behavior. As soon as we lose our balance, the unpleasant sensation arising from the fall returns us to a state of balance. Thus, balance is regulated by feelings of comfort and discomfort. When we are in a state of balance, it is pleasant, we feel comfortable. Having lost our balance, we experience a sense of discomfort, which indicates to us the line, having reached which we must stop, so that unhappiness does not happen. Something similar happens in systems and relationships.

In a relationship, certain orders are valid. If we adhere to them, then we have the right to remain in the relationship and experience a sense of innocence and balance. But as soon as we step back from the conditions necessary to maintain the relationship, and thereby endanger the relationship, we have unpleasant sensations that work as a reflex and make us turn back. This is perceived by us as guilt. The authority that oversees this like an organ of balance, we call conscience.

You need to know that guilt and innocence we learn, as a rule, in relationships. That is, the feeling of guilt is associated with another person. I feel guilty when I do something that harms the relationship with others, and innocent when I do something that is good for the relationship. Conscience binds us to a group that is essential to our survival, whatever the conditions that group imposes on us. Conscience is not something that stands above the group, above its belief or superstition. She serves her.

Conscience enforces the conditions necessary to maintain a relationship

The conscience monitors the conditions that are important for maintaining a relationship, namely connection, balance between "give" and "take" and order. A relationship can be successful only if all three of these conditions are met at the same time. Without balance and order there is no connection, without connection and order there is no balance, and without connection and balance there is no order. In our hearts, we perceive these conditions as elementary needs. Conscience is at the service of all three needs, and each of them is fulfilled through its own sense of guilt and innocence. Therefore, our experience of guilt differs depending on whether the guilt relates to connection, balance, or order. So we experience guilt and innocence differently depending on the purpose and need they serve.

a) Conscience and connection

Here the conscience reacts to anything that promotes or threatens the connection. Therefore, our conscience is calm when we behave in such a way that we can be sure that we still belong to our group, and it is restless when we have so far departed from the conditions of the group that we have to fear that we have completely or partially lost our belonging to it. In this case, we experience guilt as a fear of loss and exclusion and as remoteness, and innocence as security and belonging. Feeling right to belong on an elementary emotional level is perhaps the most beautiful and deepest feeling we know.

Only those who have come to know the safety of innocence as the right to belonging know the fear or even horror of exclusion and loss. A sense of security is always associated with a sense of fear. Therefore, it is completely ridiculous to say that the parents are to blame for the fact that a person experiences fear. The better the parents are, the greater the fear of losing them.

Security and belonging is a great dream that guides us in many of our actions. But this dream is impracticable, as the right to belong is always under threat. Many people say that you need to create security for children. But the more security is created for children, the more they are afraid of losing it, since the feeling of security is impossible without fear of loss. That is, the right to belonging must be won over and over again, it cannot be taken forever, so we feel innocence as the right to still belong to a group, and it is not known how long this will last. This insecurity is part of our life. It is noteworthy that in relations with children, conscience puts less pressure on parents than on children in relations with parents. This may have something to do with the fact that parents need children less than parents need children. We can even imagine that parents sacrifice their children, but not the other way around. Amazing.

Both sides of the conscience, calm and restless, serve the same purpose. Like carrots and sticks, they drive and beckon us in one direction: they ensure our connection with roots and family, regardless of what love in this group requires of us.

Attachment to the home group has priority for conscience over any other arguments of reason and any other morality. The conscience is guided by the impact of our faith or our actions on the connection, regardless of the fact that from other points of view, this belief and these actions may seem crazy or reprehensible. So we cannot rely on conscience when it comes to knowing good and evil in a broader context (see chapter III, 3). Since the connection has priority over everything that may follow later, we perceive the guilt in relation to the connection as the most severe, and its consequences as the most severe punishment. And innocence in relation to connection is perceived by us as the deepest happiness and the most cherished goal of our childhood desires.

Binding love and sacrifice of the weak

Conscience binds us most strongly to a group if we are in a low position and completely dependent on it. In the family, these are children. Out of love, a child is ready to sacrifice everything, even his own life and happiness, if his parents and family will be better from this. Then children, "replacing" their parents or ancestors, do what they did not intend to do, atone for what they did not do (for example, going to a monastery), are responsible for what they are not guilty of, or instead of their parents they take revenge for the injustice inflicted on them.

Example:

One day the father punished his son for his stubbornness, and that night the child hanged himself.

Many years have passed since then, my father grew old, but he was still deeply worried about his guilt. Once, in a conversation with a friend, he recalled that just a few days before the suicide, his wife said at dinner that she was pregnant again, and the boy, as if beside himself, shouted: "My God, we have no place at all!" The father understood: the child hanged himself in order to remove this concern from the parents, he made room for another.

But as soon as we gain power in the group or become independent, the connection weakens, and along with it the voice of conscience becomes quieter. But the weak are conscientious, they remain faithful. They show the most selfless dedication as they are attached. At the enterprise, these are lower-level workers, in the army - ordinary soldiers, and in the church - the flock. For the benefit of the strong members of the group, they conscientiously risk their health, innocence, happiness and life, even if the strong, under the guise of lofty goals, shamelessly abuse them. Because they remain at the mercy of their own system, they can be used unceremoniously against other systems. Then the little people substitute their heads for the big ones and do the dirty work. These are heroes at a lost post, sheep following the shepherd to the slaughterhouse, victims paying other people's bills.

b) Conscience and balance

Just as conscience monitors attachment to parents and clan and controls it with its own sense of guilt and innocence, so it also monitors exchange, regulating it with the help of a different sense of guilt and innocence.

If we talk about the positive exchange of "give" and "take", then we feel guilt as a commitment, and innocence as freedom from commitment. That is, it is impossible to take apart from the price. But if I return to another exactly as much as I received, then I become free from obligations. The one who is free from obligations feels at ease and free, but he no longer has a connection. This freedom can become even more if you give more than you have to. In this case, innocence is felt by us as a claim. Thus, conscience not only facilitates our connection with each other, but as a need to restore balance, it also regulates exchange within relationships and within the family. The role of these dynamics in families cannot be overemphasized.

c) Conscience and order

When conscience is in the service of order, that is, the rules of the game operating within the system, then guilt for us is their violation and fear of punishment, and innocence is conscientiousness and loyalty. The rules of the game in each system are different, and each member of the system knows these rules. If a person realizes them, recognizes and observes them, the system can function, and such a member of the system is considered flawless. Whoever violates them becomes guilty, even if this deviation from the rules does no harm and no one suffers from it. In the name of the system, he is punished, in severe cases (for example, "political crime" or "heresy") even expelled and destroyed.

Guilt about order does not touch us too deeply. We often allow ourselves this kind of guilt without feeling a loss of self-esteem, even though we know that we have certain obligations or that we will have to pay a fine. If we commit an attachment or balance offense, our self-esteem goes down. So guilt is experienced differently here. Perhaps this is due to the fact that, despite the need for order, in particulars we are largely free to decide for ourselves.

In addition, conscience determines what we are entitled to perceive and what is not.

Gunthard Weber TWO KINDS OF HAPPINESS