Crossdressers-Haven.com

http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/08/sh ... islam.html

This is a link to an article I found to be interesting from a psychology viewpoint only. It is not intended as any kind of political statement in any way.

There is a recurring mention of guilt and shame regarding those in the CD community and mentioned frequently here. I think in a broader sense the article describes a human nature condition with various flavors.

So it is in the spirit of understanding human nature more that I submit this link. I sincerely hope it doesn't start a firestorm just because it has the words Muslim and Islam in it.

I will defer to the moderators in case they think it is too hot.

xoxo Sylvia

"Those are my principles. If you dont like them I have others" -Groucho Marx

An interesting article. The Bedouin version of warfare reminded me a lot of some of the plains Indian practices. And the subjugation of women reminded me of the psychological benefit of racism to poor whites in this country- the assurance that no matter how far they fall they will still be white.

I suspect that these practices and attitudes are fairly common in a number of societies throughout the world.

One thought on shame vs guilt and being vs acting. Back when I worked in the mental hospital one day I said to a patient that he was being a jerk. (Actually I used another word, probably one best not used here) Later in a team meeting one of the other staff said that it might be better to have said that he was acting like a jerk. And then his therapist said no, he was not acting like a jerk, he was being a jerk. Because we become our actions. If we steal we are not acting like a thief. We have become a thief.

As the article said, shame can be good but a little can go a long way.

Absaroka

Thanks for the comment.
After thinking about it some more after a few days, I think I might have "projected" something of myself into the post.
I grew up under some of the strangest conditions where guilt and shame were the weapons of choice so to speak to the point of not even realizing it was going on until the past couple of years or so.
I am seeking to understand how this type of thing can come about with no one seeming to notice. Its beginning to make a lot more sense.
Adjusting to "reality" has been slow, but the cat is out of the bag now ...Yahoo!

Sylvia

Guilt and shame are funny things. They are vitally important to us as human beings and as a society-they are what provides us with a conscience. Yet they often get misdirected.

I remember reading the classic Christian misdirection in this area. " Ho0w dare you have fun and be happy when Jesus died on the cross for your sins? Do you think He was having fun up there on the cross?"

Of course (and I'm not trying to start a religious discussion here) when I was older I realized that the whole point of this was that He did this so that we could live freely and abundantly. Those of us who are Christians aren't supposed to feel guilty about the crucifiction, we are supposed to feel gratitude. And gratitude is joyful and liberating. Of course we still need a conscience and need to avoid doing wrong things.

Absaroka

Well said.


Sylvia

Howdy M’am,

I don’t mean to pull my britches up too high but I take exception to what you’ve said, regardless of religious philo-soppy.

The term “wrong things”, sends a message to anyone who does not fit in a particular society nice and neatly that they are not worth considering.

I do wrong things (morally according to the WASP code of ethics), and I feel really great trying to topple the notion that right and wrong are so black and white.

These things send me into a topsy turvy world of grey images every time I think of them. Life is NOT fair. But who invited Barnum anyway?

All societies have an idea of right and wrong. The trouble is that often we can't agree on what they are.

However if I come to your house, stick a gun in your face, and steal all your valuables, I think you and I will be able to agree that I did a wrong thing.



Absaroka

I haven't read the article, but I have extremely stong feelings regarding shame and guilt. I've explained it in other posts, but it wasn't until I rejected my Catholic mother's projected feelings of lifelong shame and guilt that I began to love myself for who I am. I feel too many people live with too much unnecessary shame and guilt, and I believe they are purely negative emotions that drain and waste our psychic and mental energies.

Just my $0.02 worth....

Kathy,
Im right behind you on that one. One of the reasons I suggested the article. It has been a very (understatement) painful process to unload all this guilt and shame crap. The boogey man isnt entirely gone, but on the run to be sure.
I am sad for anyone who had to go through the same thing. There seem to be so many.
Maybe we can collaborate some time and write a book or something. I think it is a bigger issue than we are willing to admit collectively, mostly because it is so personal. But it is a ruse used to control people.
I could write more, but dont want to digress from the original intent.

PMs welcome if anyone wants to discuss it further.

xoxo
Sylvia

Shame and guilt are part of being human. In proper doses they are absolutely neccesary. It's just that they make such great weapons that they are often abused and leave a lot of us emotionally wounded as a result.

Absaroka

Glad I got over both of those two years ago!! Now crossdressing is fun!!!

Love Karren

Absaroka wrote:Shame and guilt are part of being human. In proper doses they are absolutely necessary.

IMHO, you're absolutely correct. It's when a societal way of life is to project them frequently and needlessly onto children where things go too far. Too many religions (of many different faiths!) emphasize shame and guilt, and then heap tons of fear on top. I'll have no more of that, thank you.

I submitted the link to the original article to get an idea of how others view the subject. All comments have been most helpful.

In my family guilt and shame have been used as primary weapons for generations along with some attendant behaviors that I can only describe as advanced ignorance. My siblings and I have recently taken note of these things and how pervasive it seems to be in the world. So far I think we have at least agreed that there is a significant value of human nature attached to it. that is to say what we went through parallels many historical accounts going way back. How our family became practitioners for so long is a bit mysterious. One would think someone would have noticed way before now and taken steps to defuse it.

Interestingly enough I do not recall getting these messages directly in the Lutheran church where we went. More it was family members spinning their own interpretation of what the church was saying. This on the surface looks like them using the church to justify however they wanted to act, rather than the other way around.

Another part of the family was into occultism back in the 1920s and 30s (yes it was a fad even then) Quite a few strange stories around that but the net effect was I think to cause the other part of the family to become hyper sensitive and actually fuel the guilt and shame process.

I can appreciate what it must be like to be "beyond" all this and not want to look back. But we are just emerging from the dark and have decided to confront the boogey man so to speak.

I also see how this scourge as it were is alive and well in many families everywhere and though some may not have to deal with it, I feel like i need to keep this in mind. I can tell you how many people I have met who think they have done something wrong when they haven't. When you are under its spell it can keep you from even recognizing its presence. I find this insidious and well, just plain evil. It is a black hole and a straitjacket. So if there is anyway I might help someone to be free from that, I an more than willing to do so. Just think how many (not just CDers) have been driven to suicide and everything in between needlessly.

Everyones comments have been immensely helpful!!!. LeslieP yours has been particularly helpful in that it shows some of the mechanics of how this kind of S*&% comes about. It is sometimes helpful to see how this all works somewhere we are culturally detached from.

Thanks again!


xoxo
Sylvia H

It's hard for me to see how you could take the political out of that article, because she is talking not about personal levels of shame and guilt, but shame and guilt as cultural artifacts of failed national policies. Moreover, after reading as many of her other posts as I could stomach they all have a very political axe to grind, as do all of her website recommendations - none of which are even remotely mainstream.

Still, to use her examples, I've been to Japan, I've lived and worked in Japan in two very different contexts, and a better society in some respects is hard to imagine. Crime is almost nonexistent except in a highly organized (i.e. controlled) social form that rarely, if ever, hits street level. It's about as clean a society as one could ever have. So, if it is shame, or guilt, or some combination of the two, that allows the Japanese to park thousands and thousands of bikes without a single lock to be seen, to sit on the other side of a paper wall without hearing the conversation on the other side, or informs them to turn in the equivalent of pennies found on the floor of a store, and has them bathing as a ritual, then its not all a bad thing.

I've also lived and worked in Saudi Arabia and other gulf states when I was with Bechtel. It is not what people think when all they get is 'news' that is bought and paid for long before they see it - largely for reasons they do not understand. It is a very ancient (and largely unaltered) culture, one far removed from the West and the East both. And that shame is not just based in the individual or the nation, but really resides (as it does in Japan by the way, and is completely and utterly absent in America and the West anymore) in the family and in the home.

I know that I never understood the meaning of the concept of 'honored guest' until I was invited into Arab homes, be they a palace in Riyadh, a simple house in Damascus, or a Bedouin tent in the Empty Quarter. There is simply no way to even describe it. And the only thing that even remotely compares to it is to be invited into a Japanese home. Certainly, there is no culture with less shame and guilt attached to sex than in Japan, while the Arab culture is second only America when it comes to messed up ideas and ideals about sex.

And, while one might conjure a similarity between kamikaze pilots and the current wave of suicide bombers, would you not also have to put into the same camp the guy who falls on a live grenade to save his buddies, or Nathan Hale who said "I regret that I only have one life to give for my country"? Certainly, the Congressional Medal of Honor has as one of its requirements actions involving an almost near certainty of death, (conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty) the fact that of the 3,000+ medals awarded since the Civil War 616 (17%) have been awarded posthumously attests to that.

And I bring that up, because along with guilt and shame the concepts of honor and duty are not far removed as the immortal speech from Henry V demonstrates:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.


A whole lot of the time, regardless of the culture, guilt and shame are there for pretty good reasons, and aside from sex, are pretty universal. So to with honor and duty. Karren will be playing hockey on the devils own home ice long before either of those cultures build nursing homes to warehouse their parents because they are too busy to care for them at home, or before people would justify their own bad actions by claiming that it is the fault of their parents/childhood as is pretty common in our culture.


On another note:

"The comparison to the Japanese who resorted to suicide bombings is interesting, although I note the Japanese still stuck to military targets."
-- As opposed, of course, to the United States who intentionally struck civilian targets again and again going back to the Civil War in the 1860s. The fact of the matter is, in the modern world, (and the US Civil War was the first modern war,) there is no real difference between military and civilian targets to military planners. Its a nice distinction that non-military types get to pursue at their leisure, but it is one that does not hold up in reality. To break the will of the civilian (industrial worker) population, as we did in Germany and in Japan, is to deprive the nation of the ability to make war, and to drive its leaders to sue for peace. At least it worked in Japan - and Georgia. Still, had the Japanese had the ability to strike San Francisco or Los Angeles, I have no doubt they would have done so.

Tekla it is great to actually read a post from someone who has actually been to these countries and can speak from first hand experience.

My father lived in Japan for several years and had a great admiration for Japanese culture.

I do have to object strongly to a couple of statements and opinions however.

The Japanese had no compunction whatsover about striking civilian targets and did so often and ruthlessly. They just weren't American civilian targets which were either out of reach or not worth the effort and risk. China however was often a target, and millions of innocent Chinese civilians were killed by the Japanese, including quite a few in simple retaliatory executions in response to China giving help to the fliers in the Doolittle raid-an action that was perfectly in keeping with the fact that China and Japan were at war.

I also object to comparing the soldier who falls on a grenade to a suicide bomber who kills themselves along with a bunch of innocent civilians. The soldier falling on the grenade is not killing anyone and even if he simply throws the grenade back he is killing enemy soldiers who are trying to kill him. Far different than blowing yourself up in a restaurant or bus.

American society has a lot of problems. But I don't think that a blanket label of worse or better than some other society is appropriate.

Absaroka