shame and guilt??

[thir]

Shame and guilt share many similarities, they are both secondary emotions and they are both concepts. Being such they are subjective and personally defined by social rules taught (conditioned) during upbringing.

Meaning the primary are fear, anger, joy and so on?
Yes, I think you are right here. They are learned.

if one were to use the "window of emotions" theory, which states that emotions can be mapped/charted using two factors: pleasant/unpleasant and mild/intense, then shame and guilt would fall into different spaces. With both being in the unpleasant quadrants but shame being more intense. IMHO

I belive that would depend on the situation. Say you accidently ran over a child and it died, I imagine the gult would be as intense and any shame could be.

I think they (guilt and shame) are definitely of use. One could look at shame and guilt as the first line of societal defense. If a person buys into the theory that as humans we have two basic hard wired drives: sex and aggression (one of a few Freudian principles still standing in Psychology today) then shame and guilt are effective in keeping the hedonistic desires of the Id in check.

I myself do not buy into it. If those drives were all we had, we would never have developed into humans, which demanded co-operation in getting food, and compassion towards for instance children. I personally think it is time to let go of this myth.

But of course sex and agression do exist. Yet I do not see the problem - most functional people do not wish to couple with someone screaming and crying and kicking. Not because of shame, but as a function of other instints, that you do not attack your own kind, normally, and not someone who is not a threat. As for aggression, I think it the same thing: most people are simply not aggressive except for a very good reason, even then they normally know when to stop as all the other animals high up in the food chain.

I think the problems today comes from havng gone from a flock way of living to a too indidual way of living, in which some of the normal instinctual behaviour does not come into play. But they are there, we see them for example in cases of catastrophies, where people actually mostly do help each other. The flock is back, as it were, and the instincts with it.

Right now I believe that shame is a bad thing mostly used to control others with, while guilt has its uses as a compass telling us that we are doing something wrong.

Interesting topic, thanks for posting it.

Glad to hear it, and welcome :-)