GenZedong

i understand u !!!

youve mentioned being brought up w religious family, right? anyway, so did i (actually i had a scrapped comment responding to one of ur comments about it but i digress i’ll focus on this rn) aside from what Commiejones said about how they wouldn’t feel guilty over exploiting the broken schooling system, one way i’ve tried to grow and get better is to stop feeling like any emotional/internal response is the Right One to have, in regards to being a better person.

i do think it’s something i got instilled with at first by religion (catholicism) and i held onto it for a while as well as other moral principles that i later discarded when my faith in absolute ideals began degrading (i told a lie and the earth didn’t swallow me up, and by then i was starting to get a little confused)

more often than not, guilt was something leveraged against me, that i had to spend a lot of time and energy measuring my Sins and feeling bad, being god-fearing, all that. i think that wasn’t good, but i see now how it influenced me and i think this religious leaning to guilt and impurity and self-flagellation has embedded itself in a lot of people.

guilt in and of itself is seen as redemption. to toss and turn over your own sins and feel like a piece of shit is Redemptive, even for those who aren’t explicitly religious, since, well, it is an expression of remorse and a recognition of that, which should, ideally, motivate someone to then improve.

but it’s not really as simple as that, people feel paralysis about self improvement all the time, or seeking forgiveness/mending relationships. and so you get people who act like Bojack Horseman, constantly berating themselves, and none of that energy goes to actually remedying their behaviors, because that self-punishment is Good on its Own, a moral act in and of itself!

it’s much less daunting than, say, truly apologizing to their Herb. it leads to yankees on the net complaining about how they feel sooooooo bad that they have to pay attention to Gaza, it leads to veteran schlock movies whining about the fact that they killed all those people and now feel BADDD!!! dont you get it?? i feel BADDDD!!! now i am a good person, since i felt BADDDDDD!!!!

all that really matters in proving your actual morality is just producing better outcomes, though, rather than thought Crime or thought Purity. thoughts are just shit my little electric sack produces, based on a million stimuli, i no longer feel disgusted that i produced a weird one, that sack just does shit!

anyway, if you are able to rationally take apart what you’re doing, identify what conflicts with your principles, and then act differently, literally nothing else matters aside from the final outcome. so i wouldn’t mentally persecute myself for not doing the ‘good’ thing of self-flagellation, which is something i kept doing back then, which led to my occasional stagnation.

i just think it’s a healthy way to approach guilt and striving to Be a Good Person. i think you’re doing well. i think you don’t need to try to find ways you can feel worse so that you can earn your penance. i think you’ve got it :3!

How can something be "wrong" if you aren't harming anyone?

Cheating on tests isn't "wrong." Essentially you are just fabricating a lie and lying to a teacher/school that only cares about you as a commodity to be shipped off as a worker to be exploited by capitalists isn't amoral.

If you harm another working class person you should feel guilty. But morality doesn't apply to the class war. You cannot do anything "wrong" to the ruling class or their institutions. They have been doing wrong to you your whole life anything you do against them is justified self defense and nothing you or I can do would ever reach a fair punishment for their crimes.