Home Society The Suppression of Guilt, Part 1: The Lesser Players

The Suppression of Guilt, Part 1: The Lesser Players

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The My Lai massacre in Vietnam,  Photo: a YouTube video by Democracy Now

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

This online magazine, GumshoeNews.com, engages in both the reporting and the analyzing of news.  These days, we feel overwhelmed by the horrors that are projected for the near future.  We are looking for ways to prevent those horrors from happening.

Today, I zero in on guilt and shame. Presumably, if all the persons engaged in preparing those horrors experienced a sufficient prick of conscience, they would quit. So let’s try to figure out why conscience appears to be in abeyance for so many people.

Note: This article doesn’t attempt to account for the planning of evil on a large scale (such as genocide or geo-engineering).  That does seem to be taking place today in a very deliberate way but will require a different analysis in Part 2.   Here we look only at the lesser players.

We start by recapping five independent writers on the subject of “lack of guilt.”

M Scott Peck — Author of People of the Lie: Hope for Healing Human Evil (1998)

Peck puts some of the blame for war-related crimes on the fact that our jobs are specialized.  This allows the individual to duck responsibility. He says:

“Specialization contributes to the immaturity of groups and their potential for evil through several different mechanisms.”

If [in 1968] wandering through the halls of the Pentagon, I stopped to talk with the men responsible for directing the manufacture of napalm and its transportation to Vietnam in the form of bombs, and if I questioned these men about the morality of the war and hence the morality of what they were engaged in, this is the kind of reply I invariably received:

“Oh, we appreciate your concerns, yes, we do, but I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong people. We’re not the department you want. This is the ordnance branch. We just supply the weapons—we don’t determine how and where they’re used….

“Whenever the roles of individuals within a group become specialized, it becomes both possible and easy for the individual to pass the moral buck to some other part of the group.”

Brice Taylor (author of Thanks for The Memories, 1998)

Brice’s book has been removed from archive.org, so I am going on memory.  Brice was married to a dentist and attended some dental conferences in California. She tells us that she was a demonstration model for mind control. Some dentists at these conferences “bought” training in mind control.

But, I hear you ask, wouldn’t that mean that huge numbers of people would find out about such things? Not exactly. First, a large group of dentists would gather round and be told of the benefits they might gain by using techniques on their employees, such as hygienists or receptionists. If anyone raised an eyebrow, they were not invited to the next session.

At the second session, more was revealed, including a hint of how the girl, such as model Brice, could be used for sex. At the final session, with a small audience of dentists who had showed enthusiasm for the plan, much more was revealed, along with a live demo of Brice’s sexual talents.

I am using this as a way of showing how something pretty terrible need not run into the obstacle of the public’s conscience. The “public” gets whittled down to a few who lack conscience. (Incidentally, I can relate that I know of a dentist who owns – i.e., brainwashes – his hygienists and receptionists. Amazingly, I also know of a dentist and his two hygienists who are owned by the receptionist.)

Mary Maxwell — author of Morality among Nations (1990)

In this book, I argue that we all have a dual morality. We believe in acting ethically within our group, but an enemy group inspires our hate and contempt. If told to shoot or bomb an invader in defense of his country, the soldier does not hesitate on the grounds of ethics.

Such cold-heartedness toward an outgroup can also operates within a nation against its ethnic or religious minorities. If they are not seen to be “us” they are seen to be “them.” Automatically they do not get consideration. I say we evolved this way. It has acted as a barrier to feeling guilty when we hurt “them.”

ME Thomas, author of Confessions of a Sociopath (2013)

ME Thomas explains how her mind works in a way that (she admits) is not typical of our species. She is an American lawyer who claims to have no conscience and no empathy. She is driven to succeed at various tasks in pursuit of her own gain, no matter at whose expense.

Thomas says she was raised as a Mormon and thus was given very specific rules, even about what to wear, and so she learned to follow rules to get social acceptance. But whenever she can cheat, she does. She likes to use charm to fool someone into trusting her. She loves to “conquer.”

I think of Ms Thomas’s basic selfishness as something we all inherit, but that most of us have an instinct for altruism that conflicts with pure selfishness. Note: Thomas estimates 1 to 4% of the population are sociopaths. If the proportion of people without guilt or shame is really so high, this poses a serious problem for a society to recognize and fight evil.

M Scott Peck, Again, Regarding the Bayonet Story

Peck tried to come up with many explanations for evil. I am most interested in his theory of covering one’s guilt for a bad deed by doing more of it.  He tells of a soldier who was taught, in Vietnam, to kill with a bayonet.

First, the man was ordered to make-believe-stab a straw man, lying on a bed. Of course, he had no need to feel guilty when sticking the blade into a bunch of straw. The next day he was ordered to bayonet a real man on the same bed, but was told the man had killed many Americans and was very dangerous. He obeyed.

Peck gives an unusual interpretation (provided by the soldier himself) of what happened after that. The next time the soldier used his bayonet to kill a man, he did so with gusto. Having later reflected on this, he told Peck that if he had hesitated, it would have made him look back with guilt on his first such kill, and he did not want that feeling of guilt.

So far, then, we see specialization (in the Pentagon), a selected pool of buyers (at the dental conference), ingroup versus outgroup mentality (affecting international and interethnic actions), general sociopathy (in a female lawyer), and the bayonet story (where practicing the sin helped it become acceptable).

Recap. All five examples are specific factors by which guilt is overcome or evaded, and no doubt there are more. As I said at the beginning, this article is not about the central planning of massive evil; it’s about lower-echelon players.

Narc’s and Pedo’s

Recent articles at Gumshoe delved into the matter of individuals who lack shame or guilt. First, on January 22, 2021. there was Dr Les Carter’s ideas about “narc’s” – persons with NPD, Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Then on January 23, Anneke Lucas’s insight into the minds of perpetrators of child sexual abuse, often of an extremely violent kind.

Les Carter. Dr Carter says that a narcissist cannot feel guilty about something bad he did, as he pretty much denies doing anything bad, ever. He sees himself as wonderful – only other people are bad. He never takes responsibility. Les Carter says that if the narc is seriously confronted, he may become not only angry but unhinged.

Interviewing a married couple jointly, Dr Carter heard the woman accuse the man of something. As the therapist, Carter asked the husband to explain. The guy wagged his finger at the therapist saying “Don’t go there.” When Carter pushed a bit harder, the man could only repeat, more loudly, “Don’t go there.”

I think we can assume that this NPD person has never “gone there” in his own mind and simply cannot do so. Shame and guilt have been suppressed at some point in his life.  Dr Carter also teaches that a narc typically has missed out on love in childhood. That could additionally explain the narc’s inability to form relationships, to accept tenderness, and to play fair.

Anneke Lucas. In her childhood of slavery, in Belgium, Anneke Lucas was abused by hundreds of men. She says she waited to find one who would hold back and say “I can’t do this,” but that never happened.

I don’t know what percent of those perpetrators were abused in childhood. Professor Briggs says of the Australian abusers that 80% were once victims themselves. (Thousands of victims reported to the Royal Commission between 2014 and 2017.)

Ms Lucas came to the notion, which strikes me as very plausible, that a perp can’t face up to an accusation of what he has done to a child, as this would trigger painful memories. She says:

“For most perpetrators, the shame that would be appropriate to feel, for the harm they have caused, is enmeshed with shame once unfairly imposed on them…  Any implication they should be ashamed, would trigger the original, humiliating feeling … leaving them with the horrendous feelings of being deserving of the abuse, or being unworthy of better treatment — of being bad….”

Lucas notes that the purpose of natural shame is to correct behavior, but that some victims cannot differentiate natural shame from the toxic, imposed shame they once suffered. She thinks this is why “child abuse victims sometimes pass on their abuse and become perpetrators, rejecting shame altogether, becoming shameless.”

I’ll bet that caused you to think of the bayonet man. It’s not quite the same, but it shows a desire to distance oneself, unfortunately, from guilt.

The Two Explanations

Note that in the present article, there are at least two explanations for participating in bad deeds.  One is that a person can suppress his feelings of guilt — the abused child abuser and the bayoneter.

The other is that he is generally conscienceless – he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Or he attends the dental conference and is selectable by his ethics-free behavior.

There’s also the nationalist or racist, proudly believing that only the ingroup (“our people”) deserves fair treatment.

I want to state again my surprise at Dr Les Carter’s discovery of a complete set — I call it a Table d’hôte menu – of traits in the typical narc.  Carter’s readers, by the thousands, have commented, under his YouTube videos.

They corroborate that someone in their life shows all these symptoms: unwillingness to apologize, irrational display of anger when another person accuses them of anything, and belief in their own superiority (which, Carter says, belies their actual dearth of ego.)

While a sociopath is pleased to be missing any feeling of guilt, these other folks (narc’s and some pedo’s) are in a state of torment when accused. I think we need to pay attention to that.

Disclaimer. Please do not draw from the above discussion any sense that the author, me, wants to let criminals off the hook. To explain a situation is not to justify it.

Reminder. None of the above five styles of the suppression of guilt suffices to explain the planning of massive evil. That’s a matter for Part 2.

 

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16 COMMENTS

  2. Interesting event. I heard earlier in the week that the governments of Russia, Italy, Estonia, Germany and a couple of others have stepped down.

    What I saw in this event, at least in front of the camera the police did not perform with malice as they have done in US and Australia recently.

  3. Seeing as we’re on the topic of ‘Suppression of Guilt’, there have been few more egregious suppressions than the one in this article titled ‘Navy SEAL Texted Photo Holding ISIS Fighter’s Head, Bragged About Killing Him With a Knife, Government Lawyers Allege’:

    https://www.newsweek.com/navy-seal-faces-war-crimes-charges-1217979

    The Navy Seal in question was Eddie Gallagher and Trump pardoned this vermin.

    From the article :

    “Navy SEALs were administering medical aid to a wounded 15-year-old ISIS fighter when one SEAL [Gallagher] allegedly stabbed the prisoner to death and then posed for photos next to the body.”

    Gallagher also has a history of shooting and killing unarmed Iraqi civilians.

    This is indicative of the TRUE state of the U.S military today. This is how ‘brave’ they are – resorting to frenzied attacks on boys.

    For all his faults, at least Obama had the guts to poke the cabal in the eye in the last few weeks of his administration and issue a pardon for Chelsea Manning.

    I’m not going to say I knew for certain that Trump wasn’t going to pardon Assange. Despite pressure from his controllers to not go off script, I still hoped that Trump had the barest remnant of empathy, just a few drops of the milk of human kindness that he could draw upon to pardon Assange.

    I was wrong.

    Yet Trump saw no problem in pardoning the Blackwater operatives that murdered Iraqi civilians (as per the Collateral Murder video released by Wikileaks), nor pardoning the vilest of individuals like Eddie Gallagher.

    For this I will never forgive Trump and will hound him to my last breath.

    To think, there were some who actually believed that Trump would Make America Great Again.

    By any metric one chooses, the world is a darker, less compassionate place after four years of the Chump.

  4. 1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

    The Link Between Jews and Money Is No Longer Taboo

    Fact Sheet: Jews Control America | Real Jew News

    https://www.realjewnews.com/?p=821

    If Jews can’t control money, then they can’t control the other categories such as below: 1. Media (Jews took control of the MSM in the early 1970s), 2. Congress (Lewis Charles Levin was a first Jewish congressman, in the office from 1845 to 1851), White House (Jews took control of the White House in the early 1990s) 3. Foreign policy (”According to a 2013 BBC World Service Poll, the …

    After years of focusing on anti-Semitism, more and more historians are daring to deal with a subject long considered untouchable

    Even most Jews don’t know the hidden truths about Judaism …

    themillenniumreport.com/2019/03/even-most-jews-dont-know-the-hidden-truths-about-judaism

    Rosenthal debunks the commonly accepted lie that, “the Jews are Israelites, and thus God’s chosen people”. Rosenthal said in part: ‘Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer — so I wasn’t lying — and we are his chosen people. Lucifer is very much alive.’” (The Hidden Tyranny)

    http://themillenniumreport.com/2019/03/even-most-jews-dont-know-the-hidden-truths-about-judaism/

  5. Do you trust the government with your life?

    Simple answer is no.

    The PM speaking on 2GB said in reference to the 33 deaths in Norway that “this happens with very frail elderly people” —he linked their deaths with the vaccine….then in the next breath said, ‘ you know my stand on this, that the first people to receive the jab in Australia will be the elderly and front-line health workers.’

    The guy admits that the 33 very frail elderly folk in Norway succumbed to death by a reaction to the vaccine…..then says he plans to vaccinate our frail elderly people FIRST.

    https://cairnsnews.org/2021/01/24/do-you-trust-government-with-your-life/

    • If ScoMo was truly objective and sought that which is best for the people of this country, he would’ve responded with something like :
      ‘Yes, this is definitely a concern. We’ll be monitoring this closely and meanwhile impose a moratorium on the Vaccine rollout until such time as we’ve ascertained its safety and efficacy’.

      But, the fact that ScuMo immediately came out defensively with that lame excuse dismissing those Norwegian deaths, speaks voulmes.

      This man is beholden to his cabal / Big Pharma paymasters.

  6. On point, article topic: would be interested to hear people’s ideas/definitions about the nature of good and evil. It’s hard to have a discussion about morality, shame and guilt without a shared understanding of these concepts. There are a lot of evil people that don’t particularly stand out. Is evil only evident in people’s actions? or does it live in the individual mind and soul? eg. Will it be wrong to rape an artificial person (sex bot)? What is your conscience? Is it the voice of your parents? Is it a reminder of the social contract? or is it the spirit of God? What is evil? What is good? Where does it come from?

    • evil implies death – i define evil is causing pin and suffering and premature death. this things that make me cringe when i watch a movie. Was this trained or did i know that hurting puppies was wrong when i hear their little welp. for me the sound that things make when they are in pain is so unbearable i will do almost anything to relieve their suffering. why dont they shoot the ones they set on fire in the alien movies?

  9. The Soviet Purge IS Here Again

    Democrat NGO’s To Direct Military / CIA & FBI In Purge of Conservatives

    Biden administration openly confirms former CIA John Brennan’s claim that “Christians” and “Libertarians” are being targeted by government agencies

    https://banned.video/watch?id=600cb07242993508da58bc9a

    For the NWO to gain total control they first have to destroy all resistance.

    Depop Secrets PDF

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    My sincerest gratitude to the countless people who have helped me do the impossible, destroy the secrecy of the world’s first global system; a system based on genocide.

    Preface
    To convince the world that the international system commits genocide within
    nations to prevent nuclear war between nations seems an impossible task; even
    more so that the original justification for genocide was and continues to be the
    pursuit of prosperity. First, you have to get past the sentinels to this secret, the
    193 UN Member States, whose intelligence services will come at you from every
    direction to stop you from telling the world that every national leader is an
    unwilling participant in a global program of population control based on mass
    murder. You will be imprisoned, discredited, derided, bankrupted, and
    emotionally undermined until you lose your mind, commit suicide or starve to
    death out on the street. ……………………

    https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/depop-secrets.pdf

  10. The Will to Believe: Americans and their Divine Masters
    Edward Curtin

    “…….Propagandists take this need for belief and use it to create different scenarios that they develop into full-scale social theater pieces that will give the public various options to believe, all of which are meant to satisfy the public’s yearning for something rather than nothing but which conceal the truth.

    Facts don’t matter with these offerings since they are completely illusory narratives.

    These staged plays usually contain their opposites; one can choose what has already been chosen for one, even seemingly contradictory scripts with opposing roles. Seemingly is the relevant word, for the opposites are not opposites but counterparts, flip sides of the same coin. But each choice is a choice of belief that satisfies the need to believe no matter how unbelievable. It’s the coin that’s counterfeit.

    For the propagandists, facts are fictions used to entice the audience into double-binds so entrancing that there is no exit. Or so they hope…………..”

    https://off-guardian.org/2021/01/24/the-will-to-believe-americans-and-their-divine-masters/

    George Carlin said that to believe in the American Dream you have to be asleep.

  11. For those so-called Christian-Zionists

    Why The Heresy Of Zionism Is So Dangerous To Christians (ABSTRACT click on link for full article)
    http://www.jesusisprecious.org/false_doctrine/zionism/why_expose.htm
    The false teaching of Zionism is not about the Jews; but rather, a Satanic counterfeit of the Jews, Israel and Jesus Christ. Revelation 2:9, “I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.”

    Zionism (both political and religious) is the false doctrine which says that present-day Israel is the fulfillment of Bible prophecy, to restore the Jews to the Promised Land. Biblically, the nation of Israel (true Israel) will not be restored until the Jews return to the Lord, which hasn’t happened yet. Hosea 3:4-5, “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; and shall fear the LORD and his goodness in the latter days.” Israel has been without a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice and nation for the past 1900 years.

    Ah, but in the latter days, at the close of the 7-year Tribulation, a remnant of believing Israel will fear God and seek the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Messiah. At that time, Christ Himself will establish once again the legitimate true nation of Israel, and restore Abraham’s seed to the Promised Land. Notice in Hosea 4:5 that the children of Israel shall not RETURN until they SEEK THE LORD! There is no genuine turning to the Lord Jesus Christ in Israel today. And so, present-day apostate Israel which was established in May of 1948 cannot be the fulfillment of Hosea 3:4-5.

    But wait, it gets much worse! The modern state of Israel was created by the Zionist International Banking Cabal (the Wall Street gang). Research history and you will see that I speak the truth. The Anti-American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created in 1947 by Wall Street Investment Bankers and Lawyers (the United States is run by a criminal banking cabal).

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