Posted by Jost on September 22, 2006, at 18:24:58
In reply to Re: Blame - Trigger, posted by alexandra_k on September 21, 2006, at 18:07:22
>>>That doesn't mean you aren't allowed to / can't feel angry. When you feel angry don't blame yourself for feeling angry. It is a consequence of what happened. It is an understandable consequence of what happened.
>>>But you can feel angry without blame...
Like if a volcano erupts causing mass destruction...
You can be understandably sad and mad and hurt and vulnerable and scared...
And it doesn't have to be anybodies fault.
Is this possible, though, I wonder--really? Anger can exist without blame, but only at lesser degrees. Intense anger seems to imply guilt-- and seems to have, almost as a concomitant, some degree of blame. I doubt that the Divine Comedy would be an important text if blame and retribution were not deeply part of human experience. In fact, Dante seems to consider it wrong morally to forgive those (ie not put them into the Inferno) who commit certain mortal sins.Foregiveness, though, seems less a part of a cycle of blame, than a possible step toward acceptance and distancing.
Some sort of acceptance has to occur for blame to diminish -- and wouldn't that be a point one gets to after a fair amount of work, including but not limited to foregiveness-- ?
Jost
poster:Jost
thread:686272
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060911/msgs/688255.html