#self-reproach

I can feel the neurons in my brain remapping themselves whenever I choose to make amends with my human spirit rather than indulging in self-reproach

The Christian Breed

Is a crippled soul. Humble, Conscientious, Guilty, Ascetic. Meekly following the herd. Treating vitality, desire, power, and ambition as things that require constant suppression.

Nietzsche believed that certain forms of Christian morality encouraged people to become suspicious of their own strength, ambition, pride, aggression, sensuality, and self-assertion. Instead of expressing these drives outwardly, people were taught to restrain them, judge them, confess them, and often feel guilty about them. In his view, this produced a human being who was divided against himself. Natural impulses were not eliminated. They were turned inward. The result was guilt, self-reproach, bad conscience, and endless self-examination.

However Nietzsche would say that the Church did not create "crippled souls" because humility, conscience, or self-discipline are inherently bad. Rather, it often cultivated a form of humanity in which self-denial became an ideal and self-assertion became morally suspect. For Nietzsche, the danger was not humility itself. The danger was making humility the highest virtue. The danger was not conscience itself. The danger was turning conscience into a permanent tribunal against one's own instincts. The danger was not self-control itself. The danger was treating vitality, desire, power, and ambition as things that require constant suppression. People who cultivate these traits cannot be controlled. Nietzsche's question is devastatingly simple. What happens to a culture when its highest human type is not the strongest, wisest, most creative, or most life-affirming person, but the person who is best at renouncing himself?

His answer is that such a culture may become morally refined while simultaneously becoming psychologically weakened. At the same time, Nietzsche is often misunderstood. He was not advocating a society of tyrants, or selfish predators. He did not want people to abandon discipline or become slaves to impulse. The opposite. What he opposed was a morality that automatically treated strength as guilt and self-overcoming as sin. A concise Nietzschean formulation might be that healthy conscience helps a person direct his strength. An unhealthy conscience teaches a person to distrust his strength.

“There is a luxury in self-reproach.When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.It is the confession, not the priest that gives us ablution.”

Wilde, Oscar ~ The Picture of Dorian Gray

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.