A DARWINIAN-MODEL EXPLANATION TO THE FEELING OF GUILT

DESALES NUNES, Vladimir - UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO VALE DO SO

FRANCISCO

Ive recently heard, from a north-american christian of The Church of Jesus

Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the following question, in an online debate: how
can we feel guilty if the Holy Ghost does not exist? I could not give her the
answer immediately, or at once, at least. This is not a simple question, that
may be answered in a simple quote; it takes a longer chain of arguments to
find a satisfying result. In this text Im doing a more complete explanation
and a proper answer to that question.
Perhaps the Homo sapiens sapiens may be indeed the only specie in the live
world that feels guilt. I think that is possible that other kinds of animals with
great group-living skills may have somewhat of this too, like the whales or
dolphins, but if it exists, it must be very primitive or almost nothing. In
humans, on the contrary, that characteristic have evolved so much that it
gave origin to many and complexes systems of mysticism, a real industry of
guilt religion.
I guess that the guilt is a form of preservation of gens, and why? Because
more careful individuals generally survive far more than those who throw
themselves in dangerous situations. Guilt is also related to the coexistence
with a group.
Imagine that you are a cave man (or woman I doesnt matter) that lives by
the products of hunting; you sleep in a dark and cold cave, and not often
finds a female partner to share your gens. But then you discover that theres
a tribe of men who lives together nearby; they eat more regularly, they all
engage more successfully in fighting against the monsters that hunt you, and
they have a lot of female partners they even have only one female to each
male in the tribe (what is a very useful thing If you want to survive). Then
you resolve to move and live with them. Soon a strong community is risen.
That first agglomeration of individuals was only possible because of the
invention of language, even when it was quite primitive and simple. This
common code allowed the individuals of a group to communicate to each
other. Each tribe or groups of tribe developed a different language humans
are (and this is amazing) the only animal species in the whole world to have
thousands of different languages to a single kind of individuals.

Along with the invention of language, theres of course the necessity, now, of
the group-living and the preservation of you tribe. Patriotism comes from
that time. It became necessary to be kind or tolerant with those of your tribe
and hateful and xenophobic with foreigners an evil consequence of the
exaggerate patriotism. Between the members of a single tribe, it became
necessary to live in harmony. That would not happen, however, if you went
to hunt alone, and got a big amount of fresh flesh, and yet you did not want
to share it with the others. It would obviously create a conflict in the group. If
you allowed to share with them, the conflict would be solved if not, perhaps
you would have to move out. To solve this problematic, evolution gave us the
skill of feel guilty for do not sharing the flesh with our partners, and a lot of
other situations, of course, like invading the others tent, or step on
someones foot all these situations in a local reality; thats why we
generally feel more guilty by bad things we did to a known person than to a
strange one.
As happens through evolution in all times, that characteristic was useful and
helped the continuation of the gens, and thats because we still have it
today. As demonstrated, guilt can make you solve small problems before
they grow beyond control. The invention of language is also an evidence of
why the other animals do not share guilt characteristic as well. It requires
exchange of information and a complex system of sociability. The reason why
Ive cited whales and dolphins is because their communication system is
very complex and is yet not fully understood. Therefore we can infer that
advanced emotional characteristics, such as guilt, shame or pride are no
possible without socialization or language.