Remorse and Grief

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

I have been listening to Arnold Bennett's Mental Efficiency on audio, found here for free download: https://librivox.org/mental-efficiency-and-other-hints-to-men-and-women-by-arnold-bennett/ 

Albeit rather "King's English", I found this particular section of Chapter 3, Breaking from the Past, very useful. I went online to grab sections of text that really spoke to me and I hope someone here finds value in it also. I had to look up some words so I put the definitions in! 

This part speaks of the excitement of Resolutions; which mean nothing without execution!

And at this hour, while the activity of the Resolution is yet in full blast, I would wish to insist on the truism, obvious perhaps, but apt to be overlooked, that a man cannot go forward and stand still at the same time. Just as

moralists have often animadverted upon the tendency to live in the future, so I would animadvert [pass criticism or censure on; speak out against] upon the

tendency to live in the past.

Because all around me I see men carefully tying them- selves with an unbreakable rope to an immovable post at the bottom of a hill and then struggling to climb the hill. If there is one Resolution more important than another it is the Resolution to break with the past. If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing.

This may seem a hard and callous doctrine, but you know there are aspects of common sense which decidedly are hard and callous. And one finds constantly in plain common-sense persons (O rare and select band!) a surprising quality of ruthlessness mingled with softer traits. Have you not noticed it? The past is absolutely intractable. One can't do anything with it. And an exaggerated attention to it is like an exaggerated attention to sepulchers [a small room or monument, cut in rock or built of stone, in which a dead person is laid or buried]-- a sign of barbarism. Moreover, the past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness, and cheerfulness is a most precious attainment.

This following goes along with my attitude towards "hope" ("Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man." - Friedrich Nietzsche).

Personally, I could even go so far as to exhibit hostility towards grief, and a marked hostility towards remorse -- two states of mind which feed on the past instead of on the present. Remorse, which is not the same thing as repentance, serves no purpose that I have ever been able to discover. What one has done, one has done, and there's an end of it. As a great prelate unforgettably said, "Things are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why, then, attempt to deceive ourselves"-- that remorse for wickedness is a useful and praiseworthy exercise? Much better to forget. As a matter of fact, people “indulge “in remorse; it is a somewhat vicious form of spiritual pleasure. Grief, of course, is different, and it must be handled with delicate consideration.

Nevertheless, when I see, as one does see, a man or a woman dedicating existence to sorrow for the loss of a beloved creature, and the world tacitly applauding, my feeling is certainly inimical [tending to obstruct or harm]. To my idea, that man or woman is not honouring, but dishonouring, the memory of the departed; society suffers, the individual suffers, and no earthly or heavenly good is achieved. Grief is of the past; it mars the present; it is a form of indulgence, and it ought to be bridled much more than it often is. The human heart is so large that mere remembrance should not be allowed to tyrannize over every part of it.

Finally, my favorite excerpt of this:

But cases of remorse and absorbing grief are comparatively rare. What is not rare is that misguided loyalty to the past which dominates the lives of so many of us. I do not speak of leading principles, which are not likely to incommode [inconvenience] us by changing; I speak of secondary yet still important things. We will not do so-and-so because we have never done it – as if that was a reason! Or we have always done so-and-so, therefore we must always do it – as if that was logic!

[JaneStorm]

I have been listening to Arnold Bennett's Mental Efficiency on audio, found here for free download: https://librivox.org/mental-efficiency-and-other-hints-to-men-and-women-by-arnold-bennett/ 

Albeit rather "King's English", I found this particular section of Chapter 3, Breaking from the Past, very useful. I went online to grab sections of text that really spoke to me and I hope someone here finds value in it also. I had to look up some words so I put the definitions in! 

This part speaks of the excitement of Resolutions; which mean nothing without execution!

And at this hour, while the activity of the Resolution is yet in full blast, I would wish to insist on the truism, obvious perhaps, but apt to be overlooked, that a man cannot go forward and stand still at the same time. Just as

moralists have often animadverted upon the tendency to live in the future, so I would animadvert [pass criticism or censure on; speak out against] upon the

tendency to live in the past.

Because all around me I see men carefully tying them- selves with an unbreakable rope to an immovable post at the bottom of a hill and then struggling to climb the hill. If there is one Resolution more important than another it is the Resolution to break with the past. If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing.

This may seem a hard and callous doctrine, but you know there are aspects of common sense which decidedly are hard and callous. And one finds constantly in plain common-sense persons (O rare and select band!) a surprising quality of ruthlessness mingled with softer traits. Have you not noticed it? The past is absolutely intractable. One can't do anything with it. And an exaggerated attention to it is like an exaggerated attention to sepulchers [a small room or monument, cut in rock or built of stone, in which a dead person is laid or buried]-- a sign of barbarism. Moreover, the past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness, and cheerfulness is a most precious attainment.

This following goes along with my attitude towards "hope" ("Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man." - Friedrich Nietzsche).

Personally, I could even go so far as to exhibit hostility towards grief, and a marked hostility towards remorse -- two states of mind which feed on the past instead of on the present. Remorse, which is not the same thing as repentance, serves no purpose that I have ever been able to discover. What one has done, one has done, and there's an end of it. As a great prelate unforgettably said, "Things are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why, then, attempt to deceive ourselves"-- that remorse for wickedness is a useful and praiseworthy exercise? Much better to forget. As a matter of fact, people “indulge “in remorse; it is a somewhat vicious form of spiritual pleasure. Grief, of course, is different, and it must be handled with delicate consideration.

Nevertheless, when I see, as one does see, a man or a woman dedicating existence to sorrow for the loss of a beloved creature, and the world tacitly applauding, my feeling is certainly inimical [tending to obstruct or harm]. To my idea, that man or woman is not honouring, but dishonouring, the memory of the departed; society suffers, the individual suffers, and no earthly or heavenly good is achieved. Grief is of the past; it mars the present; it is a form of indulgence, and it ought to be bridled much more than it often is. The human heart is so large that mere remembrance should not be allowed to tyrannize over every part of it.

Finally, my favorite excerpt of this:

But cases of remorse and absorbing grief are comparatively rare. What is not rare is that misguided loyalty to the past which dominates the lives of so many of us. I do not speak of leading principles, which are not likely to incommode [inconvenience] us by changing; I speak of secondary yet still important things. We will not do so-and-so because we have never done it – as if that was a reason! Or we have always done so-and-so, therefore we must always do it – as if that was logic!