Conscience

.... is something I think about a little from time to time, mostly when I myself have a bad conscience about something, because when you talk about conscience, it's usually a bad one, but it can mean so much more.

Conscience is partly innate but also learned. The sense of values and having the ability to decide what is right or wrong, or to feel guilty...and that's exactly where the bad conscience comes in. Things you should have done or not done, things you should have said or not said….

Conscience is also strongly linked to the ability to empathize, i.e. to care and be able to understand someone else's feelings or situation without mixing in one's own feelings and opinions. But even the empathic ability seems to be repressed in many people today.

When you see all the hate and all the rudeness that occurs, often online, you wonder if those who grew up in the last decades were taught anything at all about values and what is right and wrong, and the little things that are innate, like guilt, seems to be displaced at the back of the cerebral cortex.

One also wonders if those which out of greed turns a blind eye to environmental destruction and the climate crisis, or certain heads of states and other holders of power around the world have a conscience...Netanyahu, Putin to name a few.... Do they sleep well at night?

If you want to look at the positive, there is always the word "conscientious", i.e. reliable and loyal, tidy, dutiful and zealous but it feels more like a character trait than something of the human emotional register.

A bad conscience is never fun to have, but it is at least proof that you have one....