The Self-destructive Nature of Guilt

Following Tuesday's class, I have been made aware of my own 'bad conscience', my own guilt, which plagues me in every day life, and which society has taught me is a natural phenomenon. On analysis, however, Nietzsche shows us how unnatural it is, for it is a type of self-torture, a 'will to life' which, previously discharged on the world, is now discharged into ourselves; an internalised rather than externalised cruelty. In this way, man "wounds himself, this master of destruction, of self-destruction" (Nietzsche 121) and renders himself sicker with every deepening feeling of guilt.

Interestingly, the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" provides a exemplary example of this destructive process, and  religion in this case (as with many) is the driving force which encourages and exacerbates guilt. Indeed, guilt seems to be the primary tool utilised by religion to bring people under control. Miss Kilman claims that turning to religion sooths "the hot and turbulent feelings which boiled and surged in her" (Woolf 124). These feelings, however (which could be seen as Nietzsche's 'will to power'), rather that being assuaged, are internalised instead of discharged on the world. This causes Miss Kilman intense suffering and unhappiness. Her very act of "trying to subdue [the] turbulent and painful feeling" (128) fails, because even if she masters it and convinces herself that "it is in the flesh" (128) she will continue to feel a "violent grudge against the world" (129), that is, a resentment stemming from bad conscience or the internalised violence against herself.

Other than religion, what other societal mechanisms wedge guilt and bad conscience in place?