# Regret, Remorse and Guilt

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2016/09/03/regret-remorse-and-guilt/
- Published: 2016-09-03T20:35:41+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/56e70-1p4pgdmd93tcgkfomfrzksa.
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Get ready for blood, gore and wasted time!

#### The happy three friends that can’t be unseen

> I agree that regret may be inevitable in a richly lived life. However, I think
> that type of regret is much less robust than regrets about things one rally should
> have done (morally speaking), but didn’t. says [Mike](https://medium.com/@MikeSturm)

This above is Mike’s note on [my story on regret](https://medium.com/@andraganescu/regret-is-a-form-of-curiosity-4ecb2b32f4d5#.z6ssbhwsf),
where I was making the case for regret being a type of curiosity and a natural effect
of a lived life.

So, pursuing your idea [Mike Sturm](https://medium.com/u/49842523be47) a bit further,
I thought about guilt versus regret and the biggest and flashiest of problems was
this: _can a criminal honestly acknowledge _**_regret_**_ about his/her actions?_

For example, parole hearings deal a lot with regret from detainees, yet being in
prison is not a matter of wrong choice. Common law is inspired from our instinctual
morality and it is just as much of a dictatorship as morality is. Therefore, you
cannot think of a criminal, no matter if rapist, murderer or petty thief, like having
a choice between doing the crime and not doing the crime. There is no choice, there
is solely the act and when such things such as character are brought up in court,
it is meant to distract from the act itself, like in the case of Brock Turner.

In fact, we don’t judge people for things they don’t do. We only judge ourselves
for things we didn’t do.

For example, in Turner’s case, if we judge him by what he didn’t do, we sentence
him to six months, of which he served three, because, hey, he didn’t _really _rape
the girl. This is bad law, this is when the judge dismissed the complete lack of
guilt assessment and instead focused on _regret. _Do you know what Turner regrets?
That he was drunk! This could mean for example, that he could have done a better
job than get caught had he been sober. That is why he should have been sentenced
without any mitigating circumstances, so he’d get the time he needs to build the
guilt he deserves.

Guilt is the only verdict we’re devising in all trials. Regret actually means nothing
when the subject is love, morality or law. No jury ever found the defendant regretful,
only guilty or not guilty. No lover ever wanted your regret but only your passionate
love in return, even when you make a love mistake, especially then, you being passionately
in love is the only plead accepted by the hurt heart in the jury box.

I think the difference between guilt and regret is in the fact that regret stems
from a question with multiple answers, while guilt stems from a question with a 
yes or no answer. Regret is a logical tree, guilt is a binary switch.

In love, for example, while in love with someone, I am sure anyone can confirm the
drowning guilt flowing from even thinking about loving someone else. If you are 
in a love relationship and you feel regret for not being in another relationship,
it usually is not connected to your current relationship, it is some distant memory,
some disconnected fantasy. If you are seriously considering someone else as a better
option and you experience this as regret, you probably aren’t in love really.

The problem is how well do people differentiate between these two emotions, regret
and guilt? Are they both emotions? In my opinion, guilt is a sentiment and regret
is an emotion. Regret is connected to thoughts while guilt is connected to sensations.

This reminds me of this line from a movie: guilt comes after orgasm, during a flirty
discussion between married people.

Going back to the prison punishment, do victims actually desire regret in the perpetrators
or do they want guilt? Is revenge seeking to inflict guilt or regret? I think well
planned revenge should seek to overpower the target with guilt, for if we manage
to awake regret in the object of our vengeful actions we are inadvertently lessening
the pain we inflict.

Religions handle this right. No one cares if you regret, they want you to repent,
which means literally to be crushed by guilt. Yet, it appears that in moral issues,
guilt does a poor job in bringing people on the right track. The masses who act 
as scripted by the fear of guilt, would have behaved properly anyway because we 
have other kinds of pain to inflict on those who do not conform, and they simply
avoid any societal pain.

At the halfway between regret and guilt you’ll find remorse. But remorse is neither
an emotion nor a sentiment, it is a state, and that makes remorse last longer than
both regret and guilt. A life of regret is made of many regrets, a life of guilt
is unlivable, but a life of remorse is more common than it should be.

To be sorry is an all encompassing description for all of our three friends here,
that is why you have questions such as: “you have regrets, but are you really sorry?”,
meaning “is guilt eating away at your spleen, keeping you up and sweaty at night
and down and dry by day? ’cause regrets, well …, I also have a bunch and they’re
not that bad”.

The enemy of guilt is pride. But, this is a subject for a future story because my
remorse of spending a Saturday evening on Medium is overpowering.

Love me, I dare you.

A

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![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/fc48f-1suv1wub07ogwpliobp7t8q.
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[Thin Man](https://medium.com/u/a678e9562376), I mention you ’cause maybe you can
throw some cents of the mind this way, since I guess, (guess!) you’d be familiar
with this topic, plenty!