We are wired so that when we violate a social rule of some sort, we “punish” ourselves with a tension we call guilt or shame. This flows naturally from the connection between our social brain, which allows meaningful connection to others, and very old instincts which protected us long ago. Likewise, anyone who does not feel guilt can be assumed thereby to be separated from humanity in important and primitive ways.
Guilt might be the explanation and shame the reality. Even animals feel shame. We have all seen dogs express it.
Trauma in some respects is a primal expulsion. It is being forced to detach from your social brain, and identify with feelings with exist in a much more primitive place. There is a rough homology between this expulsion and the “guilt” or shame sense. This manifests in many as self loathing.
This self loathing underlies, in my view, virtually all that is wrong with the human species. I think tension leads to self loathing, which leads to rigidity, which leads to violence of all sorts.
Ponder the link between steps two and three. If you hate yourself, you want to redeem yourself. Since you cannot resolve the underlying and fundamentally irrational–as seen from its disconnection with any current observable reality–sense of shame, you invent something very difficult to accomplish, to help alleviate this feeling which would otherwise drive you mad. I think this is the root of many manias, and all dogmatisms.
Being dogmatic is primarily an EMOTIONAL stance. Being dogmatic is different from a strong sense of being right. People who are dogmatic do not want to hear or consider alternative points of view. People who feel like they are right, but willing to consider alternatives, are open to all feedback.
Logically, if unresolved tensions lead to dogmatism, then more agile, accurate, and useful thinking ought logically to proceed from relaxation.
It is literally my belief that we could achieve world peace in short order if all leaders of all nations were capable of regular deep relaxation, and of the pleasure that flows from it.
As things stand, I think the game, the ludetic system, favors strongly obsessive and rigid people, which is to say people incapable of seeing much of the world, and very capable of misunderstanding most of the rest.