120 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
In this case, Perceiver mode knows that Eating causes Fatness.
Conscience is a conflict between Perceiver facts and Mercy feelings.
Experience A (eating) feels moderately good, but Experience B
(fatness) feels strongly bad.
Without the Perceiver connection, the emotional label of A in the
Mercy part is good: Let‟s eat.
With Perceiver knowing, the overall emotional label in the Mercy
part is bad: I hate fat.
Guilt is conscience plus the addition of me.
Experience A is part of me: I ate a box of chocolates!
Perceiver thought knows experience A and B belong together:
Eating causes Fatness.
Experience B, which feels bad, is now part of me: I will be fat.
Punishment is the arrival of the consequence predicted by guilt.
Oh no! I can‟t fit into my clothes any more. See those rolls of fat.
Here is an example. In
colonial America, „hell-fire
and brimstone‟ sermons
were quite common.
Church preachers found
that warning people about
hell was an effective way
to win converts. I suggest
that this was because
pioneers carving an
existence out of the
wilderness identified
constantly with experiences of personal tragedy: If someone‟s axe slipped,
then he might lose his leg; those who didn‟t make it home in wintertime
could freeze to death; wild animals roamed the forest and attacked the
unwary. With all of these terrible memories residing within the Mercy
internal world, it was easy to create a sense of religious conscience and
guilt. One simply had to modify the statement, “Make the wrong physical
decision and your body will suffer incurable trauma,” into the prediction,
“Make the wrong spiritual decision and your soul will suffer incurable
trauma.” This type of preaching is no longer effective, because today‟s
people feel no threat of punishment. Tell a person protected by our social
safety nets that he may go to hell and he will laugh at you and tell you to
go to hell.
Evidence from neurology backs up the assertion that conscience
depends upon content within the internal world and that the effectiveness
of conscience depends upon the presence of emotional memories within