Yesterday’s Right, Today’s Wrong

 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been on a personal search to understand guilt and shame—feelings that have stayed with me for a long time. I went through video after video, article after article, and noticed one common thread: most of them assume you don’t deserve the guilt or shame you’re carrying.

I found that approach shallow, even frustrating, it assumes you're wrong to feel what you feel, when your own mind knows the guilt is earned.

One suggestion I came across was to list all the good you’ve done on one side, and the bad on the other, to evaluate whether you “deserve” to feel guilt and shame. I find that insulting. People don’t feel guilt because of a label—they feel it because of a specific incident, a real mistake that changed how they see themselves. 

If society forces a shame without the underlying incident, it would be in our instinct to reject the notion (unless others controlled the environment too). In my opinion, in most cases, for most people, they have already through things through before accepting guilt and shame.

These theories often assume your thoughts are not mature, that you're brainwashed into believing you're bad. But I think that’s a farce. If guilt and shame were just social noise, most people would reject it, for self-preservation. 

They feel guilt and shame because something specific happened which allowed them to fall in their own view, even if it was because they were pushed into it by others. Others couldn't have pushed it if they didnt allow it.

What I believe is this: the issue isn't a broken label—it's a specific memory, their actions, their choices,  things that they regret, something they truly believe was wrong from their part. That's the root. And that’s what needs to be addressed.

After a long time, I found a short clip by Jordan Peterson that finally made sense to me:

I also noticed as a clinician, I was often dealing with people who had been accused in one way or another, often by themselves, of some malfeasance. If someone was feeling very guilty and depressed—which is a situation where the adversary is within themselves and eating their soul—that person has to mount a strong defense. They should take a very careful look at their weaknesses and transgressions with the presumption of innocence—not guilt  

That hit differently. It didn’t tell me to explain away my guilt. It didn’t ask me to forgive myself blindly. It simply asked me to shift perspective—just enough to defend myself internally, with honesty.

It doesn’t matter if the outcome was terrible, or if you’ve since learned new information that proves you were wrong. What matters is that, at the time, something made you believe it was the right decision. The goal isn’t to deny the damage—it’s to acknowledge it and then understand why you made the choice you did.

So let’s apply this to a real-world example—one that most people find unforgivable—and use the Three-Layer Model of Right and Wrong to explore how someone like that might still confront their guilt and shame, if they genuinely chose to.

⚠️ Note : I’m intentionally choosing an extreme case here. Not to compare anyone’s actions with his, and not to excuse anything. But because when someone is universally condemned, our instinct is to stop thinking and just judge. Same as how we judge ourselves without thinking. When analyzing with your own pain, you are starting with the same conviction of guilt for yourself as you have for the example below.

Josef Fritzl was convicted in 2008 for imprisoning his daughter in a basement for 24 years, during which he repeatedly raped her, leading to the birth of seven children. He claimed he did it to “protect” her from the outside world and eventually pleaded guilty. He also claimed to regret his actions.

• Layer 1: Self-benefit : He undeniably benefited from the situation in terms of their personal well being and reproduction through physical, emotional and psychological dominance.
• Layer 2: Duty to Society / Social Roles : As a father, the  duty assigned to him by the society was to protect his daughter.
• Layer 3: Morality of the Masses : He kept it secret. That alone suggests he was aware his actions violated collective morality. 

So, if we take his own perspective at the time, he may have believed he was right on Layer 1 (self-benefit) and possibly Layer 2 (duty), but he knew he was wrong on Layer 3 (morality of the masses).

Then, once he was caught, Layer 3 crushed the others. The public condemnation reframed his sense of duty (Layer 2), and the legal consequences directly harmed his survival and well-being (Layer 1). All three layers turned against him. And that’s when shame and guilt took over—because the whole system, internally, now said: “That was wrong.”

If he wants to let go of the shame and guilt, he needs to accept the mistake and the devastation, confess and make sure it wouldn't happen again before justify internally with the presumption of innocence.

This idea also resonates with core Buddhist philosophies where their teaching ask their monks to accept their mistakes, Confess the mistakes, learn from their mistakes and let go of the attachment to the mistake. 

To let go, He shouldn't be analyzing his actions not from the lens of guilt, but as a person who is reformed and seeing with clarity how these layers were once saying it was right for him to do so when he weighed it against a layer of his choosing.  

He should realize that the shame he feels today is because the layers had shifted as per circumstances and that it originated not because he was wrong but because that is the punishment of being wrong at Layer 3 today and the guilt originates because new knowledge and consequence showed how he failed in Layer 1 and Layer 2 from today's lens. 

He should realize that evaluating his past misdeeds with clarity would realign Layer 1 in his favor — by seeing things objectively than subjectively, His past self was right in some obscure way - without realizing the overarching implications. Understanding this shift allows him to view his actions objectively and forgive himself, because doing so is now right for his well-being.

To be clear, this article isn’t arguing that what he did was right—or even debating whether it was wrong. The focus here is on how a person, even someone who has done something so extreme, can begin to confront guilt and shame

This isn’t about claiming innocence or wrongful conviction—it’s about understanding how, even in the darkest cases, a person can begin to loosen the grip that shame holds over them.