oh, the guilt!

I'm just throwing this out there, to see if any one else cares. Which they probably don't. So, you know. Throwing commenced:

Have you ever had one of those Cardinal Rules that you've lived by all your life, and never, somehow, despite many, many other personal and professional failings, never seemed to break that one stupid rule?

I'm obviously not talking about obvious things like, "Don't murder people, even your jerky asshole boss who demoted you in absentia at the most recent staff meeting." or "Don't abuse defenseless animals. Because one day, if you leave them alone and someone else abuses them, they just might haul off and attack your jerky asshole boss."

I'm talking about those Quirky Cardinal Rules that are important to you--as opposed to society in general--for some reason, like, "Don't go around telling people you think Stalin was one hot-looking twenty-year-old. Because they will think you're crazy."

That kind of Cardinal Rule.

Okay.

So what if one day, you woke up and realized that you were breaking one of your Quirky Cardinal Rules, and had been, for some time?

And what if that rule involved other people, who may--or may not--be hurt by your breaking of that rule?

And then you realize your Quirky Cardinal Rule is really more of a General Cardinal Rule, which is germane to the preservation of civilized human interactions as we know them, such as: "Don't eat the last bowl of Cocoa Puffs if you aren't going to buy more."

But then, you think about your rule-breaking some more, and you can't decide: is it a Quirky Cardinal Rule only you care about in your finite moral universe, or is it really a General Cardinal Rule that applies, in true Kantian fashion--although one supposes we would have to start talking about moral maxims if that were the case--to everyone?

Does context and complicity matter in appropriating guilt and recrimination?

Well, I was just wondering.

I wonder about a lot of things, after all.

Things that don't seem to have easy answers.

Or answers at all, for that matter.