ABSTRACT
Human childhood is characterized by a particularly long period of immaturity and dependence on others, the source of human guilt. The debt to our parents can never be fully erased, in spite all of our efforts. The sense of filial obligation and promise runs deep in us, the sacred attachment bounding between parent and child is the cradle of human guilt, the sense of duty and trust, compound with self-consciousness and the sense of reputation emerging early in development. The transgression of a promise, whether real or imagined, tends universally to be the source of painful rumination and internal stress. With mortality awareness, guilt is the other cardinal spinoff of human self-conscious psychology. It motivates much of what humans do and think, including morality, another unique feature of human self-conscious psychology. Obligations, duties, and commitments toward self and others form, with the sense of reputation, the core of human self-conscious psychology.
