We must acknowledge that we as a society need negative emotions to regulate our behavior. But at the same time we need to remember that negative emotions aren’t predefined by nature; that it is we, as a collective, who make others experience shame and guilt, and that these emotional regimes can be more or less justified, be more or less in tune with the current societal conditions. Negative emotions like shame, guilt and envy are socially dependent; they don’t emerge autonomously in a given person, but are always derived from society’s norms, values, routines—and
