A Healthy Sense of Shame

Parra, Il Senso di Colpa

[In italiano]

Last week's post gave rise to a fantastic wellspring of negative emotions in the many people who commented. This week, rather than ignore or repress negative emotions, we are going to do the exact opposite: we are going to celebrate them. Sometimes it's the healthy thing to do.

There is a tendency to regard negative emotions as, well, negative: few of us particularly want to spend time wallowing in guilt, shame, embarrassment, feelings of insecurity or inadequacy, confusion and incomprehension. Cognitive dissonance, which is caused by having to simultaneously accept two contradictory notions, is painful, and even fewer of us like pain (and for those who do, it is not the sort of pain that we tend to like). And yet all of these negative emotions exist for a reason: they provide essential negative feedbacks to our behavior, allowing us to avoid, recognize, and atone for our mistakes. Without them we spin out of control, crash and burn.

Most people go through life trying to avoid negative emotions. We work and play well with others, we don't rock the boat or cause problems, we ask permission and apologize for trivial things. We do what others expect of us, and we hide parts of ourselves that might meet with disapproval. We avoid subjects that might trigger negative emotions, and when we can't, we avoid thinking things through and drawing conclusions. But most importantly we take license: society gives us license to think badly of those who differ or deviate from its accepted norms without experiencing guilt or shame even if we know full well that we are far worse than they are. No matter how negative our view of ourselves may be, we can always ignore it by hiding behind xenophobia. And no matter how vanishingly small is the likelihood of anyone else wanting to join you, you can always say “If you are not with us, then you are against us.” Our sick society provides us with a sick trick by which to take our guilt and shame and convert it into anger and pride.

Here is a specific example: I recently told an audience a few things about their own country (the United States). I pointed out that their country is number one among developed countries in quite a few categories, such obesity (Mexico is number two), divorce rate, one-person households, children being raised fatherless, child abuse death, sexually transmitted disease infection rate, teenage pregnancy rate, incarceration rate, depression and stress-related ailments. I pointed out that one-third of the children in the US are fatherless, that one-quarter of teenage girls in the US have at least one sexually transmitted disease, that a quarter of the women in the US are prescribed antidepressants at one point or another, that a third of all the employees suffer chronic debilitating stress and one-half experience stress that causes insomnia, anxiety and depression. I told them that they are killing themselves in record numbers, suicide being the leading cause of injury death, ahead of the also plentiful car accidents and gunshot wounds. I told them that the extent of their social inequality and societal neglect is worthy of a third-world banana republic. And I told that audience what they, according to numerous opinion polls, think of their government: their Congress is less popular than cockroaches, lice, root canals, colonoscopies, traffic jams, used car salesmen and Genghis Khan. And they took all that on board and even chuckled. Yes, it's all true.

Then I told this audience about a number of different social groups living in isolation in their midst, right here in the US, who have vastly better outcomes. According to every conceivable metric: alcoholism, spousal and child abuse, substance abuse, mental illness, crime rate, suicide rate—you name it—they do not just a little bit better, but hugely, massively better. Their trick is to throw up a firewall between themselves and the surrounding society and to live by their own rules without consulting those around them even if it means periodically facing persecution. In fact, it is that persecution that gives them the strength to persevere. I explained that these groups are disparate: some are religious, others atheist; some settled, others nomadic; some are scrupulously law-abiding, others scoff-laws; some drive their children to earn advanced degrees, others deny them basic literacy; some embrace equal rights for women, others don't. I explained that each of these groups has its own ideology and code of behavior, and that the differences are such that there are barely any grounds for comparing them. On the other hand they have significant areas of commonality which look like the set of essential ingredients for their very different recipes for success. Finally, I said that the only things worth looking at are the commonalities, and explained what these are, because, you see, if we want to achieve significantly better outcomes for ourselves, we would ignore these traits, which are candidates for cultural universals among successful communities, at our own peril. And people generally took this on board as well.

But then there were a few in the group that went on a xenophobic attack. They started attacking some of the groups I described (they singled out the Amish for ill treatment) on the grounds that the way they treat women, or children, or animals, is not in accordance with the standards of progressive society. Which progressive society? The one I described above, the sick society, ruled by lice and cockroaches, presided over by Genghis Khan, where something like half of the population is taking mind-altering substances of one sort or another which allow them to not notice their miserable conditions and surroundings, their lack of security, loyal companionship, or hope for the future. That society. It's progressive, you see, and the Amish (who have none of these problems) apparently are not.

Now why on earth would someone who just heard that he doesn't have a leg to stand on try to kick someone who stands firmly on two feet? There you are, lying on the ground legless, and there he is, standing a few paces away smiling at you. He might even consider coming closer and helping you up, but you are cursing at him, plus your breath smells just a little too awful from holding in farts all your life. And, my goodness, did you just piss yourself in anger? Oh for crying out loud!

I can think of one reason why someone would behave so disgracefully:

Now, you might think that once the common principles that underpin all successful communities are abstracted away from their various potentially offensive specifics, these commonalities could be successfully implemented even by utterly shameless people. But I seriously doubt that this is the case. The ability to judge others more harshly than you are willing to judge yourself, or, on the other hand, the inability to limit your own behavior by remembering who you are and what your place should be—these are not the least bit helpful in forming close-knit, harmonious, cooperative, self-organizing and self-governing groups.

In fact, it seems like lack of shame is a good candidate for a litmus test. Those who fail to abide by the dictum “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” (Matthew 7:1) should be judged right out of the group. But what would be even better is if there could be designed a certain number of specific poisoned pills, if you will, which do no harm to the community itself, but are poisonous to judgmental outsiders. This would force them to self-select themselves right out of the community under their own power, saving everyone the trouble of kicking them out. And it might result in a healthy dose of persecution, which, as I have found out, is one of the key ingredients in keeping a community cohesive and healthy.

Taking a step back from this tempest in a teacup, What was my talk about? It was about “communities that abide”: separatist groups that have stood the test of time—five centuries in the case of the Anabaptist groups, ten or so in the case of the Roma (plus some more recent experiments). These groups are old-fashioned in their social order by virtue of the very criteria by which I selected them: their ability to abide. Their ability to persevere in an alien and sometimes hostile social environment and ignore to the winds of change that blow through that social environment are aspects of the same phenomenon. They are conservative, and they haven't found a sufficiently powerful reason to update their ancient customs, be it arranged marriage or gender segregation at the community mess hall or extending voting privileges to women, as well as many other things of this sort that progressives find offensive. But nobody ever suggested joining or emulating these groups! The discussion centered on the commonalities that make them successful, and there is nothing about these commonalities that is offensive to anyone. But to understand these commonalities we have to look at the communities that exhibit them, and to do so successfully we have to evaluate them in accordance with their standards, not ours. But among us there are found some heirs to the legacy of cultural, economic and military imperialism, and these people are apparently used to judging the entire universe as if it were created to suit their fancy and please their sensibilities. They may find it very difficult to suspend their judgment and to learn to see the world through the eyes of those who are purposefully and unapologetically different from them, and who have no place for them in their universe. But these are the only terms under which their participation in the discussion that will follow would be anything other than a waste of everybody's time.

As this dead horse hasn't been sufficiently tenderized yet, let me reiterate one last time: if you are one of the few people who is a member of a tight-knit, long-lasting community that provides everything its bretheren need from cradle to grave, everybody should want to hear from you and to learn from you anything that they can, no matter how “unacceptably” cult-like, old-fashioned or generally weird your people happen to be. Fear not that you will be judged, for the rest of us are in no position to judge you. If, on the other hand, you are one of the many, many people—far too many people, really—who are still thinking that maybe the US government or Wall Street or Fortune 500 corporations or the Department of Homeland Security will provide for all of their needs, then you are little more than a figment of your own imagination, and there's a new acronym with which you need to become comfortable: STFU. And to earn bonus points, hang your head in shame.