tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post6480586387831819400..comments2024-03-29T01:07:30.224-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: Weaponizing ShameStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-24975227985069508362016-03-19T03:10:23.016-07:002016-03-19T03:10:23.016-07:00Reading Wilfred M. McClay's article "The ...Reading Wilfred M. McClay's article "The Higher Shamelessness" wasn't very enlightening to me. I almost wonder if it is impossible to talk rationally about something like shame while entirely focusing on the behavior of people you don't like.<br /><br />Like this dramatic assertion "Surely Bill Clinton’s persona and career represented some kind of milestone in this moral transformation. For a sitting president of the United States to do the things he did while in office, and for him to have lied about those deeds brazenly and repeatedly, and authorized his minions to lie about the character of Monica Lewinsky and the other women whose lives he had damaged, would in the past have been permanently disqualifying, and would have ensured that the sight of his name on public buildings and works would have been rarer than that of Benedict Arnold."<br /><br />So the assertion seems to be "weaponized shame" is valid, but only if your rivals deserve it. If you KNOW your enemy has been naughty that should disqualify him from ever having any power at all, and if this "weaponized shame" fails to have this obvious result, it is because our rivals are "shameless" and beyond our control.<br /><br />But if Clinton was truly "shameless" he would just have admitted the truth as a matter of fact. Instead the GOP witchtrials got him to "lie", i.e. by lawyering his answers as "depending on what the meaning of "is" is." That doesn't sound like someone who is shameless, but it probably is worthy of the name "Slick willy."<br /><br />What made Clinton so despicable on the Right comes from an obsessive focus on his character, and whenever they found something that seemed sure evidence of wrong-doing, somehow the case would evaporate in the light of day. It surely is infuriating to be SURE someone else is BAD, and not be able to convince others.<br /><br />But the whole thing evaporates if the judges are judged. People see in others what they don't want to see in themselves. And you see things like Newt Gingrich and his affairs, and its more sensible to call him shameless. But it shows the nature of scapegoating - people who feel their own guilt and shame can feel better for a short while, when they can project that guilt and shame onto someone else. And this is surely a nonpartisan skill.<br /><br />Again I go to Jonathan Haidt's review:<br />http://righteousmind.com/where-microaggressions-really-come-from/<br />-----<br />6) THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CULTURE<br />A) A Culture of Honor<br />B) A Culture of Dignity<br />C) A Culture of Victimhood<br />7) CONCLUSIONS<br /> The emerging victimhood culture appears to share [dignity culture’s] disdain for risk, but it does condone calling attention to oneself [as in an honor culture] as long as one is calling attention to one’s own hardships – to weaknesses rather than strengths and to exploitation rather than exploits. <br />-----<br /><br />I don't know how useful it is to see three cultures - honor, dignity, and victimhood, at least the third is clearly not honorable or dignified.<br /><br />But this is also where I find psychology valuable, since it acknowledges the existence of the unconscious, and that we're not really doing what we think we're doing, and in fact much of our judgements of others come from our judgements about ourself, which comes from the internalization of judgements others we cared about made against us.<br /><br />Or Jung talked about the Shadow, and so if we can't admit what we see in others is also in ourselves, then we are more likely to deny the subjectivity and bias of our judgements.<br /><br />I try to make my peace via detachment, to try to separate observations, opinions, feelings, at least a chance to slow things down so I don't need to attack or over-react.<br /><br />I do feel shame when I find I've made false accusations, when I make assumptions and judge people on those assumptions. And I recognize how pride makes it hard to back down on falseness once I commit to a point of view.<br /><br />I'm sure I would make a poor politician. I too easily withdraw from personal attacks.Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-1909217264810987162016-03-18T11:58:27.470-07:002016-03-18T11:58:27.470-07:00Outstanding post.
I have a number of concerns a...Outstanding post. <br /><br />I have a number of concerns about our society and where we're headed, but nothing is as infuriating or disgusting to me as the white Aspen Institute attendee who stood up to shame Shelby Steele. This episode seems to capture the craziness of our times. And identifies a great source of our unraveling across a number of social dimensions. One assumes (or perhaps one hopes at very least) that people go to events like Aspen Institute to learn something. McClay's description of the man as "callow but earnest" is the best description of people who -- to my mind -- represent the greatest threat to our social fabric. He is so convinced of his own moral magnificence while displaying a narcissism and level of ignorance that betrays the pretense. So they double-down on pretense. They act like indignant children. They watch TED talks with Brene Brown talking about how terrible shame is, and then dress down a black man in the next breath for the sin of denying the dogma of racial justice... <br /><br />So we're told "Shame is the enemy here, but not over there." Shame is a problem in this instance, but not in another. One can call this "politics," but I suspect it is something more sinister. We are distinguishing what is politically *correct* and what is not. And I see no demands of courage being made on those who parade around their political correctness and shame those who have "political wrongness." Who is "speaking truth" to power in these monolithic activist groups, colleges, conferences, etc.? We are seeing the weaponization of shame in so many forms, and we don't follow the racketeers who benefit from it. Who at the Aspen Institute was going to challenge this man who challenged Shelby Steele? No one. They will say that prejudice against minorities is bad, and in the next breath condemn white history. So racism, stereotypes and prejudice is not okay over here, but it is over there? That's the glorification of ignorance, cowardice and sloth -- and it produces anomie. That's the racket: you get to ingratiate yourself with your morality, and condemn others for their amorality. That's weaponized shame. <br /><br />Racism is the Scarlet Letter. The Gulag Archipelago. 1984. Take your pick. It's also the easiest thing to complain about, because it's here and it will always be here. It's part of the human condition, part of original sin. That's why we have the opportunity to be virtuous and look beyond race, and counter our inner demons. But being shamed and condemned by a bunch of kids taking 4 classes a semester, along with a cheerleading crew of guilty white activists is preposterous. Being a raging activist against racism is like being an activist against sleep... you become so self-satisfied with your moral majesty that you forget that you're human, too.<br /><br />It seems what we have really weaponized is our concept of childhood... that childhood is idealized as this innocent time where you can do whatever you want and be who you really are. Yet childhood is a phase as you become an adult and a contributor to the tribe. Yet the Glowing Box tells us that childhood shame binds you, and you have to be shameless to release the shackles and lead an "authentic" life. Okay, but we're not children anymore. We have a choice. We can each be responsible for our own lives and how we conduct them. If you want to violate social norms or sanctions, knock yourself out. But no one is obligated to celebrate your choice or welcome it into my own life. That's my choice. But if one says that, he is "mean," he is "racist" and an otherwise rotten person. It's narcissism on parade. It's childish. It results in social chaos. It claims to be loving when in fact it is patronizing and condescending. When we tell people that it's okay to be an adult acting like a petulant child, we lose something. Dignity.Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18222603717128565302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-63235662393949479912016-03-18T09:42:39.261-07:002016-03-18T09:42:39.261-07:00Stuart: This to say that true shame cultures do no...Stuart: This to say that true shame cultures do not weaponize shame. Guilt cultures do. Shame cultures are about avoiding shame, not seeking to shame. They prescribe propriety and decorum, temperance and probity. They and set down rules that each individual should follow in order to be a member in good standing of the culture.<br /><br />This distinction seems vital, and endlessly confused, so much that you'd almost have to change terminology to gain wider clarity. Its just too easy to assume the opposite - that shame societies are those which use shame to control people.<br /><br />And unfortunately Wikipedia seems to promote this focus, at least seeming to claim both shame and guilt cultures are about "control".<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame_society<br />---------<br />In cultural anthropology, a shame society, also called shame culture or honour-shame culture, is a society in which the primary device for gaining control over children and maintaining social order is the inculcation of shame and the complementary threat of ostracism. <br /><br />A shame society is contrasted with a guilt society, in which control is maintained by creating and continually reinforcing the feeling of guilt (and the expectation of punishment now or in the afterlife) for certain condemned behaviors, and with a fear society, in which control is kept by the fear of retribution.<br />---------<br /><br />My own extrapolation considers there are more or less sophisticated ways of working with shame, so it makes sense that guilt-societies might be cruder in their usage of shame, and as you suggest, individuals raised gently within a shame society will be more sensitive to it, and less likely to abuse this emotion to control others, and will instead seek to protect fellow members from undue shame.<br /><br />A term I don't think I've heard Stuart use is "Toxic shame" which arose in attention with John Bradshaw along with abuse and addiction.<br />Let's see, Wikipedia has some types:<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame#Subtypes<br />--------<br />* Genuine shame: is associated with genuine dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation.<br /><br />* False shame: is associated with false condemnation as in the double-bind form of false shaming; <br /><br />* Secret shame: describes the idea of being ashamed to be ashamed, so causing ashamed people to keep their shame a secret.<br /><br />* Toxic shame: describes false, pathological shame, induced inside children by all forms of abuse.<br /><br />* Vicarious shame: refers to the experience of shame on behalf of another person.<br />----------<br /><br />Anyway, it seems useful to me to ask how Freud considered shame. If he really saw it as a universal expression, then perhaps his work was identifying things more like "toxic shame", the sort that persists in creating a negative self-image, then he might have failed to consider ordinary shame's social utility?<br /><br />And there's a section on the wiki-page also about Narcassism's relation to shame, that it, seeing it as a defense against shame, which we might ask which sort of shame, but it makes sense that "toxic shame" that persists for years in the unconscious, and requires continal defenses would create unhealthy narcassistic defenses, reinforced as a habit.<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame#Narcissism<br /><br />Finally, I think back to a TV movie I remembered as a child, with Michael Landon going back to his childhood as a bedwetter, and his mother would try to shame him by hanging his wet bed sheets out his bedroom window for all to see, so his running success started as he tried to run home from school early enough to pull the sheets in before his friends might see.<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loneliest_Runner<br /><br />That might be a clear example of a "guilt society" response of "weaponized shame", as a punishment. But it also shows a "positive" side of shame, regardless of the mother's motives, that we all have deficiencies of some sort, and when we find we can't break through them for whatever reason, we learn the defense mechanism of compensation.Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.com