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Ain't that a shame (J. Plowright)


By John Plowright


After Adam and Eve defied God and ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”


Anyone reading ‘Genesis’ might thus be tempted to think that shame has always been with us and it certainly seems to be one of the defining characteristics of humanity insofar as we are apparently the only species to blush. However, the boundary, if any, between shame and embarrassment, like that between shame and guilt, is hotly contested, not least because varying over time and between cultures.


But if not ubiquitous, shame is certainly extremely resilient, not just surviving but thriving even when many disapprove of it, as can be seen by the fact that efforts to shame various forms of shaming out of existence - such as slut shaming or fat shaming - have manifestly failed.


Can shame be a good thing, then, as in the eyes who advocate “naming and shaming” or is it clearly a bad one, for example by fuelling so-called honour killings? Or should we occupy some half-way house, admonishing the sentiment but acknowledging the validity of the social needs it clearly services? Is shame, then, akin to gossip: an essential feature of the human psyche, albeit one which frequently expresses some of the worst aspects of human nature, including the desire to inflict hurt?


Hurt can often lead to self-harm. The idea that it is better to die with honour than to live with shame is an extremely powerful one, with the Japanese samurai code being a particularly notable example, helping to explain why even today Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world amongst developed nations.


Of course, the other side of the coin to shaming is virtue signalling and the global reach and virtual or actual anonymity offered by social media means that the capacity for shaming has never been so great. Consider, for example, the case of Justine Sacco who before boarding her flight from Heathrow to South Africa tweeted a remark to her 170 followers about AIDS that were probably meant humorously but which were certainly insensitive, and meant that by the time her plane touched down she’d become a global news story, the recipient of death threats and dismissed from her job.


The self-righteous have a new tool of unparalleled efficacy when they become part of a digital lynch mob, not least because their victims, like Caroline Flack, are addicted to the means by which they’re being tormented.


I wish it was possible to make all the trolls reflect upon the damage they wreak. I wish they could think what it must feel like to be surrounded by wagging fingers and wagging tongues. I wish I could say, “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone” without it sounding sententious and holier than thou. But I can’t, and that’s a real shame.




Further Reading and Viewing

Christopher Ricks, Keats and Embarrassment (1984)

Can We Take a Joke? Documentary directed by Ted Balaker (2015)

Jon Ronson, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (2015, updated 2016)

Peter N. Stearns, Shame: A Brief History (2017)

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