‘Shame’ has been omnipresent in society for centuries as a forceful check on what is accepted and unaccepted, and it can be useful in understanding our own actions as well. The word does not elicit much positive imagery, however; it evokes feelings of guilt and humiliation, and the emotion seems to be most preferred when it is nonexistent. If everybody would prefer to not have to deal with shame, then why is it so prevalent in all of us and why has it been used as a social mechanism so frequently throughout history? There are many theories that debate the value of shame and the proper way for us to handle this inescapable emotion.
In a March 2012 TED Talk titled “Listening to Shame,” researcher Brené Brown discusses her personal experiences with the emotion and stresses the importance of confronting it.
“Shame is an epidemic in our culture,” Brown said during her presentation. “And to get out from underneath it…we have to understand how it affects us.”
Brown believes that shame holds us back from revealing our true selves, and if we can hurdle the obstacle it presents then we can fearlessly attack our dreams, whatever they might be. She views shame as a hindrance, and preaches the necessity of overcoming it; I see an additional interpretation of shame, however. In a society where the decisions we make daily can help or hurt those around us, shame acts as a vital deterrent to some of our worst impulses.
Psychologist John Amodeo recognizes two kinds of shame: toxic and healthy. Toxic shame is the variety that Brown focuses on, the kind that will hold us back in fear and prevent us from fulfillment. Healthy shame acts as a societal check that keeps us from overstepping society’s boundaries. In moments that test our character, it is what holds us back from berating or harming other individuals for no reciprocal purpose. We want to fight back against toxic shame, to push through it and prevent us from cowardice. Acceptance of healthy shame, on the other hand, appears to be necessary for the maintenance of our societal norms.
Many of us may consider ourselves righteous individuals, but the impulses to commit socially taboo actions are within all of us. If you see someone drop their wallet on the ground, you most likely will pick it up and give it back to its owner. At the same time, however, you might be inclined to pick it up and walk away with it hoping no one will notice. The force that prevents you from doing that may not be conceived from moral convictions, but rather the humiliating feeling of doing something that you would be ashamed to tell others. And this humiliation is often put forth by external factors.
From Tarring and Feathering to Twitter Humiliation
The use of shame in society to deter people from committing social ills has evolved over the centuries, to take on new forms. During the times of English colonial rule in America, tarring and feathering was a common humiliation tactic in local villages, meant to punish the individual accused of wrongdoing. The victim would be surrounded by a local mob and stripped, usually to the waist, and then the mob would throw liquid tar on the person’s body before covering him or her with feathers. This bestial punishment tactic was used to humiliate the victim and deter him or her, as well as the public, from committing the act again. Instances of tarring and feathering in the United States have occurred as recently as 1918, when a German-American farmer in Minnesota was removed from his home and tarred and feathered for alleged disloyalty to the United States. There was also a report in 2007 of agitators in Northern Ireland exerting this medieval punishment method on a man accused of drug dealing.
Although there are outlying instances of malevolent humiliation practices in today’s society (e.g. shame-based societies such as Saudi Arabia), public deterrence methods in modernized cultures have taken on a completely new form: social media shame. The barometer of what is and isn’t socially acceptable is now gauged by the reactions people receive on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The actions and opinions presented on these sites will be met with swift condemnation if a large-enough group of people determines that it is not socially acceptable.
There is a general consensus today that tar and feathering is a social deterrence tactic gone overboard, but there are examples of online shame being taken too far as well. One form is explicitly more physically severe than the other, but there seems to be a mob-like similarity to the groups of people that would tar and feather someone and the mobs of people on Twitter who verbally attack someone, both in the name of perceived social justice. These public diatribes that can cause harm to another person are one problem that arises with the use of social media shaming. Another issue is the overreaching of censorship that inhibits the right of people to speak freely online, and these negative concomitants of social shaming are to be rejected at every turn. Shame’s positive influence is in its ability to regulate social discourse and facilitate civility and respect amongst groups of people, and it remains an integral factor in our ability to communicate on an ever-increasing scale.
Finding Its Place
We all foster a different set of principles that shape who we are, and not every decision we make is influenced by societal pressure; but it is also human nature to push our self-interests as far as possible in the absence of consequences. Shame is a consequence of harmful decisions, and the inability for individuals to feel it would render any form of deterrent useless. This not an endorsement of the questionable morality of an extreme humiliation tactic such as tar and feathering, or the so-called “social justice warriors” who often are just looking for something to be outraged about online. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of the presence of shame and the powerful influence it has had throughout society’s history. The absence of it would disrupt social order and incite a chaotic society in which everyone acts strictly in their self-interest and is unconcerned with social ramifications.
Finding the appropriate usages of shame in our personal lives and in the public is tough. It should not be viewed as an emotion to avoid at all costs, nor is it always proper to use it to influence the decision-making of others. There are times when it is best left out of our own lives, times when it is appropriate as a social deterrent, and times when it is there to hold us back from actions we will regret. The only discernible consensus is that our societal norms would be vastly different, as well as the framework of our cultures, if the emotion ceased to exist.