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A Look at Shame in Modern Society
Shame is in an interesting place in modern society. On the one hand, we've made the wise decision not to shame people into feeling bad about being extremely depressed or anxious, etc. This understanding has come from recognizing that a lot of the time, these feelings can make their conditions worse, thereby leading to increased suffering.
At the same time though, we have lost much of the utility of shame. Shame, in its traditional role, is to engender manners and create a very legible and trainable way for people to interact with each other. This is not a new concept, as Emily Post pointed out in her etiquette books. She talked about how the point of manners is to consider and focus on how the other person is feeling, and not to focus exclusively on your own desires.
I think the absence of this benefit of shame is why so much of modern society is characterized by vitriol and name-calling, etc. These are often symptoms of a deeper issue. A lot of this has to do with the norms of acceptable discourse online, where anonymity can sometimes contribute to a lack of empathy and understanding. It has gone out of fashion to shame people into talking or acting a certain way, even though there is a lot of social utility there.
How can we grapple with the two edges of shame, and find a way to have productive social discourse without burying people under piles of negative emotions?
Does it start with changing internet culture, and following the cancellation warrior's plan of making online anonymity a thing of the past?
Do we need to return to aristocratic training and virtues, making sure the elite at least have a legible, shared set of manners they can use to discuss fraught topics with each other?
Perhaps artificial intelligence will grow in capabilities to the point where we will talk to each other through an AI interface, which will automatically insert manners and promote productive discussion.
Where do you, dear reader, think that our society should go with regards to how we incorporate shame into our culture?
Why should we not bury people under negative emotion? That seems like the purpose of shaming no?
If the idea is that it shouldn't be too bad, then you've probably already lost . Shaming involves both a general (hopefully internalized) taboo and serious consequences when they're broken. My family doesn't have a lot of bastards because there is a general taboo that people internalize but also they know there'll be social consequences.
Not "scarlet letter" level but serious enough, especially factoring in that people depend on each other much more*. Without that people will eventually do as they like.
As for "productive social discourse": that might also be part of the problem. Part of the value of shame is that, if society sticks to it, people can't argue themselves out of it. It doesn't matter what Lizzo feels; a strong society will simply make it clear it's futile to complain and she should and will continue to feel bad about being fat until she changes. That's not necessarily something that's inculcated in a calm, reasoned debate.
This all leads to: You need to have a stable community and norms to have strong taboos. But Americans/Westerners can't seem to decide what norms or even basic beliefs they have and so much of the debate is about how to talk about talking about norms.
* Another probably insurmountable obstacle in the West. When I needed to find something or someone back home I had to call someone. The West has all sorts of impersonal systems that reduce the need to care about the opinions of others.
The general idea here is that we should not shame people into things that they cannot change. Unfortunately this devolves into which framing you want - as I mentioned in a comment above, some people think that being gay is a choice, others don't.
Unfortunately we just don't know at this point how much of our personality is a 'choice' and how much it's baked into our genetic makeup, or 'identity' as progressives would call it.
There are some meta-analyses in the psychology literature that suggest that environment does actually have a strong effect on personality, even well into adulthood, but not that strong in early childhood or old age.
Perhaps based off of this analysis at least, we should shame people from the age of say, 5-40 or so, then leave folks alone after they reach a certain age since their personalities are more set.
Now with that being said, we know for a fact that psychedelic substances dramatically increase openness to experience as a trait, so if we truly want to have 'diversity training' with older executives that works well, we might need to slip them some mushrooms. I don't think this would be a good outcome of course, but I do think that as we developed our technology and understanding of personality, as well as study psycho-active substances more, we will realize we can do a lot more to change our minds than we previously thought.
@self_made_human, I'm actually curious if you know much about the development of personality changing medicine right now?
Uh, the closest thing that comes to mind is psychiatry meds for things like anxiety, ADHD, depression and the like. To the extent that they're part of one's personality, that's the closest you can get. Certainly a schizophrenic who desists on the drugs has had a rather large shift in personality.
There's preliminary evidence that Ozempic is a "good habits" drug, since not only does it reduce weight and food cravings, it also seems to reduce the urge to use nicotine and alcohol too, and maybe gambling, but don't quote me on that.
On the less legit side of the spectrum, you can make a nerd do coke, or make someone try LSD. The latter does lead to longterm personality changes like openness to experience and so on.
Ahh gotcha. Yeah Ozempic is pretty amazing at least in preliminary results. I'm fascinated to see if AI will drive faster drug discovery.
Alas, the psych meds we have right now are pretty terrible. Adderall can be fun, but not great for long term health or stability IMO.
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I like this sentiment. Overly caring about people's feelings seems to be a particular failure mode of modern discourse. Oftentimes your feelings are simply incorrect, and you should literally just go for a jog instead of caring about them.
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