Inculcating Shame

I recall some years ago that some wingnuts were harping about how we had a dearth of “shame” in America, that inculcating a sense of shame in folks would go a long way to restoring their version of morality. I reckoned at the time that this was about the stupidest thing anyone had ever said, and it still ranks pretty high. First off, shame just means you try hard not to get caught. Guilt is what they’re really after. Guilt keeps folks in line even when the risk of discovery is low. Or in my case, guilt makes me feel bad about the thing I did anyway even knowing that I would feel guilty about it. (That’s what comes of being made to feel guilty about everything; it loses its punch, much like the expression “see you in hell” loses its power if you use it at the end of every conversation).

Secondly, if a thing is shameful within a particular cultural milieu, it will produce shame. You can’t start with the shame and work backwards to effect cultural change. You have to change the culture first. And nobody can control the culture.

Culture is the sum of ideas, values, strategies, and what have you as expressed by individuals. All anyone should really do about culture, besides whining about it all the time, is to put his ideas and values out in the cultural marketplace and hope that they can compete. Unfortunately, many folks realize that they probably cannot compete in that marketplace (otherwise the culture would already reflect their ideals), or in any event, they don’t want to take any chances. They frequently advocate legislation to advance their values through coercion.

Whenever anybody tut tuts and tsk tsks about some aspect of culture, I always suspect that they are advocating coercion to privilege their favored viewpoint over all others.