Does a humiliated person bear any responsibility for their feeling? I ask because while I sympathize with her examples, I can also think of many unsympathetic examples of humiliations, and the person's response to it, and I'd wonder whether humiliations are the result of power shifts. Many people I know are sympathetic to violent responses to humiliation, and even in the article, the interviews with convicted muderers showed their decision to kill someone was often over a related issue of respect.

Being witty or funny gives you the power to shame, and often it's unintentional, to where we might consider the target of a well aimed observation to be fragile for being offended. And yet, we wouldn't blame someone or hold them morally culpable in a disadvantaged relationship for turning the tables, even with a pair of scissors in the back. I don't have answers, but I'd wonder if there is a more general idea of where the responsibility for humiliations and their consequences lie.

There is such a thing as forgiveness.

In Buddhism there is a form of meditation called "metta", sometimes translated as "loving-kindness" meditation. The way I've been taught to do it is to wish sincerely to yourself, "May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe." Then bring one's attention to those one most loves and think, "May they be happy, may they be healthy, may they be safe." Then repeat that for the people around you, then your neighbors, then your town or city, your country, then the world. The most advanced form of the practice is to sincerely wish this for one's enemies and people one most dislikes or hates.

In Buddhism it is often taught that hatred and ill will towards others is a poison that hurts oneself. It is more constructive and healthy to forgive and move on, rather than fixate or seek vengeance.

In many other traditions also, forgiveness is greatly valued.

In the article, the author writes:

"There are many things we can live without. Self-respect is not one of them. One would think the absence of self-respect would resemble much of a sameness, but the circumstances that can make people feel bereft of it are as variable as persons themselves. A psychiatrist who interviewed a group of men imprisoned for murder and other violent crimes asked each of them why he had done it. In almost all cases the answer was "He dissed me.""

I wonder if the outcome would have been different had these people been taught the value of forgiveness and how to detach and let go from their negative thoughts, rather being in environments where lashing out in violence is modeled as the norm for how one reacts when faced with humiliation.

Also, obviously most people don't react to humiliation with violence. There is something unusual going on with the minority that do, and I wish the article had explored that.

Anyone else disappointed not to hear more about the Sheila interaction?

>Whose humiliation did [NY Times columnist] Bruni have in mind, Weinstein’s or the women’s? The answer is both. Think of all the taunting rejections Weinstein must have endured before he found himself in a position of power.

The article doesn't substantiate that Weinstein experienced past humiliation (let alone that this partially motivated his evil). This seemingly-speculative humanization doesn't seem fair to his victims.

>The problem is that the consciousness bestowed on us is just barely sufficient; if we are to achieve inner freedom, it is necessary that we become more (much more) conscious than we generally are. If men and women learn to occupy their own inspirited beings fully and freely, Fromm posited, they will gain self-knowledge and thus no longer be alone: they will have themselves for company. Once one has company one can feel benign toward oneself as well as others. Then, like a virus that had been stamped out, humiliating loneliness would surely begin to wane.

Oh, hey. Furries.

Coincidentally, I just finished reading Under an English Heaven by Donald Westlake. It's the story of the British invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla, and the invasion itself turns on an incident where a British diplomat (delivering more-or-less what the Anguillans wanted) humiliated the leaders of the 6000-person island, who in turn kicked the diplomat off the island, humiliating him.

(If you're interested, the book is in the Internet Archive freely. It's hilarious.)

Well, the action of the Iliad kicks of when Agamemnon disrespects first the priest Chryses, then Achilles. The verb shows up in line 11 of the first book of the Iliad.

I have found looking into practices around what ancient Indian religions refer to as "no-self" or "non-self" to be helpful in learning to respond better in situations where I have acted wrongly or otherwise felt ashamed.

It's so much easier to value yourself when someone else genuinely shows that they value you too.

Make sure the people you love know that you value them. Make it a habit to greet them at the door when they come home, and to always tell them sweet dreams when you go to sleep.

These affirmations build up an ablative layer that protects against life's daily indignities, I think.

good introduction, do we have any way to end humiliation of a country? this will be best way to end wars.

I guess this is kinda judgmental on my part, but I feel like a lot of the personal anecdotes you hear about from.. older Americans.. seem totally anachronistic and bizarre. Like:

> On the other hand, I have a cousin, a doctor, who feels humiliated if he’s shortchanged in a grocery store. His wife, too: if another woman is wearing the same dress at a party, she feels humiliated.

Like -- who are these people? They just _suck_. They need to get over themselves. I'm sure there are new people like this still coming of age, but probably not at the rate they used to... These sound like very 'boomer' problems, and I think a larger part of millennial culture is collectively rolling our eyes at this brand of arrogance. All over the country younger people grew up with parents and grandparents who were more concerned about pettily defending their pride than being good parents or doing good in the world, and understandably their children grow up with nothing but contempt for it.

It should go without saying, but just in case: If you happen to be on the other end of the spectrum - someone who tends to blame themselves and easily forgives others. If you find yourself constantly forgiving someone who is damaging you then you need to focus on getting out of harm's way first. Then, by all means, forgive them from a distance.

Weirdly, I myself have apparently learned not to forgive. (Want to be humiliated? Wait until someone you've forgiven does whatever it is again.)

But I have learned to forget. Which is likewise useful.

This is interesting to me. Your description of metta is very similar to one aspect of how I... guess I must have been taught... to pray. Not that I do that much these days. Not even sure what I believe. But I could.

The main difference seems to me to be the form of speech. Rather than using the subjunctive ("may they be safe"), here the "second person" is more explicit; you are using a kind of supplicating imperative to speak with -- well, God: "Please keep them safe." Feels funny to say out loud, that you're "talking to God". But there it is.

There are also the established, formulaic prayers, of course. But the theme of forgiveness is big there too, like you hinted at. The most obvious being in the Lord's Prayer, which includes "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us". I assume these lines are famous, but, y'know, not everyone grew up with the same tradition; it may be worth me saying it here.

I've begun to think mantras have a real effect. I know, for example, a person who used a mantra to overcome a fairly minor personal issue. That was a good enough thing to do, and was for personal ends.

Well if mantras work -- are the prayers of Christian tradition really so different from them? What does it do to you, to repeat every day a prayer, one of whose stanzas is about forgiveness? Presumably it changes how you think? Maybe that's a good thing?

I may yet return to religion. The older I get the more sense it makes. Without it you end up thinking other things, which maybe you wish you didn't.

"Right thought, right speech, right action." These affect thought.

Does Buddhism talk at all about the difference between acquiescence and forgiveness? I think that's usually among the thoughts on the minds of people who might hesitate to forgive, and I'd imagine it's come up before.

Basically the entire luxury goods market is about purchasing status.

If you think about it, lowering or threatening someone's status ("dissing them") is robbery, from a certain point of view.

Alexander Hamilton died in a duel with Burr, after Burr "dissed" him at dinner...

I feel like this comment might change the course of my life and I'm going to try this practice you suggested. Thank you. It's really relevant to me right now.

I think she should have left it out. As anecdotes about humiliation go, it's not much. There's no mention that Sheila publicly shamed her (as the author, by the way, has now publicly shamed Sheila), she just didn't want to be friends anymore. And she's still holding a grudge against her erstwhile friend from when she was 13? People grow apart, especially around major life transitions like adolescence.

One consequence of this essay being published in a high-profile literary magazine such as Harper's, whether intentional or not, will be Sheila's sense of humiliation upon reading it.

I bet it's intentional.

Interesting you said that - i read the first part, scanned the rest looking for continuation of the story and then searched for 'Sheila'. Really wonder what happened next - was there a reconciliation, did the hurt run too deep, did Sheila even remember or did she think they just drifted apart?

I asked myself how a 63 year old would recognize a childhood friend on the street. My assumption is Sheila found her on purpose, because she had lived her whole life with this burden of regret, and wanted to apologize. I have a similar burden, and occasionally try to look up an old friend, but his name is too common.

Absolutely yes. For me, it somewhat upstaged the rest of the essay.

made me read to the end. brilliant!

Everyone grew up conditioned by a different context, and every generation has their idiosyncrasies. I'm sure millennials and gen-z folks have things that are humiliating to them which older folks would roll their eyes at (say, something that happens on Twitter or in a video game). I'm not meaning to criticize you; just saying it's good to remember that each person has their own story shaped by the environments they spent time in.

I'm a millenial and as I read this, I got a strong visceral feeling like the one you're describing but about you. Not you personally, but the narrative you just posted.

Do you really feel confident that millenials don't have any culturally systematic pettiness and arrogance? The social media generation, the neurotic depressed generation, the generation that has originated no novel politics... they are categorically more serious and more humble than the previous couple generations?

The minute details you point to seem essentially irrelevant, exactly the kind of thing that varies generation to generation as culture changes -- anachronistic, as you say.

Some people are very self-conscious. As a doctor, he recognizes the amount of change is minuscule, the effort expended to point it out is barely worth it, the clerk may have done unintentionally, because schools suck and this is the best the market could get at the wage they are willing to offer.. all sorts of reasons not make a big deal.

But.. deep down, internal scales are off. Because it is not about the money. It is about balance. it is about principles. It is about getting what I am god damn paying for, which includes courtesy of getting the right change.

It is insignificant in the long run, but it isn't completely without merit.

This does bring up the general question of who is sensitive or insensitive to humiliation.

I am reminded of something Michael O. Church wrote a few years ago [0] in connection with agile/scrum and the issue of intense observation of an employee's work process:

"Another topic coming to mind here is status sensitivity. Programmers love to make-believe that they’ve transcended a few million years of primate evolution related to social status, but the fact is: social status matters, and you’re not “political” if you acknowledge the fact. Older people, women, racial minorities, and people with disabilities tend to be status sensitive in the workplace, because it’s a matter of survival for them. Constant surveillance into one’s work indicates a lack of trust and low social status, and the most status-sensitive people (even if they’re the best workers) are the first ones to decline when surveillance ramps up. If they feel like they aren’t trusted (and what else is communicated by a culture that expects every item of work to be justified?) then they lose motivation quickly.

Agile and especially Scrum exploit the nothing-to-hide fallacy. Unless you’re a “low performer” (witch hunt, anyone?) you shouldn’t mind a daily status meeting, right? The only people who would object to justifying their work in terms of short-term business value are the “slackers” who want to steal from the company, correct? Well, no. Obviously not.

The violent transparency culture is designed for the most status-insensitive people: young, usually white or Asian, privileged, never-disabled males who haven’t been tested, challenged, or burned yet at work. It’s for people who think that HR and management are a waste of time and that people should just “suck it up” when demeaned or insulted."

[0] https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-an...

What a truly invalidating and humiliating take! Clearly you need to be warred upon for a thousand years for this unforgivable slight :D

As it happens I agree with you here, at least personally, and here is why: humiliation is an EMOTIONAL feeling and you cannot assume it is justifiable. Narcissists can feel humilated over not being treated like they are God almighty. Bigots can feel humiliated over having to engage with subhumans as if they are people. I've got a brother who is humilated if he has to bag his own groceries at the grocery store, and goes into rather well-disciplined and civilized rage over it. Likewise if he's served food and something is wrong with it or with the service: he, in a dignified way, punishes everyone as hard as he can and goes to war.

We cannot go by feelings like this: it can't be personal. There has to be a contextualization where you say 'no, you cannot beat that passing lady to death because she rolled her eyes at you and sneered'.

That's why humiliation is so dangerous: both for individuals and for societies. It spurs these extreme, vengeful reactions, but there seems to be NO requirement that it is over some justifiable slight. We're far too subjective to trust this reaction in anyone or anything. Being able to take a broader view is indispensable.

Some of the most capable, powerful people in the world are walking wounded, forever acting out revenge on past, unreachable humiliations. It's tragic, but also dangerous. It's why we have laws and police and such: we've never not had this problem.

People can't help how they feel, they don't suck: they're just normal human beings whose feelings exist. Each generation will feel humiliated at something someone else considers or will consider to be stupid.

People vary, and some people are offended by things that others aren't.

I do wonder if there are lessons to be learned regarding climate change specifically. I'm thinking of my parents, but there are a lot of boomers who would never think of tossing a pop can or candy bar wrapper out their car window, and who regard that sort of thing as absolutely inexcusable. And yet they're now being told that burning gasoline is far worse than lowly littering. And it's a thing they've been doing most of their lives, thinking it's normal and doesn't cost anything beyond what it costs at the pump and maybe (if they're reasonably self-aware) the geopolitical issues around being dependent on a few major oil producers in the middle-east.

Accepting that climate change is a serious issue implies acknowledging their role in creating it, which is a kind of humiliation. Just saying "fine, get over it" may be satisfying, but in order to get them on board maybe we need a kind of messaging that isn't moralistic and doesn't assign blame. How would that even work, though? I don't know.

I think most younger people have grown up in a world where climate change is an acknowledged fact and that burning gasoline is known to be problematic even if there isn't a practical alternative if you need to get to work or whatever. So there's no mental transformation that has to happen.