The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart(newyorker.com) |
The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart(newyorker.com) |
When the author bemoans a lack of shame in how the NBA teams tank games to improve later draft odds instead of playing out every game with ferocity and pride, what they’re actually bemoaning is the lack of consequences for such negative behavior - and misattributing that to a lack of shame by fans towards the team instead of a lack of consequences from governing bodies. It’s a naive fantasy of how the world works rather than a stinging critique of real problematic behavior.
It also ignores the grim reality that many people simply have no concept of shame in any sense that could correct their behavior. Zuckerberg absolutely has no shame, nor does Musk or Thiel or Bezos; it is impossible to shame them into better, healthier behavior, just as it’s impossible to shame Sony into manufacturing physical media again, or shaming the driver that just cut you off in traffic without a turn signal and used their vehicle as a missile to get their way by honking your horn or flipping them off. Shame alone means fuck all absent consequences.
And the thing about shame is that it too is a weapon that has been wielded to horrific ends in the past. Relying on shame alone is how you get McCarthy and the Red Scare, how you repress LGBTQ+ identities, how you segregate people based on skin color or ethnicity or national origin. Shame is toxic, and the few areas we rely on shame as a weapon are also areas of some of the greatest societal harms at present: homelessness, malnutrition, poverty, convicted felons, all are shamed for existence to the point they’re encouraged to disappear from society by any means other than improvement, like a one-way gate rather than a crisis to be addressed. In light of how we currently weaponize shame, I don’t think relying on expanding its use to address grievances is the right call.
Not saying the article is right, but the point is supposed to be that social norms used to (or should) be sufficient. People should feel and be made to feel shame for flagrant disrespect of core principles that their participation in a system would seem to entail (like playing to win).
Speaking for myself, shame has certainly sometimes been enabling, sometimes disabling. Wanting to live up to an image I have of myself and what I should be (and feeling ashamed when I don’t) is a pretty core part of how “I” work. I agree shame can certainly turn toxic, but there are times when it is fair to say, “you should feel ashamed of yourself” (including in some circumstances, “for driving that kid to suicide by making him feel ashamed of who he is”).
This requires shared “norms” and “core principles”, which we no longer possess. I’m not sure how to regain them either. It’s not like we’re going to agree on a new set of shared principles; each major political group prefers that social norms should reflect only their own priorities.
Lack of required shame used to be called being "uppity".
If they couldn't identity the person they would setup cameras or a passage system to identity who uses the staircase until the problem can be solved. The law here allows apartment owners to setup cameras in the case of resolving problems with property and shared spaces. For example, in my building there are cameras in the garage and the garbage room, and entry require tags that get recorded when opening the door. Those intrusive actions where done to address past theft and misbehavior which in turn cost money to the company who own the building.
The framing of shame as a bad thing instead of an important mechanism of self regulation is destroying maturity and social cooperation at an obscene rate, and future generations will be the ones that pay the price in a society where government has stepped in with coercive force to moderate behaviour at a much more granular level in a society that no longer governs itself.
In this it is important to distinguish between shame and shaming. Shame is the useful mechanism of self regulation. Shaming is social aggression and is all too frequently hijacked by astroturfed “social movements” and vile and petty narcissists to project power. Shaming has its place, but needs to be legitimate social sanction or it’s just another form of unregulated violence.
Unfortunately, the reaction of society has been to reject shame, which is about as useful as rejecting fear, for example. Fear is a useful and necessary mechanism of self regulation, and people that lack it entirely tend to live short lives. That said, too much is crippling. Shame is much the same, but is a social contract. Societies that lack it tend to fail. Societies with too much are stifling.
Fortunately, now we have the CCP and Palintir, so we can shrug off the yoke of shame and give up over that mechanism of self regulation to social credit scores and surveillance capitalism. I’m not sure that will be so much better.
Treasure your shame. I’ve lived in societies where it has been replaced by violence, and it’s not better.
Not every society is like this.
Maybe the shame didn't disappear, just fell prey to increasing inequality where one end of the spectrum has very little where the other gets absurd amounts?
Another example is the concept of involution and lying flat in China. You can't have both if you assume that the entire population is equal. Too much involution breeds lying flat. Too harsh of a cancel culture (for minor faux pas, not sexual assault) breeds contempt.
There was such an over use of shame to hurt people's social standing and careers that it stopped being effective. At some point, people lost all trust in the institutions carrying out the shaming and life ruining and started fighting back.
All of this is orthogonal to personal wealth. Some of the shamers were very wealthy and powerful people and some of the shamed were those with very little wealth, influence or power.
They awarded themselves Pulitzers for publishing false stories. They don't go back and correct them, they just pretend like they never existed (and one day will silently delete them from the archives.)
They showed some shame after the Iraq War over continuously lying about WMD on behalf of the state, there was a little shame expressed after trying to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11, and I guess they decided that they were never going to do that again. They in fact put one of the largest spreaders of disinformation in charge of The Atlantic. The Atlantic is supposedly the leading magazine for the opposition.
Every day that the Washington Post kept the PropOrNot story up, even taking into consideration the lengthy corrections that kept being appended to it, made me realize that these institutions had no shame at all. I'm not sure if people are connected enough to particular institutions to have shame about what they do - they have backers, who will find them another place if the place they're at now becomes too hot for them. Straight from politics into being a lobbyist into journalism into a think tank into a consultant for a Middle East dictator into head of ethics for a tech company into head of ethics for a hedge fund, then back into politics again.
Apparently it's diminished a bit in recent years, but not because it's clearly shameful behavior: the leagues started issuing bans.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_(association_football)
-- Cory Doctorow
https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-04-11...
> Post-Hinkie, the league experimented with variations of the lottery, but none of them could deter teams from losing on purpose.
I struggle to believe they've tried everything unless they're also talking about players betting against themselves (which probably is impossible to overcome without bans). Incentives aren't easy things but there has to be some system where winning > losing.
On that topic we're actually pretty lucky - in the real world, the winning strategy over long time-frames is almost always talking, prosperity and cooperation. Not obvious why the powers that be are so keen to involve other strategies that routinely deliver worse material and moral results.
It's called promotion and relegation.
Such an apt term, thanks.
Nowadays in the west, holding an option contrary to whatever herd you find yourself in falls into a binary label. There is no redemption for you, there is no second chance. "You voted for X? You're nothing but evil thoughts and vacuity where a human could have been".
OTOH Japan is generally very functional, despite this problem, so perhaps this is their homegrown Omelas. The few suffer greatly and unjustly so that the social order doesn’t break down. Hard to say. I hope it is possible for them to fix the problem without losing their culture.
Gen Z is an entire generation paralyzed by social anxiety.
Just slap it on your favourite term and hurl it at the opponent.
In my own life/career I have seen that over a long enough horizon that lower shame seems to generally work out for people on the long run if you can back it up with some amount of confidence and competence.
Could be remembering wrong though.
John Bradshaw defined toxic shame as distinct from a healthy sense of dignity, manners, and modesty. Also, he addresses how toxic shame can be "carried" by people, and passed down in families, as a legacy, so that eventually those who are afflicted need to heal from it, to stop the cycle.
I have personally read this book (found it in community college library) and I found myself wishing I'd paid more attention to his talks while he was active.
There are in fact expectations of your behavior and that is not a bad thing, despite western popular culture attempting to tell us otherwise.
OF prostitutes and iShowSpeed make more money than neuroscientists. There are more incentives to be a bozo than an educated “pillar of the community”.
You'll see similar arguments on this thread: "shame is just what you don't approve of", etc. Yes, it's just about being a decent person, and no, scientists still haven't discovered a moral axis in the universe that says what that means. Unfortunately we're in a position where we have to explain that "just be a decent person", which is an inclination shared by 95% of people anyway, isn't some vestigial instinct that modern humans should be ridding themselves of.
As a benign example, eating food with your hands rather than utensils. In some cultures this is rarely ever tolerated, in others it depends on the food item, and in others still you might always eat with your hands. These will be at odds and you have to decide what is OK to shame and what isn’t.
I think we as a society bias against shaming in seeking inclusivity, but some things can be lost along the way as well. To use the eating example again, eating with your hands instead of utensils may be more likely to spread disease (or maybe it needs to be coupled with a stronger shame against _not_ washing hands). I don’t know what the right approach is to strike a balance here in a multicultural society.
I know there are some strange people who eat pizza with a fork, but is there actually anyone who does that with say hamburgers?
If one day you may become my boss better treat you well. If one day anyone may become my neighbor better treat anonymous people well. If my kid may end married with yours then I better treat you well.
For billionaires shame makes no sense. They will never have to confront the people that they abuse. Inequality makes consequences go away. The powerful have not shame because they feel entitled to not need it.
Even average people knows that they only need to care about the powerful. It is better to wrong your neighbor than the powerful politician that will retaliate against you.
Eliminate inequality and people will care again.
if you want someone to respect your feelings then ultimately you will have to make them. for broke-ass hoodrats, for whom economic factors won't work, that means eventually going to Louis' ultima ratio -- e.g. calling this out may lead to a fistfight on a moving bus.
More seriously, whenever I ask a young person on public transport to use headphones (and luckily I live in a region where I can safely do that and enjoy some authority as an older person), the response is usually that the youth doesn't have headphones on him for whatever reason (doesn't own any, left them at home, whatever). But with the breakdown of this taboo, people don't feel that not having headphones should stop them from sweet TikTok dopamine.
What you experience is a cultural difference.
I was that shameless annoyance once too. It doesn't mean shame is dead.
I noticed olders are more ignorant too:
* Standing prolonged in the way during smalltalk? Even 60y+ seems to have lost the art of stepping aside as much as possible.
* Stopping a crosswalks, esp. when children are waiting? 50y+ seem more prone to just driving ...
Disapproving glances on the subway when their music is too loud does not rise to that level, however.
Discussed earlier today here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654229
If from the start they had simply had separate volume controls for alarms / phone calls / media / alerts then I think this would not have become a trend.
In that not all cultures recognize causing negative externalities as a bad thing?