The Peripatetic Philosopher shares:

SHAME REDUX – READERS REACT TO “SHAME” MISSIVE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 12, 2015

NOTE:

This missive has generated some interesting responses somewhat afield of the actual perspective shared, which is normal.  We read and interpret what we read in the light of our experience. 

The dictionary defines shame quite specifically, but mainly in terms of uncovering why we feel ashamed:

Shame is a feeling of guilt regret, or sadness that we have because we have done something wrong.  It is an ability to feel guilt, or embarrassment, dishonor or disgrace.  It is a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or some impropriety.  The shame of being arrested or found out for being other than projected to be. 

We can be very uncharitable when we learn of someone else’s shame.  By the strange construction of our minds the subject of shame is internalized and often projected in vein totally out of the context of the personal to the general.  That was not the case with Monica Lewinsky.

Shame and Survival

Photograph by Mark Seliger

Monica Lewinsky kept out of the public eye for a decade.  

She tried public appearances. She tried being reclusive. 

She tried leaving the country, and she tried finding a job. But the epic humiliation of 1998, when her affair with President Bill Clinton became an all-consuming story, the shame of that momentous indiscretion has followed her every day. 

Meanwhile, the former president who was her partner in the affair has risen to international prestige and fame, and wealth beyond what he might have never dreamed, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars for fifteen minute speeches off the cuff with his wife today the primary candidate for the nomination to the office of the President of the United States for the Democratic Party in 2016.  

Nathaniel Hawthorne “Scarlet Letter” has become her burden, but not her scorn.  

After 10 years of self-imposed reticence, and now hoping to help victims of Internet shaming, she critiques the culture that put a 24-year-old through the wringer and calls out the feminists who joined the chorus.  There is survival after shame as we are all too human and should judge not.

RESPONSE NUMBER ONE

Dr. Fisher,

You have rattled a cage.  Shame should be a personal thing, a moral decision, to impart shame on another does naught but destroy. 

Shame only works when a person feels it from their heart. 

Jeb Bush's late 1990's utterance to apply shame as judgment on those single mothers, bounce people off or out of public aid, yet never give thought to policies and other factors that create these woes. 

Per always, judge the girl but never consider it takes two to produce that child.  Never address the factors that push people over the edge to homelessness, children living in cars or worst.  Shove the mentally ill into the streets, just shoot them down when troubles arise. 

June 15th will be the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, The great charter of liberty.  King John forced to sign by the Barons of the day at Runnymede in a meadow, near Lincoln castle, was between Windsor and Staines. 

It rests today both at the castle and the cathedral of Lincolnshire, depending on the occasion.  It spend WWII at Fort Knox as was on display at the World's Fair and due to the war remained in the US.  Much has been written, but it remains the basis of much law and our forefathers found its bones a good foundation for our declaration of independence. 

Today we hold dear this instrument and must cling to the words, used by the many over the centuries, from this grew "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."  

Impossible to attribute to one person, it is a sad truth used regularly over those years. Benjamin Franklin says it best, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."  And that quote Churchill lived and breathed in his quest to overcome the evil creeping across Europe and extending long fingers to wrap the world in its cloak of blackness. 

Eisenhower said much that is ignored today, "A people that values it privileges above its principles soon loses both." 

An education is a value which I know you fear is being diminished.  While listening to the BBC overnight, an American head of the Bar Association, lamented the fact that few today can identify our freedoms, yet hold value in them.  

One of the stones of the Magna Carta was that justice should not be able to be bought, and today it seems it must be bought to defend oneself, leaving the poor to suffer their fates.  Far too deep waters to jump into without the adequate knowledge to stand upon.  I leave this to you to sort out.  Factors exist that play a game of mirrors and this is what must be tackled prior to casting shame in any direction. 

RESPONSE NUMBER TWO

Dr. Fisher,

Recognizing you as one who has taken a somewhat heretical stance in shamelessly encouraging workers to behave in manners typically considered counter to accepted cultural norms of industry, it seems odd that you are critiquing the lack of shame in others.

Heretics aren't always right. There are stories of California based consultants conducting t-groups in among the redwoods and fueling the explorations with LSD. 

Should one feel shame over committing the murder of an innocent?

Yes, of course! You mention thirty killings in Tampa. That happens over a hot summer weekend in Chicago, where I live.

There's a blues song, popularized by Paul Butterfield, in which he mentions his first friend "going down" when he (Paul) was 17. A second friend killed when he was twenty-one. Plus or minus a couple of years, this is similar to my experience and common to many in this harsh city. 

So, one thinks about it. Here's my simple response. When your life has no meaning, no present, no future, it is nearly impossible to ascribe meaning to any life.

As the song said, "When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose." The threat of jail or execution means losing a basic freedom to most of us, but may be a step up for some.

Sorry for the digression. Heretics have been praised for taking risks and changing our world view. We had a heretic bubble in the Sixties and Seventies as people protested social injustice and an illegitimate war.  This is not to ignore the labor protests bubbling up in the early 1900s. But, those were personal for personal gains, or to prevent personal loss. Now, it seems okay to take up any social cause with impunity.

How can a politician shamelessly cut a food stamp program that barely provides subsistence to millions of poverty stricken citizens, while, with the same vote improving benefits and credits to rich agriculture corporations?

He or she may believe they are being heretical by going against the practice that made this country grow into a compassionate world power. How do our citizens, in a myopic sense focus on reducing taxes, constantly vote against referendums aiming to increase funding for education?

Maybe they feel heretical by saying I don't like the direction of education so I will choke it off because I have no time to be otherwise engaged. Why are we not ashamed to spend trillions of dollars to kill, yet choke the spigot on infrastructure spending and leave hundreds of thousands of people unemployed?

No heresy in this one as it has been the common practice of civilization from the beginning. 

Murder doesn't always happen at the point of a lethal weapon. Or, maybe, we should reclassify a congressional person's vote in that category. Our public, high profile examples have no shame. Oh, sorry, Denny Hastert has shame. But that's another story. 

DR. FISHER RESPONDS

The passion, energy and intelligence in these responses is palpable.  They care and in caring they sublimate my words of the missive “SHAME’ into what it means to them, and in sharing with you, what it means to us.  I thank them.

My next missive is titled “POVERTY,” and it is offered only to provide some perspective to this complex problem.  My desire, as I’ve repeated many times, is not to provide answers but to get people to think about the problems, not in a macro sense but in a personal sense as these subjects relate to their own experience.  Experts don’t have the answers.  People do, but people have to get out of their comfort zone to provide such answers.      

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