Shame, where is thy sting?

Been thinking about shame lately. Shame? The young folks ask us what we mean. For them: as a noun it is that painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. Yeah, I know we use every asset available to protect you from it. But, the old folks used to say things like “Her face turned red with pure shame.” It was a major method of controlling behavior. Yes, really.

As a verb, the word was used as an action to make someone feel bad (ashamed) about some untoward action. “She shamed him right out of acting like that.”

Yes, really. I know we don’t employ it much anymore. Today, when someone says or does something with which we disagree, there is a fairly well-defined process. First, we demean, criticize, curse, or bear false witness against them. If that doesn’t work, we file legal action. That failing, we kill them, either socially, financially, figuratively, or actually.

My Sainted Mother had a more effective, by far, process. She could scald the anger right off you with a simple, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” I remember once making an improper hand gesture toward my sister in a public place. Not being one to suffer in silence, she reported the incident to Sainted Mother.

SM didn’t try to be my pal about. She didn’t psychoanalyze my action. She didn’t put her arm around me and tell me that we all make mistakes. She didn’t try to explain logically why an alternate action might have been more appropriate. She didn’t even try to protect my self-esteem.

No, she said, “What would you think if some bully on schoolyard made that gesture to me?”

When my chin hit my chest, she followed with, “If you don’t show respect for your sister, who do you expect will?”

That did the trick.

I maintain that we might introduce shame into our national lexicon. What if, when a former reality TV star publicly ridiculed a person born with physical differences, instead of electing the bully president of the United States of America, we had figuratively hung ribbons of shame around this shoulder and made him walk through the village with his chin on his chest?

It’s interesting to think about it. I thought about a few days ago when I had an interesting conversation with a progressive police chief in one of our Arkansas cities. We were talking about the use of physical devices to control traffic, things like speed bumps and four-way stops. We both agreed that they suck at speed control.

“Know what works for us better than anything?” he asked.

I didn’t.

“Those simple signs that tell you what the speed limit its on the bottom and what speed you are driving at on top. Works better than anything I’ve found.”

Is that an example of the effect of shame caused by instantaneous feedback? I think so.

Maybe, just maybe, the owners of the social-media outlet “Twitter,” ought to attach “ribbons of shame” to egregious postings.

Couldn’t hurt. Could it?