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?

Sunrise With Schubert: April 9, 2018

There's this couple I know, nice folks, who became "boyfriend and girlfriend" in the third grade. They married right out of high school and are still together. Who knows how many grand, great-grand, and beyond, offspring they have? I think about them every great once in a while.

Secrets? I don't imagine they have many. If my relatively short marriage (44 and a-half  years, but who's counting), is any indication, old secrets best lay buried. I don't think I would want "her" to know some of the things Mike Dunkum, the boys, and I did back in our college days. Some memories still make me shudder.

I don't think I'd want anyone to know, and I don't think any of that group would tell. We know too much on one another and we've never held ourselves out as being above retribution. I even have a couple of photographs.

And don't even get me started on my naval career.

Maybe secrets are good in that they add some tension to life, and a dependency upon tension seems to be an evolutionary trait, descended to us from earlier species in which the relaxed and oblivious tended to be eaten first.

Perhaps secrets also lurk as instruments of shame should they be unleashed like some subterranean monster roused by nuclear explosions back in the sc-fi films of the 1950s. Shame used to be a powerful behavioral determinant back when I was growing up.

It's not so much anymore. I suppose cell pone obsession makes keeping secrets ever more difficult. Concomitantly, it makes shame a less potent force in our lives. But, on second thought, it can't all be blamed on texting and such, for the greatest collection of shame-challenged individuals in our county these days can be found among those running the government.

It wasn't cell-phone-mania that cleansed those folks from the moderating influence of shame. It must  have been something else. I suspect it was the worship of, the love of, and the burning desire for more of … money, or at least the freedom from shame that riches can buy.

Maybe that's why the Galilean warned us so strongly against the worship of money. His second major gripe seemed to be divorce. Perhaps he saw that it was difficult to keep secrets after the third or fourth marriage. Mothers used to be dispensers of shame par excellence. I suppose that particular gift becomes strained when one is preoccupied with trying to remember which kid belongs to which husband.

As for the couple with whom I began this essay, I don't think they needed secrets to make them good people. They were just raised that way for starters, and love did the rest.

Got to go now, need to put away some photos I was scanning, tourist photos taken on my R and R trip to Bangkok these many centuries ago. Some old shipmates and I are swapping, but don't tell anyone. Those are tour guides in those pics. Nothing more. Trust me. I'd be ashamed if they weren't.

Secrets? I've a few. But don't
tell her. She thinks I'm perfect.
Not.