The Positive Side of Shame
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People who experience childhood trauma (sexual, physical, emotional, etc.) are particularly at risk for developing a chronic, toxic sense of shame that follows them throughout life.
If you as the shamer shame someone who is in that position, it would only compound their shame and be extremely unhelpful, since it is something they already feel about themselves. Of course, it's difficult to know whether someone feels toxic shame about themselves as the "shamer", which makes it impossible to know if it would be "helpful".
Point is, because it's impossible to know whether the recipient of shame feels "toxic shame" about themselves, I would never purposefully engage in "strategic shaming" as a way to help someone.
Left to themselves, most people have a tremendous ability to ignore their flaws, and it hampers their growth. A bit of shame is often a positive motivation. I am ashamed of a lot of code I wrote last year. I have reasons why it is the way it is, some of which are defensible, but some are just "WTF was I thinking?" If you don't have nagging bits of guilt about your recent body of work, it might well be a benefit for someone to point out problems in terms that break through your defenses.
[0] https://disqus.com/home/discussion/varianceexplained/a_milli... 1974419008
In Not-Violent Communication Marshall Rosenberg considers shame (and guilt) to be one of the violent ways to change people's behavior.
And yes, shame has its place to coerce social rules - the same as (the threat of) using physical (including lethal) force - e.g. by police. But IMHO it should be the last resort, not a go-to method.
When you feel shame it's because you accept external judgements. If you didn't accept those judgements then you wouldn't feel shame, you'd just be angry. Accepting external judgements is healthy and necessary because our self-worth is derived from our perception of how other people view us.
Like any tool, shame can be misused. But, as the article lays out, it's a necessary tool. It's also highly preferable to violence.
> In Not-Violent Communication Marshall Rosenberg considers shame (and guilt) to be one of the violent ways to change people's behavior.
Calling shame "violent" is dismissing actual violence.
When it comes to who you are or how you choose to express your individuality, shame is absolutely a violent thing. The suicide rate for trans people is as high as it is almost ENTIRELY because of shame - shame from others and society that becomes internalized. LGBT people have had to form whole alternate communities because of shame. For many of us our relationship to shame forms large parts of our personality.
> Calling shame "violent" is dismissing actual violence.
I agree if you're dealing with the idea of "all" shame, but in a lot of contexts is just as or even more harmful. Being punched is less harmful to a person than feeling like they're rejected by the whole of their community.
It's not clear to me how you can confidently state something like this. The difficulty of coping with gender dysphoria could just as easily explain the high suicide rate among trans people.
> LGBT people have had to form whole alternate communities because of shame. For many of us our relationship to shame forms large parts of our personality.
Like the article says, shame is amoral. It's a tool, a necessary one, and it's not helpful to label shame as "toxic and destructive".
> I agree if you're dealing with the idea of "all" shame, but in a lot of contexts is just as or even more harmful. Being punched is less harmful to a person than feeling like they're rejected by the whole of their community.
Punching someone is violent. Disapproving of someone's sexual orientation is not. The fact that the latter is likely more harmful than the former does not make it violent.
It's also quite easy to imagine an act that is very harmful but is neither violent nor wrong.
While you're right that dysphoria over physical manifestations of the wrong gender can be traumatic, in my experience its usually the experience of social shame.
> It's a tool, a necessary one, and it's not helpful to label shame as "toxic and destructive"
I didn't.
> The fact that the latter is likely more harmful than the former does not make it violent.
There's the 2nd definition in the dictionary: "strength of emotion or an unpleasant or destructive natural force". Shame is a violent force.
citation needed. There are a lot of things happening internally as well.
Telling a child that having rotten teeth, unkempt hair, and filthy clothes will be met with social disdain is a form of shame, and it's also the truth. A little bit of awareness of the consequences of their actions in terms of how others will perceive them might aid them.
Telling a child they're a horrible person for traits beyond their control, and whatever obtuse and vile repercussions the parent imagines as a result is abusive. It is probably true that the child may encounter social disdain, but the causal factors are beyond their control. Shaming them will not aid them, it will only harm them.
I’m from an Asian society and I’ve seen the pain the strict social framework can cause people who biologically cannot conform to social expectations. However, I feel like your phraseology sweeps more broadly than necessary. Society should think very hard about what would be good social norms, and evolve them as appropriate. (For example, the social norms against women on the front lines may need to be re-evaluated in the age of fly-by-wire F22.) And society should accommodate people who for biological reasons are different.
But that does not require unstructured, wholesale accommodation of how people “choose to express their individuality.” You can accommodate people without abandoning the rule that, “in general, society expects you to be a certain way and do certain things.” Abandoning that rule is a recipe for unhappy, directionless people and a disharmonious society. The fact of the matter is that (1) society is better and more well functioning when people conform; and (2) most people are pretty similar and will be made happy by the same things. The stunning irony of millennials is that they were raised to “follow their bliss.” But they grew up, and what’s their number one complaint? That they can’t find steady work that will let them afford a house in the suburbs and a couple of kids.
> The stunning irony of millennials is that they were raised to “follow their bliss.”
Citation please! Not my experience.
> But they grew up, and what’s their number one complaint? That they can’t find steady work that will let them afford a house in the suburbs and a couple of kids.
Citation please! Not my experience. Just complaining that it takes a 90th percentile income to afford housing in most areas now instead of 60th decades ago.
It's worse than that. Calling words violence justifies the use of "defensive", actual violence against someone that has used "violent communication" – whatever the hell that might mean at the moment.
Where I grew up this was the norm. There were things that could only be said with full understanding that physical violence is the only possible response. And while I do not condone violence and would not want children to grow up in the same environment, I have to admit that the possibility of things escalating from words to punches did act as a deterrent. I also wonder if the modern zero tolerance attitude to violence is the reason for such wider spread bullying problem.
I've heard quite a few times (especially for older generations) that one learned to behave well because their parent beat them. I was raised in a guilt (rather than shame)-driven culture (Catholic), and well, while this is effective, it takes decades to undo the damage.
> It's also highly preferable to violence.
And my point is, that shame is a form of violence (not all violence is physical). Yes, it can be justified on occasions. If you dislike the word violence (in this context), then consider intentionally making someone suffer.
For using shames, when it hurts beyond proportions, "How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life" (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t...) is worth reading.
All violence is physical. Metaphorically speaking of shame as violent is an attempt to make shame sound inexcusable when, in reality, shame is necessary.
I don't think it's possible to do a good job raising a child without intentionally making them suffer in order to teach them things. The issue is making someone suffer more than is necessary or making them suffer for the wrong reasons. The suffering part isn't the problem.
The other definitions are metaphors.
Agreed. I just think that most people would call causing suffering more than is necessary and for the wrong reasons "violent".
If not "violent", what would you call a shame based intervention that causes unnecessary suffering or is done for the wrong reasons?
(It is in almost all ethical and moral systems.)
You can also call it immoral and a few other adjectives.
And for added irony, it should also be shameful.
That's not really true, and the article addresses that point directly: "Fourth, 'The transgressor should be sensitive to the source of shaming.' The shamee must consider themselves subject to the same social norms as the shamer."
If you're someone who jaywalks because you think laws a against jaywalking are a product of Big Auto lobbying, you're not going to be shamed into using the crosswalk. Shame works for things where people know its wrong, but do it anyway because they think their transgression won't be publicized. Shaming people for littering, for example, reinforces what everyone already knows is wrong. It doesn't change minds per se, but reinforces a social norm, and that's a very good thing.
So in this case, its a lot more often that the transgressor isn't sensitive to the source of shaming. Take a look around at who leaves their trays in fast food restaurants around for others to pick up - its disaffected people, small kids, punks, and out of touch old people who are cynical and nasty about society. About the only people who respond to "shaming" about it are the people who do it due to being completely overwhelmed, like a parent wrangling 3 crying kids around and doesn't even have a free hand, and they're the ones least likely to really be able to respond to it.
in my experience, littering (and public urination/defecation by non-homeless people) almost seem like acts of aggression or defiance by the transgressors. i've rarely gotten anything but anger in return for speaking up about it. it seems to defy shame intentionally, rather than succumb to scoial norming.
However, I strongly object to using "violent" do describe any form of verbal communication.
We need a hierarchy of what we as a society agree upon as wrong, and violence needs to be clearly at the top of that list, for good reason. Using the word "violence" to describe ways of speaking has the positive effect of making it clear that those ways of speaking are harmful, but it also has the negative effect of diluting the potency of the word "violence". To call shaming someone "violence" is to place it in the same category as murder, rape, and assault, and shaming someone simply does not belong in that category of actions.
Ironically, equating shaming with violence has the effect of shaming people into not shaming each other, by placing their action in the same category of the most horrific actions humans inflict on one another. I suspect this wasn't intended, but it's one of the ways in which attempts to control language, even one's own language, are ineffective. If you really want to shame someone you can find a way to do it, even with the frameworks set forth in Non-violent Communication.
I've observed similar problems when experimenting with E Prime[1]: I found when using it that I quickly was able to find ways around expressing identity and predication, which I began to employ subconsciously (against my conscious will: I was honestly trying very hard to conform to the spirit, rather than the letter of the law of E Prime).
I have to temper this opinion by saying: It's hard to say how this plays out with people who are actually proficient with the techniques in the book, however. A lot of my criticism of the book comes from seeing people use the techniques, but perhaps the reason people pick up the book to begin with is to address harmful patterns in their communication, which might bias my experience toward the techniques being used by people with poor communication skills and confounding psychological issues.
> Wherever possible, we should target shaming at institutions, not individuals. Effective shaming focuses on the powerful, not the weak.
It's not about changing random people's behavior, but about large groups, like corporations, or political parties. Shaming such groups is a reputation attack on the group, not a personal attack on the individuals who make them up (usually).
I'd love to see the HOV idea though.
So the HOV thing would only work on people who thought it was morally or socially wrong to drive in the HOV lane. If you, for example, believe that HOV lanes are simply a handout to already-rich Tesla drivers and just remove a useful lane from the rest of us, then the only reason you don’t drive in them is the risk of a fine if you get caught. These people don’t care if they are publicly called out for breaking a rule because they reject the moral basis of the rule.
The impact that cartoon has had on management/office behavior would be hard to overstate, I suspect.
Lot's of people identify with Dilbert [1], nobody with the PHB.
[1] less these days, I suspect, as Adams has undermined his universality
I feel bad for Scott Adams as it would appear he's never taken part in a conversation which has been based on the assumption of good intentions on both sides. But, having read what Scott Adams writes, and his obsession with utilitarianism and zero sum games, that shouldn't be too surprising.
I've changed my views on drug policies thanks to discussing it - mostly politely IIRC - here on HN.
Rather than eliminating these human flaws, we may begin to codify and implement them in automated systems.
We've also evolved a response to violence, and yet I wouldn't consider violence to be a useful tool in my management toolbelt.
Obese people self shame constantly. It creates a feedback look that keeps them being obese. It destroys all their self confidence. If fat shaming worked to prevent obesity on a societal level nobody would be fat. Its an issue with a lot of factors.
> Paradoxically, the use of fat-shaming to induce weight loss is a significant public health issue, as it has been linked to eating and exercise psychopathology. As juvenile obesity increases in African societies, there is a continuing risk that obese school children and adolescents in physical activity settings will become targets of fat-shaming that damage their developing self-image and weight management efficacy. The thesis of this paper is that fat-shaming in physical activity contexts can undermine efforts to stem juvenile obesity, promote lifelong physical activity and redress health inequities.
So "fat shaming" not only destroys juvenile's self-esteem, but may actually make them gain weight and struggle to control their weight. If you have any literature that supports "fat shaming" as a successful weight loss strategy, I'd be interested to read it.
[0] https://journals.co.za/content/ajpherd1/22/Issue-41/EJC20007...