“Put on the Diamonds”: Notes on Humiliation
harpers.org
harpers.org
Being witty or funny gives you the power to shame, and often it's unintentional, to where we might consider the target of a well aimed observation to be fragile for being offended. And yet, we wouldn't blame someone or hold them morally culpable in a disadvantaged relationship for turning the tables, even with a pair of scissors in the back. I don't have answers, but I'd wonder if there is a more general idea of where the responsibility for humiliations and their consequences lie.
Humiliation us about the percived damage inflicted on the self constructed self image. One is responsible for one's perceptions and constructs.
Unless we want some kind of thought police making sure we don't think the wrong things or - worse - cause bad thinking in others.
Advantages, privilege, power imbalances... All of these are at the core of humiliation. It's all about the violation of a person's sense of self. You believe you have worth but someone else comes along and strips you of it.
> the interviews with convicted muderers showed their decision to kill someone was often over a related issue of respect.
This is universal in human nature. When one person humiliates another, consequences are likely. Even in civilized society, there are consequences. They just tend to be more formal and indirect. They come in the form of simple exclusion from a group, not being elevated for a prestigious position, trials at a court of law, things like that. In less civilized circles, people are held accountable for their words and actions immediately, directly and violently. For certain kinds of people, a man getting his respect is more important than his life.
Humiliation causes violence. In so many cases, physical violence was not going to happen until the victim said or did something that humiliated the perpetrator. Challenging a man with a gun by saying he doesn't have the balls to shoot it will provoke an attack. It humiliates him, makes him less of a man and leaves him no option but to shoot. It's really easy to end up making this sort of challenge while under a stressful situation. There are no shortage of cases where a violent person starts to leave the area but the victim just has to get that last insult in, they just need to have the last word, teach them a lesson and put them back in their place. "Yeah, crawl back to the shithole you came out of." Is it any wonder the situation escalates to violence?
> And yet, we wouldn't blame someone or hold them morally culpable in a disadvantaged relationship for turning the tables, even with a pair of scissors in the back.
It's interesting to observe who is and isn't blamed. For example, incels also fit this description and they are certainly unsympathetic to the vast majority of people despite the constant humiliation they endure.
I imagine there is at least a 2x2 matrix of humiliation: on one axis, there's intention (did A intend to humiliate B, or was it inadvertent?). On the other axis, there's public versus private: is the person humiliated in a way that other people will know and remember?
There may be more axes, but those are the big ones, to me.
It seems like it's fairly uncontroversial to say that someone who inadvertently inflicts a private humiliation known only to the humiliated deserves the least amount of blame, while someone who intentionally humiliates someone in public deserves the most.
For example, an inadvertent, private humiliation might be that you and I are talking privately, and you make a joke about my alma mater, which I care a lot about. You didn't mean it personally: you didn't even know I went there, let alone that I was sensitive about it. No one else hears you say this, and two minutes later you've forgotten about it. On the other hand, I take it to heart, and carry a grudge for years.
Most people would say you're not really at fault at all. You could have been more circumspect, but I'm the one who needs to lighten up.
On the other hand, if you and your partner are at the beach, and I come up to you and kick sand in your face, and everybody around you laughs, that's a public humiliation, and I'm 100% responsible for it.
These feel like different situations, and the distinctions between them just aren't captured by the single word 'humiliation'. Perhaps these more precise words exist in English, and we just don't use them very well, but it feels like if we did then this confusion wouldn't even arise.
It's like having 50 different words for snow, because snow is such a large part of your culture. Our vocabulary for talking about humiliation is limited. On the other hand, I'm not sure I want to live in a culture that has 50 different words for humiliation!
In Buddhism there is a form of meditation called "metta", sometimes translated as "loving-kindness" meditation. The way I've been taught to do it is to wish sincerely to yourself, "May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe." Then bring one's attention to those one most loves and think, "May they be happy, may they be healthy, may they be safe." Then repeat that for the people around you, then your neighbors, then your town or city, your country, then the world. The most advanced form of the practice is to sincerely wish this for one's enemies and people one most dislikes or hates.
In Buddhism it is often taught that hatred and ill will towards others is a poison that hurts oneself. It is more constructive and healthy to forgive and move on, rather than fixate or seek vengeance.
In many other traditions also, forgiveness is greatly valued.
In the article, the author writes:
"There are many things we can live without. Self-respect is not one of them. One would think the absence of self-respect would resemble much of a sameness, but the circumstances that can make people feel bereft of it are as variable as persons themselves. A psychiatrist who interviewed a group of men imprisoned for murder and other violent crimes asked each of them why he had done it. In almost all cases the answer was "He dissed me.""
I wonder if the outcome would have been different had these people been taught the value of forgiveness and how to detach and let go from their negative thoughts, rather being in environments where lashing out in violence is modeled as the norm for how one reacts when faced with humiliation.
Also, obviously most people don't react to humiliation with violence. There is something unusual going on with the minority that do, and I wish the article had explored that.
If you think about it, lowering or threatening someone's status ("dissing them") is robbery, from a certain point of view.
Alexander Hamilton died in a duel with Burr, after Burr "dissed" him at dinner...
But I have learned to forget. Which is likewise useful.
The main difference seems to me to be the form of speech. Rather than using the subjunctive ("may they be safe"), here the "second person" is more explicit; you are using a kind of supplicating imperative to speak with -- well, God: "Please keep them safe." Feels funny to say out loud, that you're "talking to God". But there it is.
There are also the established, formulaic prayers, of course. But the theme of forgiveness is big there too, like you hinted at. The most obvious being in the Lord's Prayer, which includes "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us". I assume these lines are famous, but, y'know, not everyone grew up with the same tradition; it may be worth me saying it here.
I've begun to think mantras have a real effect. I know, for example, a person who used a mantra to overcome a fairly minor personal issue. That was a good enough thing to do, and was for personal ends.
Well if mantras work -- are the prayers of Christian tradition really so different from them? What does it do to you, to repeat every day a prayer, one of whose stanzas is about forgiveness? Presumably it changes how you think? Maybe that's a good thing?
I may yet return to religion. The older I get the more sense it makes. Without it you end up thinking other things, which maybe you wish you didn't.
"Right thought, right speech, right action." These affect thought.
I bet it's intentional.
There is a lot of poison here, and I don’t think it is in Sheila.
I am sure these sort of confessionals used to come across as audacious. Now, it's just a tired trope of the format.
fwiw - I also wanted to know what happened there right after their encounter.
The "now" is especially important. It implies the friendship they shared was never real. Sheila was just keeping her around while she waited for someone better to be friends with.
The article doesn't substantiate that Weinstein experienced past humiliation (let alone that this partially motivated his evil). This seemingly-speculative humanization doesn't seem fair to his victims.
Oh, hey. Furries.
(If you're interested, the book is in the Internet Archive freely. It's hilarious.)
Make sure the people you love know that you value them. Make it a habit to greet them at the door when they come home, and to always tell them sweet dreams when you go to sleep.
These affirmations build up an ablative layer that protects against life's daily indignities, I think.
when people find themselves in this type of situation, sometimes they lash out, or try to be controlling/manipulative when they stop getting them, instead of being self reflective and figuring out why and addressing. Sometimes there IS nothing that can do to address it - a bogus accusation from someone else, or affirmations built on some material wealth that disappeared, or whatever.
Many people believe the affirmations they see are genuine, but when tested they turn out not to be.
It’s also easy for it to be a kind of hedonic treadmill, with someone chasing ever strong and strong affirmations to make up for a pain or fear that won’t go away, and is not faced, overdoing what you are describing to the point it is hostile and toxic.
If you look in the media, these patterns are very, very visible.
And inevitably, for any number of reasons, the affirmations will stop or reduce in number or impact - even if just due to normal variation - even if 100% genuine and healthy. Kids go to college, or partners drift apart, or everyone gets so used to it they stop noticing.
Some of the discussion from others above can be helpful here, as being ok just ‘being’ is a much more stable place, and requires only that which the person themself has (somewhat) control over - themselves.
Covid plausibly more rapidly ended the US occupation of Afghanistan for example. It became increasingly politically untenable to disregard the cost of remaining in Afghanistan, while the US looks at raising taxes, deals with soaring budget deficits and mounting public debt (an ongoing context made sharply worse by the pandemic).
Humiliating a country is often done through extreme resource extraction and/or subjugation (where existing resources are controlled, at a minimum, if not directly extracted).
Adding ideological humiliation on top of it can make the fire burn hotter once lit, but is rarely the direct cause.
WW 2 was a good hexample of this - the crushing penalties on the German economy + the ideological humiliation fed a fire the world has not seen for a long time.
But if Germany had been allowed to prosper, but been humiliated? Unlikely they would have been the aggressor. For evidence, see what happened Ww2, where that is essentially exactly what happened.
If they been made poor the way they were, but otherwise treated well? Hitler may not have been the figurehead, but someone would have, and a war would have been inevitable. It probably would have been less vicious and pointlessly destructive of lives and property - but not by that much.
Even the crusades had a clear economic justification - massive overpopulation of fighting age males resulting in a shortage of jobs, opportunities, and money. Sending them off to die (and loot and pillage) solved both problems. Beliefs were used to paper over the obviously unpalatable reality on the ground and help recruit.
Besides whatever is captured, there are of course other things successful war gets you - fewer young men rattling around locally causing problems (including crime, revolts, general instability), your new ‘green’ military leaders get to cut their teeth in the field, ‘better’ female to male ratios for your traditionally male leaders, more space (aka conquered territory), looted riches and newly available natural resources, and it often reduces competition and neighboring populations that would get in your way within a region in general.
This doesn’t last that long obviously, as a generation or two later the population has again increased, your veteran leaders have retired, etc.
It’s not always so direct of course - most of the recent American wars are more about burning old excess material inventory, keeping domestic military manufacturing expertise alive, and ensuring domestic weapons manufacturers of all types are able to stay on the cutting edge, but it is still the same song and dance when you get down to it.
While you average solder may fight for a cause, a nation only goes to war when the books show it needs to happen.
> On the other hand, I have a cousin, a doctor, who feels humiliated if he’s shortchanged in a grocery store. His wife, too: if another woman is wearing the same dress at a party, she feels humiliated.
Like -- who are these people? They just _suck_. They need to get over themselves. I'm sure there are new people like this still coming of age, but probably not at the rate they used to... These sound like very 'boomer' problems, and I think a larger part of millennial culture is collectively rolling our eyes at this brand of arrogance. All over the country younger people grew up with parents and grandparents who were more concerned about pettily defending their pride than being good parents or doing good in the world, and understandably their children grow up with nothing but contempt for it.
Do you really feel confident that millenials don't have any culturally systematic pettiness and arrogance? The social media generation, the neurotic depressed generation, the generation that has originated no novel politics... they are categorically more serious and more humble than the previous couple generations?
The minute details you point to seem essentially irrelevant, exactly the kind of thing that varies generation to generation as culture changes -- anachronistic, as you say.
But.. deep down, internal scales are off. Because it is not about the money. It is about balance. it is about principles. It is about getting what I am god damn paying for, which includes courtesy of getting the right change.
It is insignificant in the long run, but it isn't completely without merit.
I do wonder if there are lessons to be learned regarding climate change specifically. I'm thinking of my parents, but there are a lot of boomers who would never think of tossing a pop can or candy bar wrapper out their car window, and who regard that sort of thing as absolutely inexcusable. And yet they're now being told that burning gasoline is far worse than lowly littering. And it's a thing they've been doing most of their lives, thinking it's normal and doesn't cost anything beyond what it costs at the pump and maybe (if they're reasonably self-aware) the geopolitical issues around being dependent on a few major oil producers in the middle-east.
Accepting that climate change is a serious issue implies acknowledging their role in creating it, which is a kind of humiliation. Just saying "fine, get over it" may be satisfying, but in order to get them on board maybe we need a kind of messaging that isn't moralistic and doesn't assign blame. How would that even work, though? I don't know.
I think most younger people have grown up in a world where climate change is an acknowledged fact and that burning gasoline is known to be problematic even if there isn't a practical alternative if you need to get to work or whatever. So there's no mental transformation that has to happen.
I am reminded of something Michael O. Church wrote a few years ago [0] in connection with agile/scrum and the issue of intense observation of an employee's work process:
"Another topic coming to mind here is status sensitivity. Programmers love to make-believe that they’ve transcended a few million years of primate evolution related to social status, but the fact is: social status matters, and you’re not “political” if you acknowledge the fact. Older people, women, racial minorities, and people with disabilities tend to be status sensitive in the workplace, because it’s a matter of survival for them. Constant surveillance into one’s work indicates a lack of trust and low social status, and the most status-sensitive people (even if they’re the best workers) are the first ones to decline when surveillance ramps up. If they feel like they aren’t trusted (and what else is communicated by a culture that expects every item of work to be justified?) then they lose motivation quickly.
Agile and especially Scrum exploit the nothing-to-hide fallacy. Unless you’re a “low performer” (witch hunt, anyone?) you shouldn’t mind a daily status meeting, right? The only people who would object to justifying their work in terms of short-term business value are the “slackers” who want to steal from the company, correct? Well, no. Obviously not.
The violent transparency culture is designed for the most status-insensitive people: young, usually white or Asian, privileged, never-disabled males who haven’t been tested, challenged, or burned yet at work. It’s for people who think that HR and management are a waste of time and that people should just “suck it up” when demeaned or insulted."
[0] https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-an...
That's an interesting take on agile culture, thanks for sharing it.
As it happens I agree with you here, at least personally, and here is why: humiliation is an EMOTIONAL feeling and you cannot assume it is justifiable. Narcissists can feel humilated over not being treated like they are God almighty. Bigots can feel humiliated over having to engage with subhumans as if they are people. I've got a brother who is humilated if he has to bag his own groceries at the grocery store, and goes into rather well-disciplined and civilized rage over it. Likewise if he's served food and something is wrong with it or with the service: he, in a dignified way, punishes everyone as hard as he can and goes to war.
We cannot go by feelings like this: it can't be personal. There has to be a contextualization where you say 'no, you cannot beat that passing lady to death because she rolled her eyes at you and sneered'.
That's why humiliation is so dangerous: both for individuals and for societies. It spurs these extreme, vengeful reactions, but there seems to be NO requirement that it is over some justifiable slight. We're far too subjective to trust this reaction in anyone or anything. Being able to take a broader view is indispensable.
Some of the most capable, powerful people in the world are walking wounded, forever acting out revenge on past, unreachable humiliations. It's tragic, but also dangerous. It's why we have laws and police and such: we've never not had this problem.