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Shame seems not to have disappeared. Contemporary culture wars invoke and wield shame effectively, so it’s still there. Perhaps it’s just become unmoored from its traditional groundings?

> Contemporary culture wars invoke and wield shame effectively

I’m not sure that’s true. They certainly attempt to cast shame, but more often than not, they fail to incite it, and fall back to ostracism and excommunication. Could the rise of those latter phenomena be explained by a decline in shame?

Doesn't ostracism work through shame?

Ostracism works through shunning. In the original, Athenian sense, it was simply exile; you couldn't be in Attica for a term of years.

No? How do you mean?

If we wanted shame to remain prevalent we should have been better about how we used it. The fact that some of it's predominant uses were to shame perfectly acceptable behaviors like homosexuality and transgenderism is a huge knock on the whole approach.

The examples you provide tend to lead to poor outcomes.

Shame was the light touch prevention method. Other methods extract a higher toll.

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