while shame can be useful at the margin for curbing incidental misbehaviors (like peeing on the seat), it's often ineffective and counterproductive at tackling

while shame can be useful at the margin for curbing incidental misbehaviors (like peeing on the seat), it's often ineffective and counterproductive at tackling larger psychosocial issues like addiction. you don't shame people out of gambling, they just hide it from you. i know someone who's clearly an alcoholic and they simply isolate themselves for large parts of the day and then hangs out with other heavy drinkers at night. this is incidentally why 'cancel culture' doesn't work either. you have to do the hard work of active engagement[0], and that requires empathy, not (mis)judgement. shame has a small, limited place in our prosocial toolbox, but backfires reliably when mis- or over-used (and it's too often misused to enforce arbitrary conformity). [0]: intentionally avoiding the term "listening", because that tends to be shallowly dismissed, with everyone thinking they listen well simply because their ears work