4 ms·

That's the thing about shame, it's NOT your own standards, it's society's (your parents') standards that have been inculcated into you since before you were bor

by saulpw 3y ago

That's the thing about shame, it's NOT your own standards, it's society's (your parents') standards that have been inculcated into you since before you were born. I remember a post by a guy on reddit who was waiting for his g/f in a gas station and tried on some sunglasses on the rack before he realized they were women's sunglasses. and he felt such an immense shock of shame that he almost threw them on the floor. He realized how ridiculous this was (hence the post) but it doesn't matter, that shame runs really deep and takes a long time and a huge personal effort to truly overcome. This is why people have had such a hard time coming to terms with being gay, and that leaks out in all kinds of terrible ways. If society only used shame for truly reprehensible, amoral, antisocial behavior, then sure, the original commenter is making a great point. But shame has been weaponized. Look around you. People are being shamed for being poor, fat, disabled, lazy, oversexed, undersexed, voting wrong, not voting, you name it. So some of us live in a state of constant shame for innocuous behavior and others of us cope by becoming shameless. Even here, you're trying to cast shame upon the shameless, with "refusing to feel shame is embracing evil".

nonethewiser 3y ago
OK, now do pooping on a sidewalk
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I don’t think conflating mental unwellness (which can imply an inability to feel shame) with an absence of shame in otherwise mentally well people does any particular justice to the situation. Mentally well people don’t defecate on streets, at least not under anything less than extreme privation. Those experiencing that privation likely already feel ample shame over it.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    People without shame are mentally unwell.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      I’m pretty sure I said exactly this in my comment. You can’t pile shame onto people who don’t feel shame; social schemes that apply shame pretty much only hurt people who already feel shame.
    - rewmie 3y ago
      > People without shame are mentally unwell. Ok I'll bite. How do you expect to treat mental illness through shaming?
      - vasco 3y ago
        That's not what they said, this has to be a bad faith interpretation. Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) for example has lack of shame as one of its defining traits.
        rewmie 3y ago
        > That's not what they said, this has to be a bad faith interpretation. Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) for example has lack of shame as one of its defining traits. Read the thread. You're commenting on discussions you're ignorant and oblivious about. You're in a thread where GP talks about mentally unwell people who "defecate on streets" and you're now trying to pass it off as mere narcisists?
        vasco 3y ago
        The person said "People without shame are mentally unwell." You said "How do you expect to treat mental illness through shaming?" My interpretation of the first statement is that lack of shame is a characteristic that is present in some mental illnesses. My interpretation of your reply is that you were portraying the original statement as saying that people that are mentally ill should be shamed in order to get well. Which I thought was very far from my own interpretation. Due to this I went to google and searched for lack of shame as a trait of mental illnesses to check if there were any, and NPD came up as one example. So it seemed like the original statement was correct while saying nothing about how to treat people which is what you implied.
_8j50 3y ago
HN throttles me, so for other commenters I can't engage in a discussion with you but hope you see this. You are conflating guilt and shame. You should feel shame when you do wrong just as much you should feel pain when your body is harmed. I have no desire to debate specifics of morality and get off topic, but if your guilt is correct then your shame is always correct. A person who does not accept their guilt cannot feel shame. It isn't society pressuring you to feel guilt, it is society pressuring you to use a specific way to measure right and wrong. You can reject that way and talk about other ways by using logic and reason. But ultimately, it is impossible to not have a means of determining right and wrong even that is only "unprovoked physical harm to others" unless you are a complete sociopath. And if you do have such a system, you should feel guilt when you violate that system. You have a choice when encountering guilt, to justify your actions or find excuses or to feel shame. A healthy mindser in my opinion would not be imprisoned by shame but empowered by it to self-correct and make amends. That way, you can be at peace with yourself and others.
- saulpw 3y ago
  Guilt is about behavior, shame is about being (self). So you feel guilty over something you've done, and you feel shame over it being who you are. I agree with your statement that "guilt is society pressuring you to use a specific way to measure right and wrong", and shame is similarly the internal effect of society's pressures to measure your very being against that same code of morality. But whether society is pushing your emotional buttons from the inside or the outside doesn't matter. In the end, I know I have felt deep shame for being something completely harmless and acting accordingly. I've spent years working to overcome this, and I will say in no uncertain terms that this is not justification or excuses, but a definitively healthier mindset--and my therapist and partner and community would agree. And if you would say that it would have been healthier to use my shame to instead alter my behavior and/or self (if that latter would even be possible), I would tell you and all the homophobes and Pauline Christians to go straight to hell. I actually think you're right, that guilt/shame can be huge opportunity to evaluate your actions and your habits and your self, and to ignore it completely is to become the amoral shameless sociopath that you're decrying. But it needs to be a balanced and holistic examination, which unfortunately is not possible from a position of feeling such shame. This is the value of having someone, a therapist perhaps, to hold space for you to examine your true values, detached from the electric shock of shame. Then you can decide with your whole being whether to ignore the shame and become inured to it, or to accept that it accurately reflects your values and "self-correct" as you say. This way is how you can be at peace with yourself and others.

by saulpw 3y ago

nonethewiser 3y ago

OK, now do pooping on a sidewalk

woodruffw 3y ago
I don’t think conflating mental unwellness (which can imply an inability to feel shame) with an absence of shame in otherwise mentally well people does any particular justice to the situation. Mentally well people don’t defecate on streets, at least not under anything less than extreme privation. Those experiencing that privation likely already feel ample shame over it.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  People without shame are mentally unwell.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I’m pretty sure I said exactly this in my comment. You can’t pile shame onto people who don’t feel shame; social schemes that apply shame pretty much only hurt people who already feel shame.
  - rewmie 3y ago
    > People without shame are mentally unwell. Ok I'll bite. How do you expect to treat mental illness through shaming?
    - vasco 3y ago
      That's not what they said, this has to be a bad faith interpretation. Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) for example has lack of shame as one of its defining traits.
      - rewmie 3y ago
        > That's not what they said, this has to be a bad faith interpretation. Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) for example has lack of shame as one of its defining traits. Read the thread. You're commenting on discussions you're ignorant and oblivious about. You're in a thread where GP talks about mentally unwell people who "defecate on streets" and you're now trying to pass it off as mere narcisists?
        vasco 3y ago
        The person said "People without shame are mentally unwell." You said "How do you expect to treat mental illness through shaming?" My interpretation of the first statement is that lack of shame is a characteristic that is present in some mental illnesses. My interpretation of your reply is that you were portraying the original statement as saying that people that are mentally ill should be shamed in order to get well. Which I thought was very far from my own interpretation. Due to this I went to google and searched for lack of shame as a trait of mental illnesses to check if there were any, and NPD came up as one example. So it seemed like the original statement was correct while saying nothing about how to treat people which is what you implied.

_8j50 3y ago

HN throttles me, so for other commenters I can't engage in a discussion with you but hope you see this. You are conflating guilt and shame. You should feel shame when you do wrong just as much you should feel pain when your body is harmed. I have no desire to debate specifics of morality and get off topic, but if your guilt is correct then your shame is always correct. A person who does not accept their guilt cannot feel shame. It isn't society pressuring you to feel guilt, it is society pressuring you to use a specific way to measure right and wrong. You can reject that way and talk about other ways by using logic and reason. But ultimately, it is impossible to not have a means of determining right and wrong even that is only "unprovoked physical harm to others" unless you are a complete sociopath. And if you do have such a system, you should feel guilt when you violate that system. You have a choice when encountering guilt, to justify your actions or find excuses or to feel shame. A healthy mindser in my opinion would not be imprisoned by shame but empowered by it to self-correct and make amends. That way, you can be at peace with yourself and others.

saulpw 3y ago
Guilt is about behavior, shame is about being (self). So you feel guilty over something you've done, and you feel shame over it being who you are. I agree with your statement that "guilt is society pressuring you to use a specific way to measure right and wrong", and shame is similarly the internal effect of society's pressures to measure your very being against that same code of morality. But whether society is pushing your emotional buttons from the inside or the outside doesn't matter. In the end, I know I have felt deep shame for being something completely harmless and acting accordingly. I've spent years working to overcome this, and I will say in no uncertain terms that this is not justification or excuses, but a definitively healthier mindset--and my therapist and partner and community would agree. And if you would say that it would have been healthier to use my shame to instead alter my behavior and/or self (if that latter would even be possible), I would tell you and all the homophobes and Pauline Christians to go straight to hell. I actually think you're right, that guilt/shame can be huge opportunity to evaluate your actions and your habits and your self, and to ignore it completely is to become the amoral shameless sociopath that you're decrying. But it needs to be a balanced and holistic examination, which unfortunately is not possible from a position of feeling such shame. This is the value of having someone, a therapist perhaps, to hold space for you to examine your true values, detached from the electric shock of shame. Then you can decide with your whole being whether to ignore the shame and become inured to it, or to accept that it accurately reflects your values and "self-correct" as you say. This way is how you can be at peace with yourself and others.