The Value of Shame
And Why People with Good Values Need to Use It
“The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it.”
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlett Letter
Is the modern west a shameless society?
We are asked not to “shame” anyone for any decision that they make. Yet there is very important function that shame serves and its absence is keenly felt in the miasma of mediocrity suffocating us today.
In a shameless society, everyone is applauded for everything. You have a messy room? Congratulations! At least you ‘breathed today’. You are just ‘trying your best kween’. Let us delve into something even darker. What about shame for things like being overweight. Shame for getting divorced. Shame for promiscuity. Shame for being uneducated. Shame for getting vaccinated. Shame for not getting vaccinated.
The truth is, we do not live in a shameless society. Shame is a method of social control that, in a healthy society, prevents us from doing those things that are unhealthy or harmful to ourselves or others. A society might shame someone for small things like littering. It may shame someone for big things like rape, robbery, or murder.
Yet today, the people who are in control of society hold very specific views that are anti-virtue in every way. They shame virtue and celebrate narcissism. We can see this when we contrast the things that are shamed in the modern west to the things that are accepted and encouraged.
Shame & Women
Women are shamed for choosing to stay home and look after their families. Women are encouraged and applauded when they are doctors who take on sixteen hour shifts and abandon their babies at daycare. Women are shamed for obeying their husbands and wanting to make them happy. Women are applauded for obeying the government. Women are shamed for getting married at 19 or 20. Women are applauded for having sex with lots of strange men at the same age. Women are applauded for engaging in “sex work”. Women are shamed for getting pregnant and dropping out of university to look after their babies. Women are applauded for murdering their babies via abortion when they are “inconvenient”.
The pattern here is very clear to see,