This is actually great timing, i’d say. Just now most of the northern hemisphere is starting into summer. At least i deeply feel it on a personal level that summer is arriving. I take this as a gift from the universe that directs me towards touching grass, and going swimming. Enjoy your summer, you all! Connect with your local community, if you can.
Ah, i see now that i was simply defining the word “shame” a bit differently, as i’ve observed it used in everyday life:
I’ve held shame to mean “a painful emotion caused by group-pressure that indicates guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety”.
What you’ve been describing as “shame”, i’ve called it insight in practice. Insight is a good thing because it bring with itself reflection and thought, which i also like to call meditation and contemplation. That’s what society needs.
What society does not need is group-pressure, because it leads to people behaving right, but for the wrong reasons. Such behavior is short-lived and tends to bite you in the ass when you’re most vulnerable. Compare that to college kids who have always been told “no alcohol”, and then at college the first thing they do is to enjoy the absence of their parents and drink so much alcohol they go into a coma and to the hospital. Had they been taught the implications that alcohol has on your near-term health and consciousness instead, they might have been wise enough to not drink too much out of themselves. :)
In my experience, shame is not a natural emotion at all.
Rather, i’ve observed shame exclusively stems from somebody saying “shame on you, you shouldn’t do that”. Thus i infer that shame is a social construct, similar to gender.
Shame should be abolished after all. It is irrational. If there is a good reason for/against something, we should use that reason instead, and create a culture of habits around it.
it also works the other way around, interestingly:
nope. boomers still behave the same way on the internet when they’re using their real name. it’s really more the screen/lack of physicality that seems to do it.