31–40 of 109 posts
Sit on public transport and listen to everyone playing music / watching tiktok without headphones. Shame is dead.
If one day you may become my boss better treat you well. If one day anyone may become my neighbor better treat anonymous people well. If my kid may end married with yours then I better treat you well.
For billionaires shame makes no sense. They will never have to confront the people that they abuse. Inequality makes consequences go away. The powerful have not shame because they feel entitled to not need it.
Even average people knows that they only need to care about the powerful. It is better to wrong your neighbor than the powerful politician that will retaliate against you.
Eliminate inequality and people will care again.
OF prostitutes and iShowSpeed make more money than neuroscientists. There are more incentives to be a bozo than an educated “pillar of the community”.
Apparently it's diminished a bit in recent years, but not because it's clearly shameful behavior: the leagues started issuing bans.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_(association_football)
Sit on public transport and listen to everyone playing music / watching tiktok without headphones. Shame is dead.
When the author bemoans a lack of shame in how the NBA teams tank games to improve later draft odds instead of playing out every game with ferocity and pride, what they’re actually bemoaning is the lack of consequences for such negative behavior - and misattributing that to a lack of shame by fans towards the team instead of a lack of consequences from governing bodies. It’s a naive fantasy of how the world works rather than a stinging critique of real problematic behavior.
It also ignores the grim reality that many people simply have no concept of shame in any sense that could correct their behavior. Zuckerberg absolutely has no shame, nor does Musk or Thiel or Bezos; it is impossible to shame them into better, healthier behavior, just as it’s impossible to shame Sony into manufacturing physical media again, or shaming the driver that just cut you off in traffic without a turn signal and used their vehicle as a missile to get their way by honking your horn or flipping them off. Shame alone means fuck all absent consequences.
And the thing about shame is that it too is a weapon that has been wielded to horrific ends in the past. Relying on shame alone is how you get McCarthy and the Red Scare, how you repress LGBTQ+ identities, how you segregate people based on skin color or ethnicity or national origin. Shame is toxic, and the few areas we rely on shame as a weapon are also areas of some of the greatest societal harms at present: homelessness, malnutrition, poverty, convicted felons, all are shamed for existence to the point they’re encouraged to disappear from society by any means other than improvement, like a one-way gate rather than a crisis to be addressed. In light of how we currently weaponize shame, I don’t think relying on expanding its use to address grievances is the right call.