The role of shame in an era of shamelessness
As I write these words from London, on the morning of July 7, news is coming through that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has finally decided to step down. I say ‘‘finally’’ because any decent person with such a long trail of shame behind them would surely have resigned months ago. But Johnson, apparently entirely immune to feeling any shame for his lies and past actions, fought on until his own ministers forced him to step down.
And if you are wondering how he could possibly have suppressed, so successfully and for so long, such a powerful emotion as shame, you need only reflect on what he said in his contrition-free resignation speech. Basically, Johnson blamed the ‘‘herd instinct’’ and the herd’s ‘‘brilliant and Darwinian system’’ for his downfall.
The use of the term Darwinian was telling, because it provided the clue to why so many powerful people – mostly men, but some women too, in politics, media, finance, real estate, technology, etc – are incapable of feeling empathy, guilt or shame. Basically, these people are not motivated by service or co-operation, but by an aggressive drive to win and conquer. And this often means doing and saying whatever it takes, without feeling any shame about it.
There is a line in the brilliant HBO series Succession (inspired mostly by Rupert Murdoch’s family and his powerful media empire), where one of the warring siblings (Shiv) is warned by a newspaper editor (Mark) that the public revelation of their meeting could cause her family huge embarrassment. In response, Shiv says: ‘‘The thing about us, Mark – and you should know this by now – we don’t get embarrassed.’’ I know it’s a fictional statement, but fiction can often best explain the reality we all experience.
Now I am aware that the terms guilt, shame and embarrassment are not quite the same, although they often occur together. Psychologists argue that guilt, which is closely associated with empathy, is a useful feeling that can impact an individual positively.
Guilt, it is said, helps individuals to repent and change, whereas shame is described as a negative, painful, and debilitating emotion that can deeply affect one’s core sense of self and invoke ‘‘a selfdefeating cycle of negative effect’’.
Shame is also depicted as a public problem that gets in the way of free speech. The New York Times commissioned a poll which found that 55% of respondents had ‘‘held their tongue’’ at least once over the previous year, for fear of harsh criticism and retaliation. It therefore declared that fear of shame was a cause of Americans ‘‘losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country’’.
But a social scientist and columnist for the NYT, Tressie McMillan Cottom, has a different view about shame. When it comes to racism and bigotry, she wishes more people held their tongue than 55%. She also argues that shame can be functionally good, ‘‘like when it keeps your pants on in public’’. ‘‘Despite the bad rap that shame gets in our overly psychoanalysed culture, it is merely a feedback loop that tells you something about your behaviour, as well as the expectations of others,’’ she writes.
Cottom admits shame can be excessive and toxic but says that, being a secondary emotion, it is not as dangerous as the primary emotions that cause it. Anger and contempt are examples of primary emotions that Cottom names as being more dangerous to public life. She argues that the shunning and stigmatisation of others come closest to being a public problem, and shouldn’t be confused with feeling shame which, in her opinion, can be useful to create social order.
I think, as is the case with almost everything, that context is key. As someone who comes from a culture where women are often shamed for expressing their sexuality and agency, I feel uncomfortable defending the utility of shame as a feeling.
The use of the term Darwinian provided the clue to why so many powerful people are incapable of feeling empathy, guilt or shame.
At the same time, having followed British politics closely, I can well understand why my British friends find the shamelessness of the Tories and Boris Johnson absolutely infuriating. We need our politicians to have a moral compass, and if feeling shame is the cost of having a functional one, it is a cost well worth paying.
As I write the closing words to this column, British newspapers are reporting that Johnson and his wife Carrie have planned a big wedding anniversary party at Chequers within weeks, and this is the reason he doesn’t want to step down immediately. To me, it defies belief that the scandals should continue after Johnson’s forced resignation. It really has been an extraordinary day.
My good English friend Penny Bromley described it as ‘‘the day the UK realised it was governed by self-serving, finger-pointing a...holes
. . . that the most monstrous one won’t budge without a scrap . . . and none [of them] have a scintilla of shame’’.