Painful memories

We have all been in embarrassing situations, usually of our own making, and can’t forget it. Fewer have been humiliated. Fewer still shamed. For those who have been, it was surely a truly traumatic experience.

“I wish the ground had opened and swallowed me up”; “I wanted to die”; “I prayed that my worst enemy, who put me through it, be struck by lightning” etc. It occurred to British author Jon Ronson that there is a good deal of untapped material here and set out on his travels to gather it.

After three years, he felt he had enough to write So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. He has divided the 278 pages into 25 categories, with examples topheavy in the area of crime and punishment. Public punishment is shameful indeed, perhaps more so in the past when people were put in stocks, or flogged or executed in public.

Eleanor Roosevelt said everything can be taken from us but our dignity. Alas, not so. The Gestapo demonstrated that. Still, we have one sense of dignity and society has another. Formerly on a magazine, Ronson was assigned to impersonate a woman in order to write at first hand and how they are molested in daily life. It offended his dignity, but not his editor’s.

Lawyers are often cruel in cases involving rape, often having the victim hold up her panties to the judge and jury. In the event the rapist is convicted, the victim is sometimes so humiliated that she commits suicide. In fact, the feeling of losing a community’s respect has led to more than a few suicides.

Sadly, there are people who enjoy shaming others: wives their husbands; managers their employees; officers their subordinates. However, this cruelty has been known to backfire. With the victims attacking their abusers. Sons turn on their elders who mistreat them.

To an extent, times are changing. In parts of the world, speaking God’s name in vain doesn’t get you burnt at the stake. Nor adultery a branding. A fine covers those once heinous crimes. The laws in the American colonies were stringent, to say the least. Read “The Declaration of the Rights of Man” to see the extent.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is a downer. It will remind you of the times you’ve been shamed, humiliated, or at least embarrassed.