Shame

Shame on you! We don’t hear that much anymore. When did we lose our ability to be ashamed of ourselves? Shame has a vital place in our society and we seem to have lost our sensitivity to it. Shame keeps us in check; it causes feelings so uncomfortable that we avoid in the future whatever despicable behavior caused it to darken our door in the first place. Horrible actions – criminal, immoral, and inhumane – should be punished, not only by the institutions in place to formally handle them, but by our personal sense of right and wrong. We SHOULD hold bad behavior in contempt. We SHOULD know where the line lies between right and wrong and feel rotten when we cross it.

What, exactly, is the problem with telling children that there are consequences for misbehavior and that they will pay them if they act up? We are far too willing to invest an incredible amount of effort in finding excuses for bad behavior. Instead of imposing consequences for mouthing off to a teacher, for example, parents try blaming the teacher, the schools, or a raging case of ODD (oppositional-defiant disorder) for their child’s outburst. What lesson does that teach the child? Instead of a heartfelt apology for a rude encounter with a co-worker, each of us has a far greater tendency than we would have thirty years ago to try to transfer blame to the victim. “Yeah, I don’t like the way Joe (parks, walks, looks, etc…) ‘Bout time he got a piece of my mind.” The underlying problem with all of this is that, once the poor behavior has occurred, it’s forgotten. We don’t carry the sense of shame that drives one (as my parents would have commanded) to “straighten up and fly right.”

It is difficult to talk of shame when reflecting on the birth of children. Under the best circumstances, the possibility of pregnancy should be deeply considered and the existence of the resulting child weighed against the mom's life without that child. Some women choose to have their kids, with or without an involved father, and carry on as any other mom might - working hard, setting examples of respect and propriety. But increasingly our society is accepting - without shame - single moms who are boastful about their fatherless children BECAUSE they are fatherless. The more the merrier – kids and partners. It’s not at all unusual to see women on national television bragging about their brood and their multiple “baby daddies.” I don’t get it. It's as if the children are the afterthought - the status as "single mom" with the emphasis on "single" not on "mom".  Do they not realize the inherent message? These are the same women who buy paternity tests at CVS without even wearing a disguise. (That we have become such a shameless society that these are even available at CVS is an entirely different discussion…)

Another contributor to the problem of disappearing shame is our vocabulary. When our language creates slang to chat about crude or otherwise unacceptable behavior in public, we legitimize it. Fifty years ago, we tried to avoid saying the word “pregnant” aloud – even when the woman was married and she and her husband thrilled about the expected child. When a young woman found herself “in a family way” without a spouse, the terms "P.G.” or “in trouble” were whispered under our breaths. People today argue that that sort of repressive thinking about a perfectly natural event lent itself to misinformation and unnecessary embarrassment. In most cases, I agree! However, I don’t believe the opposite extreme is a better practice. Gossiping about being “knocked up” brings the most serious, personal experience a woman can go through to the level of a trip to an amusement park.

I don’t know what, for example, a young woman is advertising when she wears a pair of spandex shorts with “Juicy” written across her butt. If it’s the obvious implication, does she really hold herself in such low esteem? Under what possible circumstances would her parents look at her in that outfit and say, “Ah, there’s our daughter. We’re so proud! She’s juicy.”

Similarly, I don’t believe that casually referring to a woman as a bitch is acceptable either, and men exclaiming, “bros before hoes” diminishes everyone involved – their male friends, their female acquaintances, and themselves. This poor use of the English language is an insidious way to sneak degrading, hurtful, unfair labels onto others.  When we're embarrassed to sit beside our parents or grandparents while watching a movie or listening to a song, it should occur to us that the actors/directors/song writer/performer should be ashamed of their production. The very existence of such media has changed the way we look at life and at each other. It also allows a freer use of words that we should be ashamed of saying out loud.

And when did it become acceptable to appear, for lack of a more appropriate term, sleazy and not be ashamed? We applaud the half-naked celebrity, the dancers simulating sex, the speakers of lusty language and foul-mouthed dialogue.  Genuine, authentic, and real seem to be the new "odd". We're supposed to work hard to be what we are not. Should people not be ashamed of investing so much of their time and energy becoming something they are not? People who pay for plastic surgery and shape-hugging designer-wear should be ashamed of the way they market themselves. They should be ashamed of the way they allow themselves to become the models to which our children aspire.

Young men, sagging their pants to nearly knee level and donning shirts that are large enough to smuggle automatic weapons, emulate thugs and convicts. When did those people become icons? When did their behavior earn them the gift of respect? When did we all lose the ability to recognize the ludicrousness of this? Instead of the families of felons hiding their heads in shame and quietly trying to live down the humiliation brought to them by their relative, they elbow their ways to the front of the group to try for more face time on the six o’clock news.

I don’t mean to imply that shame should be an excuse to slither away from the public eye after behaving badly. On the contrary! Shame should be the prod that inspires us to action. We should harness the awful feeling of embarrassment and take whatever steps we can to apologize, to repair the damage, to pay physical or emotional restitution. Shame brings with it notoriety on scales both large and small. By working to fix all of the broken trusts and extend sincere promises to change our ways, we heal ourselves and others to whom our shame has brought pain.

Without shame, harmful behavior creates holes in our characters. Without the salve of sincere apology and a dedicated change in action, those holes become chasms and sooner or later, the goodness in our characters disappear altogether and for that we should feel truly ashamed.