Not germane to the subject at hand, but this stuck out to me:
I think shame is a beautiful and powerful psychological process that probably ought to be treated as personal and intimate, much like recountings of first lovemakings. Trying to use it as a public tool to make people act how you want them to seems to break it.
This flies directly in the face of the historical record. Until modernity began, shame was explicitly and strategically a public tool almost everywhere.
That being said, I am pretty sure this is a case of using shame and guilt as synonyms. I am stricken again and confused again by the difference between public and community; shame strongly requires community mechanisms to work, whereas guilt is supposed to work completely independently of it (as an emotion, at least). Neither mechanism would work based on the words of internet strangers, which seems to be the dominant implication of the word “public” now.
This flies directly in the face of the historical record. Until modernity began, shame was explicitly and strategically a public tool almost everywhere.
I don’t think you understood what Logan was saying. Maybe you took “break it” to mean “cause it to have no effect”, where Logan meant something like “cause it to have bad effects that don’t capture the valuable things about shame”.
Oh, the meaning wasn’t ambiguous; I understood that exactly to be what Logan meant. What I am saying is that this is completely different from how shame (in the past) has been publicly understood. Shame doesn’t have any valuable effects without anyone else knowing; it is dependent on relationships to have value, and mostly concerns the obligations to other people that come with them.
But it does make complete sense to me if shame is being used as a synonym for guilt, which is the norm in the US and especially on the internet.
To elaborate on my claim a bit: I say shame and guilt are different emotions.
Guilt is the feeling we have when we do something morally bad, or fail to do something morally good. If we consider that lying is morally bad, and following from the OP that exercise is morally good, then if I lie or fail to exercise I should feel guilty. This is true regardless of what anyone else knows or says.
Shame is the feeling of letting people down. It is about reputation and the obligations we have to our people (by which I mean family, friends and community). Shame is what I would feel if I were to be caught in that lie, or if someone I cared about knew I told it. Guilt and shame aren’t mutually exclusive: suppose I were a member of a running club, and decided to skip one day and do something else instead—but we see each other as they run by and I am sitting having a beer. Now I feel guilty and ashamed at the same time for the same event: guilt for skipping the run, shame for disappointing my club.
I propose a test: reflect on the last time you did something you felt bad about; then imagine someone important to you, who values things like you do, learning about it. This probably feels worse overall. The question is whether it is the same bad feeling only more intense, or if it is a different bad feeling. If it’s a different bad feeling when someone else knows, then I think there is value in distinguishing between guilt and shame.
None of this makes Logan’s statement bad or wrong; I quite agree with the intended meaning. I only commented because that particular reason highlighted in that particular circumstance threw into sharp relief this difference between guilt and shame, which is otherwise an idiosyncratic interest of mine.
I’d be interested to hear a steelman of ‘social shame’, which I think is something you’re gesturing at — that, regardless of what Logan’s talking about, a utopian society would make important use of ‘social shame’ to make things go well. (Perhaps that’s not your point, but it’s at least a thing I’m curious about!)
I’d need more evidence/arguments in order to be persuaded of any of these claims:
History, there’s been no such thing as private ‘shame’.
Private ‘shame’ is synonymous with ‘guilt’. (I think these are close together in concept space, but I strongly guess you’re missing important shades of meaning if you’re rounding off Logan’s topic to ‘guilt’. See also In Defense of Shame.)
In general, I think you should ask more initial questions and make fewer assumptions about what’s in Logan’s head. E.g., you’re assuming a very moralistic perspective on Logan’s part (that they’re really talking about guilt, which is really about “when we do something morally bad, or fail to do something morally good”), but Logan is a very aesthetics-oriented, very anti-morality sort of thinker.
Welp, I’ve clearly botched this, for which I apologize. To start with, I never meant to make any assumptions about what Logan was thinking, but I can clearly see where that was what I communicated despite myself. This was an unforced error on my part.
I can’t get the In Defense of Shame post, because I don’t have facebook, but I’d be keen to read—do you know if it was reposted anywhere else? I was unable to locate it at Agenty Duck or here. However, if it is about the book In Defense of Shame, then I was talking about the first of the two dogmas mentioned (which they reject).
What I meant to be talking about was the language drift between the past and present, though I now see Logan wasn’t using any more of a standard use of shame than I was. From the Shame Processing link, I see this:
According to me, shame is for keeping your actions in line with what you care about. It happens when you feel motivated to do something that you believe might damage what is valuable (whether or not you actually do the thing).
Shame indicates a particular kind of internal conflict. There’s something in favor of the motivation, and something else against it. Both parts are fighting for things that matter to you.
This is very interesting: on the one hand, it is closer to what I mean by guilt than what I mean by shame; on the other hand, it’s about reconciling competing priorities, which is supposed to be one of shame’s attributes over guilt.
I’m sad about the lack of a social element, but I was sad about that beforehand.
Regarding social and private shame: I think I agree that a utopian society would make use of social shame, but there’s a bunch of conditions attached to enable that good use which we now lack. That being said, I’ll consider the problem; I have an ongoing related reading list that should let me come to grips with the idea better.
Saying private shame is interesting; even in the sense that I was using shame, I’m not sure I’d oppose a notion of private shame. It’s really the suggestion of exclusively-private shame, or anti-social shame, with which I would quibble.
I think Logan’s Defense of Shame was mostly unrelated to the the book, FYI. (Or at least, it’s a FB comment that’s basically them just saying “I think Shame is a valuable part of you, here’s why, and here’s how.” It might overlap with the book but I’m guessing Logan’s take is fairly different).
Not germane to the subject at hand, but this stuck out to me:
This flies directly in the face of the historical record. Until modernity began, shame was explicitly and strategically a public tool almost everywhere.
That being said, I am pretty sure this is a case of using shame and guilt as synonyms. I am stricken again and confused again by the difference between public and community; shame strongly requires community mechanisms to work, whereas guilt is supposed to work completely independently of it (as an emotion, at least). Neither mechanism would work based on the words of internet strangers, which seems to be the dominant implication of the word “public” now.
I don’t think you understood what Logan was saying. Maybe you took “break it” to mean “cause it to have no effect”, where Logan meant something like “cause it to have bad effects that don’t capture the valuable things about shame”.
Oh, the meaning wasn’t ambiguous; I understood that exactly to be what Logan meant. What I am saying is that this is completely different from how shame (in the past) has been publicly understood. Shame doesn’t have any valuable effects without anyone else knowing; it is dependent on relationships to have value, and mostly concerns the obligations to other people that come with them.
But it does make complete sense to me if shame is being used as a synonym for guilt, which is the norm in the US and especially on the internet.
To elaborate on my claim a bit: I say shame and guilt are different emotions.
Guilt is the feeling we have when we do something morally bad, or fail to do something morally good. If we consider that lying is morally bad, and following from the OP that exercise is morally good, then if I lie or fail to exercise I should feel guilty. This is true regardless of what anyone else knows or says.
Shame is the feeling of letting people down. It is about reputation and the obligations we have to our people (by which I mean family, friends and community). Shame is what I would feel if I were to be caught in that lie, or if someone I cared about knew I told it. Guilt and shame aren’t mutually exclusive: suppose I were a member of a running club, and decided to skip one day and do something else instead—but we see each other as they run by and I am sitting having a beer. Now I feel guilty and ashamed at the same time for the same event: guilt for skipping the run, shame for disappointing my club.
I propose a test: reflect on the last time you did something you felt bad about; then imagine someone important to you, who values things like you do, learning about it. This probably feels worse overall. The question is whether it is the same bad feeling only more intense, or if it is a different bad feeling. If it’s a different bad feeling when someone else knows, then I think there is value in distinguishing between guilt and shame.
None of this makes Logan’s statement bad or wrong; I quite agree with the intended meaning. I only commented because that particular reason highlighted in that particular circumstance threw into sharp relief this difference between guilt and shame, which is otherwise an idiosyncratic interest of mine.
I’d be interested to hear a steelman of ‘social shame’, which I think is something you’re gesturing at — that, regardless of what Logan’s talking about, a utopian society would make important use of ‘social shame’ to make things go well. (Perhaps that’s not your point, but it’s at least a thing I’m curious about!)
I’d need more evidence/arguments in order to be persuaded of any of these claims:
History, there’s been no such thing as private ‘shame’.
Private ‘shame’ is synonymous with ‘guilt’. (I think these are close together in concept space, but I strongly guess you’re missing important shades of meaning if you’re rounding off Logan’s topic to ‘guilt’. See also In Defense of Shame.)
In general, I think you should ask more initial questions and make fewer assumptions about what’s in Logan’s head. E.g., you’re assuming a very moralistic perspective on Logan’s part (that they’re really talking about guilt, which is really about “when we do something morally bad, or fail to do something morally good”), but Logan is a very aesthetics-oriented, very anti-morality sort of thinker.
Welp, I’ve clearly botched this, for which I apologize. To start with, I never meant to make any assumptions about what Logan was thinking, but I can clearly see where that was what I communicated despite myself. This was an unforced error on my part.
I can’t get the In Defense of Shame post, because I don’t have facebook, but I’d be keen to read—do you know if it was reposted anywhere else? I was unable to locate it at Agenty Duck or here. However, if it is about the book In Defense of Shame, then I was talking about the first of the two dogmas mentioned (which they reject).
What I meant to be talking about was the language drift between the past and present, though I now see Logan wasn’t using any more of a standard use of shame than I was. From the Shame Processing link, I see this:
This is very interesting: on the one hand, it is closer to what I mean by guilt than what I mean by shame; on the other hand, it’s about reconciling competing priorities, which is supposed to be one of shame’s attributes over guilt.
I’m sad about the lack of a social element, but I was sad about that beforehand.
Regarding social and private shame: I think I agree that a utopian society would make use of social shame, but there’s a bunch of conditions attached to enable that good use which we now lack. That being said, I’ll consider the problem; I have an ongoing related reading list that should let me come to grips with the idea better.
Saying private shame is interesting; even in the sense that I was using shame, I’m not sure I’d oppose a notion of private shame. It’s really the suggestion of exclusively-private shame, or anti-social shame, with which I would quibble.
I think Logan’s Defense of Shame was mostly unrelated to the the book, FYI. (Or at least, it’s a FB comment that’s basically them just saying “I think Shame is a valuable part of you, here’s why, and here’s how.” It might overlap with the book but I’m guessing Logan’s take is fairly different).
I strongly agree with the claim, even if we differ on the motivations. I cultivate a sense of shame myself.
Come to think of it, I also deploy my sense of shame with respect to exercise. Following on Rob’s questions, it could probably be considered private.