Morally speaking, I am a pagan, which is not to say that I believe in preposterous and odd things, as some have painted me as doing, but rather that I do not believe in a morality of shaming.
Perhaps this is the aspect that has set me most apart from others in the contemporary First World. I do not believe in shaming others, I do not know how to do it, I do not think it has any point.
I recall that when I was trying to be a middle school teacher, one of the mechanisms of control I saw teachers using was in making implicit suggestions that certain actions were shameful. This was not the mechanism that was imposed on me, whilst growing up. I learned, rather, that as a student one must understand that there is a system of power -- a hierarchical system -- that rules over one, and that one disobeys authority strictly at one's own risk. Power, then, rather than morality, was my yardstick that determined the DOs and DON'Ts of my childhood thinking.
By contrast with this mode of pagan upbringing, shaming seems very Christian. One is supposed to internalise fear and self-doubt in order to fit in. Furthermore, if I may put my finger on another hot button of Christian consciousness, the only real power that women have in a society that is governed by Christian morality is the power of shaming. Apart from being guardians of morality, they have no means to hold sway over the males of that society. To lack power in life is to withdraw into self-hatred, and to generate a toxicity that destroys all happiness and pleasure.
Christian society, however, is based on shaming. In general the dynamic is thus: Women shame others in order to get some semblance of power, no matter how toxic. Men avoid being shamed by projecting their negative and uncomfortable emotions back onto (and into) women, by claiming they emanated from women in the first place. Thus males in Christian society have no capacity for introspection, no insight.
Christian males, however, are permitted to express an aspect of character that is denied Christian females. They may express themselves egoistically as a way of trying to deny, or avert shame. Women are not supposed to do that, but to take it to the Lord in prayer.
When I think of all the right wing trolls whom I've run into over the past ten (or so) years on the Internet, the views of women they espouse seem to be fundamentally based on the principles I have outlined above.
1 comment:
Excellent post! And for me, of course, the idea that the lack of power leads directly to self doubt is important to remember.
There's a professor here who embezzled money and got caught. He had to pay it back and resign. Given that, criminal/civil charges are not being pressed -- there'd be no point in it but revenge/
shaming, and while I suppose he can go on to the next job and embezzle again I am still very disturbed at the tone of the campaign which has been mounted to get charges pressed -- precisely because of the witch hunt atmosphere and what you call the "morality of shaming."
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