Shame: Wrestling with jelly

I pinched the idea of wrestling with Jelly from Martyn Atkins; he uses it for thinking about postmdernism, but it works equally well for thinking about shame. It is a tricky and amorphous subject, but I have found the wrestling itself to be helpful.

So let us start with the positive aspects. Not all shame is bad, to describe someone as 'shameless' is (or used to be) an insult. To have shame can mean to have discretion, to be properly aware of the sensitivities of others. A good sense of shame is a necessary part of community life. But shame can also be crippling and destructive; so what is shame?

The psychologists have a simple distinction: guilt relates to what we do, shame to we are; a shame is a sense that there is something deficient. It is simple, but I wonder if it always holds; surely at some point my behaviour does say something about who I am?

The anthropologists have a different set of distinctions and this is where the jelly comes in. There is a lot of fascinating material out there about 'shame-honour' societies, but, inevitably, scholarship evolves. Part of the distinction seems to be about the difference between a collective and an individualistic society. The earliest theory was that shame was concerned only how others see you; this makes guilt the sophisticated response while shame is concerned only with upholding your own reputation. But that simply does not hold, nor does the idea that people who live in a collective society have no sense of themselves as an individual. A more helpful understanding (certainly for me) emphasises the link between self respect and the respect that others show you. A 'group oriented' person is focussed on the assessment of others and internalises what others say, do and think about them. You cannot have honour in your own eyes unless you also have honour in the eyes of your group. An honour- shame can be both hierarchical (it is good to receive honour from someone of a higher status) and competitive (among equals honour is a 'zero-sum' game if one person gains in honour another is perceived as losing it).

There are two reasons why the concept of 'honour-shame' societies fascinate me. The first is that not only the Biblical but also many of the great theologians were writing in the context of 'honour-shame' societies; and realising this has, I think, helped me to understand them better. But the second is that I am realising more and more that our society is not the opposite of an 'honour-shame' culture; I can see traces of the same values in the way that many groups function. There is something here for us to learn.