The shaming fallacy [Part 1]: Ideals so weak they can't hold up without coercion

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Written by

I write to forget

6 months ago

There’s a recent prevalence of Eastern-style shaming in the world, and particularly towards Westerners. Just observe the social media chatter from (in)organic influencers: “If you don’t do X then you are Y” - infantile schoolyard shaming.

Shaming is different from the guilt-tripping -ist -phobe epithets that vex primarily Western guilt complexes and self-righteous (un)noble burdens. Shaming is something else entirely.

Defining shame

Modesty: emotional reserve from humble self-awareness and an absence of over-confidence; a virtue of self-consciousness, dignified humility, properness, decency; freedom from narcissism, over-confidence, arrogance, or ill-mannered audacity; healthy groundedness.

Shame: loss of “face”; a feeling of disgrace or dishonour in the eyes of others.

Shaming: public humiliation and ridicule to provoke shame in an individual; a type of manipulative psychological abuse and emotional blackmail / coercion. The more modest a person, the greater the impact of shaming.

The difference between shame & guilt

With shame, you feel ridiculed and humiliated only against others. You might do the most humiliating thing in the world, but if no one is there to see it, you don’t feel embarrassed. There are potentially shameful things we do daily that we don’t feel shame over, but we would if others see us doing them (e.g. bathroom activity or intimate relations). However, you might be innocent of what you’re being shamed over, but you still feel ashamed when ridiculed because you are being seen as shameful by your peers. Shame depends on how others perceive you.
Guilt is remorse, regret and self-punishment even when no one is watching, even when no one knows. If you are falsely accused of something by everyone in your community, you cannot feel guilt because you know you did not betray your principles. However, if you do betray your principles, you feel guilt even if no one knows. Guilt depends on how you perceive yourself.

Guilt is more noble than shame this way. And perhaps this is the fundamental difference between West and East on a cultural level. (see references)

False-dichotomy straw man

“But we need shaming, otherwise our fragile ideals will crumble to dust.”

Ah, supposed “good intentions” promoting ideals through emotional abuse - betraying a lack of conviction in said ideals. Ideals so weak they can’t hold up in a free market of ideas, so they need to be imposed, otherwise they’d lose on an even playing field against competitive ideas. And we don’t care about people adopting ideals do we? We just care about people pretending to uphold our ideals to validate our needy insecure identification with those ideals - let’s be honest.

To assume that you must be an oppressor otherwise you’ll be a victim is a stubborn false dichotomy fallacy from weak insecure people masking their vulnerabilities with desperate aggression - like the ‘all bark no bite’ little doggie. They can either be pretend-subservient nice guys, or they can hope to be perceived as strong through aggression - a bluff. It takes true confidence in your strength to show kindness without the fear of it being mistaken for weakness. If you are aggressed upon, yes, feel free to respond in kind. But to initiate aggression (shaming) to get others to conform to your standards is weak and telling.

“What are you saying? That we should just let degenerates do what they want?”

No. I am not preaching tolerance to abuse. I am preaching not becoming the abuser yourself. Be not a victim nor a villain. It is a false dichotomy to assume that you can only be either prey or predator.

The answer to this question will become abundantly clear to you by the end of this post... and it may shock you, especially if you have trouble holding yourself accountable, or owning your mistakes...

Delusion necessitates shame

The common justification for shaming is that we need it to discourage undesirable behaviours (assuming we are so certain in our beliefs that we know what proper/moral/ideal behavior is - and also have the moral right to impose it).

Coercing people to do what we want them to do is a threat, not an incentive; a stick, not a carrot. Threats punish what we are against - incentives reward what we are for. Focus is key.

If the benefits of desirable behaviours are not convincing enough so as to be adopted widely - so we have to resort to emotional abuse (shaming) to promote them - then this is telling: either our ideals are inferior, or our conviction in them is weak; or both.

“But no matter how good our ideals are, there will always be those who won’t get it, and who will exhibit undesirable behavior.”

Yes. So what? You can't get them all. It’s not your divine responsibility to.

If you trust the strength of your ideals, then they won’t be threatened by occasional displays of some mildly undesirable behavior, unless you feel insecure about your ideals. Plus, shaming abuse tends to lead to internalised shame, which is what drives damaged people to undesirable behaviours to begin with.

The free market will decide which behaviours are undesirable for which space, for which audiences, and when.

You must understand that the more you shame shame-based people, the more you validate their shame-based self-image, so the more they will want to provoke shame. Fun fact: the Ancient Greek word for homosexual literally translates to “he who provokes shame” which goes to show that homosexuality in Ancient Greece was accepted but not celebrated.

And here we are: proponents of shame seem to fall for the slippery slope fallacy: “we get provocative LGBT culture shoved down our throats because we stopped shaming homosexuals.” But that’s also a false dichotomy: ‘Not shaming’ does not mean ‘celebrating.’

‘Not shaming’ and ‘celebrating’ are two very different things. Shaming is abuse and an initiation of aggression. If you don’t shame certain behaviours, it doesn’t automatically mean you celebrate them. The problem is not that society stopped shaming; it’s that there is an apparent interest by certain “elite” groups to promote and celebrate anti-family, anti-social and anti-moral behaviours. This is not organic. This is directed. This is not the result of ‘not shaming.’ This is the result of deliberate and relentless propaganda by people with unlimited resources and control over media channels.

While we waste time debating “to shame or not to shame,” we miss the first cause: social engineering by people who seek to erode social cohesion for their own benefit.

“But what can we do if we can’t shame undesirable behavior?”

You can refuse to associate. People will get it, and they will create their own little bubbles with the understanding that it is not in their best interest to provoke and disconnect from the free market when there are consequences (not punishments). The consequence here is not punishment, but a deprivation of opportunity. Refusing to associate is your right because you have no obligation to offer your association to anyone. Shaming, however, (assuming you initiate it) is not your right because you cannot call yourself moral while initiating public humiliation and ridicule against others just because you don’t approve of what they do privately.

If someone displays an undesirable behavior, you can show disapproval of the behavior, not the person. And depending on how egregious their behaviour is, where it takes place, and in front of whom, you can respond in analogous fashion.

If, for example, someone shows his ding dong to your child, then feel free to take action to respond to this blatant and traumatising child abuse - in this case, he initiates the aggression, not you.

But taking someone who hasn’t publicly displayed undesirable behavior, and then shaming him/her on the merit of what he/she is, is initiation of aggression on your part. This makes YOU the villain, YOU the person demonstrating the vilest undesirable degenerate behavior: the violation of the non-aggression principle (a first principle).

The point

If you can’t show people the benefits of your ideals, then that is your failing - or the failing of your ideals. Instead of wasting time showing how you punish people who reject your ideals, how about use that energy to show the benefits of living by those ideals? Incentives are by far more effective and predictable than threats.

There is no meaning in people pretending to adopt your ideals based on shame. There is no greater way to erode your ideals than to promote their pretentious reluctant resentful adoption. In such an instance, people wonder whether those ideals were ever worthy in the first place. The ideals could be virtuous, but because they were adopted for the wrong reasons (coercion rather than free incentive-based choice), people start to erroneously hate the ideal instead of the method behind its promotion.

Does pushing righteousness the wrong way damage the righteousness?

There’s a thing to be said about the shamers.

Shamers project their own internalised shame onto you as a coping strategy to mask or mitigate their own deep shame. The easiest way to mitigate their shame is to out-shame others. So, I can’t help but wonder which degenerate behaviours are the shamers of said behaviours ashamed of.

Objections

“So, what are you saying? That we should let degenerates do what they want?”

Depends where and when. And remember that you are also a degenerate for someone somewhere - what makes you think that you got it right? Can you be humble without compromising your self-esteem and your conviction?

If people engaging in undesirable behaviour are in their own privacy, then they can do whatever they want because there is no degeneracy more sick, evil and twisted than presuming to initiate aggression against people minding their own business.

If they are trying to force their undesirable behaviour to deliberately traumatise your children, then you can respond to this as you would to any form of initiation of unprovoked aggression towards you - with analogous reciprocal responses; what’s required to protect yourself.

If they display their behaviour in a public space, you can refuse to associate with them, and make it clear that you do this because you disapprove of their degeneracy. Every public space has decency rules, and they are based on the free market revealing organic public sentiment - unlike state-imposed inorganic celebration of undesirable behaviours.

Refusal to associate is not shaming because you are not being abusive. You are depriving them of your approval, which you don’t owe them. Shaming, however, is abusive (assuming it’s initiated) because it seeks to provoke a hurtful emotional response in people who weren’t a threat to you.

And shaming people further validates their shame-based identity, which then makes them seek out more shame-provoking behaviour, like a Stockholm-syndrome wench going after one abusive douchebag boyfriend after another.

Don’t you see? It’s your shaming that created and nurtured degeneracy in the first place. What is degeneracy if not internalised self-identified shame? Should YOU be shamed for shaming?

The base ideal

No matter what your ideals are, they are meaningless if they have to be based on coercion - hollow, if they cannot be adopted without abuse. If ideals can indeed be adopted without abuse, then you pervert them by pushing them down people’s throats. People then miss the reason for having said ideals. That reason is meaning.

Meaning is what gives ideals their value.

If any ideal is to be worth a damn, it must be freely adopted without abuse, coercion, guilt, fear, threat, violence, shame. Otherwise, we are no different from the immoral degenerates we pretend to scorn - we, just like them, respond to shame. Our behavior is dictated by shame-based coercion, not freely chosen meaning.

The foundational ideal is basing all other ideals on voluntary choice, free from manipulation, emotional blackmail, or threat. It is the only way to give meaningful purpose and value to ideals.

If ideals are held for the wrong reasons, then ideals are not worth having, even if they are good.

Key takeaways

If you must resort to coercion to promote your ideals, then your ideals are unconvincing, or your conviction/confidence in the them is weak, or both.
If your conviction in you ideals is wavering, then you don’t serve your ideals by shamming others into adopting them - all you want is validation for your weakly held beliefs. It is self-serving, and it gives your ideals a bad name.
If your ideals are founded on coercion instead or meaning, then they are weakly founded, even if said ideals are good. You therefore do your ideals a disservice by building castles on sand.
Even if your ideals are good, you created resentment against them when you force their adoption. People will then find a way to rebel against your ideals out of spite alone, even if said ideals are good, meaningful and functional. Is this why the West committed suicide?
Shame the shamers, the moralists, the absolutist ideologues canonising every bit of human expression. It’s self-defense using analogous reciprocity after an initiation of force against you (when you posed no threat, no less). Aggression is a bluff of strength. Call it out, and it crumbles.
Your ideals are not worth a damn if they cannot be adopted without coercion.