A Use For Shame

In our New Age, "shame" is the only bad emotion. It's called useless, destructive, unnatural, and the only thing to be done with it is to get rid of it. Yet consider that we, the modern human being, has been voted "Most Likely To Succeed" by evolution, of all the varient creatures that could have made it to the top through survival of the fittest - and we have this amazing innate capacity for shame. Why would evolution see fit to build this capacity into us if it did not have a positive function?

What we call shame often is not shame - it is anxiety over anticipated negative reactions of others - fear of rejection, or punishment, or abandonment, because of who we are or what we do. This kind of reaction would not exist in an accepting environment - it is caused because of a threat, real or imagined, of not being accepted as we are.

True shame is rather the belief that we are not okay - that who we are, or what we do, is not okay. Believing that we not okay means that there is an authority whose standard we have failed to reach. Often, that authority is society, or other people, or those close to us - we hand over our personal authority to them, and believe them when they say we are not okay.

However, there is one other kind of shame that is not dependent on fear of retribution, nor on the disapproval of others - that is when we discover we do not live up to our own values. The authority is now internal - we have values we believe in, ways in which we want to act because they make us feel proud to be ourselves. Yet, we all have times when we act contrary to our own values. When we do this, we feel shame.

In this situation, shame becomes healthy, even useful. Shame is the indicator that we are violating our own values, disregarding our own beliefs, violating our own integrity. It is a red flag telling us that we need to look inside to see how we want to live, and then model our actions accordingly.

True shame does not revel in our failure - how bad we are, how much we fall short, how poorly we measure up - true shame is a spur to action, to decide what we believe and to live by it. Think of a time that you were caught doing something that *you* knew was wrong, by your own standards. Think of the shame you felt. The next time you are inclined towards that same action, the memory of shame will give you more strength to act differently.

Primitive? Yes. But then all the emotions are. They were developed long before the cerebral cortex. But they also have a power that mere thought can't equal.