Getting Discomfortable with Shame: Part 3

Start the Shame Series from the beginning: here

Recall that I grew up with the dogmatic belief that in order to be worthy of love and respect (which is to say, in order to avoid feeling shame), I thought I needed to prove that I was a human with value. I think this is one of the most insidious and destructive assumptions that our fear of shame spawns. I unconsciously saw people falling along a sort of hierarchy of human value, and I thought I needed to claw my way up the ladder of achievement to get to the top — a theoretical pinnacle beyond shame’s reach. But the problem is, you can never reach the top. It’s an impossible, Sisyphean task. There’s always someone seemingly above you. This is why so many super successful people still seem so driven and unhappy. Even when you’re, say, Jessica Chastain, you wake up in the morning and think, “Ugh, Meryl Streep.” And when you’re Meryl Streep, you wake up and think, “Ugh, Hillary Clinton.” And Hilary Clinton wakes up and thinks, “Ugh, Donald Trump.” And Donald Trump wakes up and thinks, “Ugh, Barack Obama.” And Barack Obama wakes up and thinks, “Ugh, Michelle Obama.” And Michelle Obama wakes up and thinks, “Ugh, Beyonce.” And Beyonce wakes up and thinks, “Ugh, Beyonce! How will I ever top myself!?”

But the real danger of this ideological hierarchy of human value isn’t that there are people “above you”, it’s the implication that there are people below you. The assumption that some people can be inferior, or have less value than you, is much more than just a harmless tactic for propping up your ego. It is the key ingredient for all types of disrespect. Everything from ghosting to stereotyping to racism, sexism, homophobia, bigotry, dehumanization, and beyond. It is also the go-to justification for systemic discrimination, violence, slavery, private golf clubs, and genocide. All of which are terrifyingly misguided tactics for dealing with shame. To quote psychologist and violence aficionado, James Gilligan:

“Cultures that have social classes, those that have caste systems, and those that practice slavery, all show significantly more of both shame and violence than cultures whose institutions do not divide people in those hierarchical ways. The existence of inequality exposes everyone to the risk of being inferior, which in turn stimulates aggressive competition to inflict the inferior status on others (such as by enslaving, impoverishing, or degrading them). In other words, inequality stimulates shame and shame stimulates the creation of inequality…”

And while I’m not a member of an elitist golf club, I’ve definitely avoided people at parties who I thought were “uncool” or “untalented” or “annoying” or just not “worthy” of my time and attention.

But after my shame breakthrough, I had perhaps the most important realization of all: there is no hierarchy of human value because all humans must be equally valuable. When you actually think about it logically, there is no science, or math, or empirical method whatsoever to measure the so-called “value” of a specific human being. And absolutely no objective grounds on which to judge the “worth” of one human against another. It’s impossible, foolhardy, and dangerous.

This is because the concept of human “value” is purely subjective. We literally just made it up. It only feels real because we have this powerful instinct called shame that pops up whenever our sense of personal “value” is undermined. And while the feeling of shame is definitely real, the dogmatic beliefs we attach to it — the meaning we give it — is not. Shame feels bad because that specific emotional reaction helped keep humans alive for hundreds of thousands of years in cooperative groups, not because it was a sign of any real or objective “badness”. Whether you believe human beings are intrinsically full of value, or whether you think we have no value at all, either way, we all have the exact same amount. We are all human, we are all the same, and we are all equal.

But once again, this isn’t something that you can just know in theory. You need to genuinely work at it. You need to truly believe we are equal, which I still struggle with all the time. To fully accept that we are all the same, you need to recognize just how subjective your own politics, beliefs, faith, and ideologies really are. For example, you might think, “Well come on, Gandhi had a positive impact on the world and Hitler was a total dick, so obviously Gandhi’s life had more ‘value’ than Hitler’s.” As much as we truly want to believe this, it’s not a scientific fact that we can actually prove. The only person who could possibly claim to know that for sure would have to be some kind of omniscient God.

Speaking of which, no discussion of shame would be complete without a foray into the wonderful world of religion. We’ve all heard of Catholic guilt or Jewish guilt, but often that “guilt” is really shame. And if so many of us struggle to feel worthy in our own religions, it’s no wonder that we can be so judgmental about those who follow a different religion altogether, or no religion at all. In overly simplistic terms, I think it boils down to in-groups and out-groups. If you follow us, you are good. If you don’t, you are bad. This is a classic trait of human psychology seen over and over again throughout history. It is also, of course, shame. In fact, I think the very concept of heaven and hell is pretty much shame incarnate. So it’s easy to see why some religious folks might be tempted to look at the world and see themselves at the top of a religious hierarchy of human value. “I believe my God created everything, which means he must have the authority to determine what is good and what is bad. And since I believe in him, worship him, and follow his rules, I’m pretty sure my God thinks I’m good. And if you don’t believe in him, worship him, or follow his rules, I’m pretty sure my God thinks you are bad. I can therefore surmise that I am literally a better, more valuable, and more worthy human being than you are.”

There are several problems with this admitted straw man of an argument. First of all, unless you have spoken directly to God — and I’m not talking about you heard it from a friend of a friend of God’s, or you read it in a book that God co-wrote with 40 other people — I mean, unless you were literally face-to-face with God almighty and he gave you an explicit thumbs up or thumbs down for every single person on the planet, then you cannot possibly know for sure what the omniscient creator of the entire universe thinks about anyone’s beliefs or behaviours. If God is all-powerful, that means he doesn’t need your help with anything — especially not judging or policing other people’s religiosity. In fact, there’s nothing stopping God from being theologically polyamorous. That is to say, having different relationships with different people that each have different expectations and even completely different rules!

Maybe you can claim that through a deep feeling of faith and a belief that your bible is the literal word of God that he has, in a way, spoken to you. But if that’s the case, that communication can only be for and about you. To use a deeply mysterious and private feeling like personal faith to judge what God thinks about anyone other than yourself is to basically claim that you are God. You might say, “Well, God has made it very clear to me that I should not have sex before marriage”. Ok, great. Don’t have sex before marriage. But if you turn around and tell your friend Luanda that she can’t have sex before marriage either — then you are suddenly way out of your depth. You have no idea what God has in mind for your friend Luanda. For all you know, God is up in heaven right now shaking his fist, complaining (like a comedian dealing with a heckler), “Hey buddy, I don’t go to your office and tell you how to do your job. I’m an omniscient deity, which means I happen to know some shit about Luanda that you couldn’t possibly fathom with your puny mortal brain. And you know what? Luanda can have sex with whoever she wants. Whenever she wants. The only reason you don’t get to have sex before marriage is because of that one time you uttered my name in vain in elementary school. Not cool man. Not cool.”

It goes deeper than that though. Even if there really is a God who for some reason spends all his time deciding who can and cannot have sex… that doesn’t mean he’s right. I don’t care if he created the entire fucking universe. That still doesn’t prove there’s an objective right or wrong. George Lucas may have created the entire Star Wars universe but that doesn’t mean he can make it right for Jar Jar Binks to rape an Ewok. For all we know, God could be living in another universe with a bunch of other Gods who all happen to use their godly knowledge to completely disagree with our God’s sense of morality. That would certainly help explain childhood leukemia or the success of Cats! The Musical.

Let’s do a little thought experiment. Imagine that you die and discover that there really is a God. BUT it turns out to be the God that ISIS believes in. And he’s all like, “Dude, you were supposed to be oppressing and murdering women and children this whole time!” Just because he’s God, would you be like, “Oh maaaaan, sorry God, give me another chance! I’ll go drive a truck into a crowd right away.” No, you wouldn’t say that. You’d be like, “With all due respect God, fuck you!”

So long bible story short, even if you believe in God, that still doesn’t give you any authority to judge the value of other people. I don’t think God herself even has that authority. The bottom line is, we all have a duty to operate under the belief that everyone is equal. And when I say equal, I don’t mean physically equal, or financially equal, or even mentally equal per se. I simply mean equal in terms of the imaginary concept of “human value” that lives at the core of shame. With that in mind, try to think of the one person in the entire world whose life has the most value to you. Let’s be honest, it’s probably you. But maybe it’s your partner, or your child, your parent, or your sibling. Maybe it’s the Pope. Maybe it’s the president. Maybe it’s Kanye West. Whoever it is, think about how much you value that person’s life. Think about how special and precious that person is to you. Now, take a moment and acknowledge that in fact, every single human being in the entire world is just as valuable and precious as that one person. That shouldn’t diminish the value of your special someone. That should elevate the value of everyone else. And that includes anyone whose life you thought had no value at all.

Which, of course, brings us full circle back to Hitler.

I know using Hitler in any argument is usually a sign that you’ve already lost that argument, but because shame connects to the very darkest recesses of the human soul, I find it useful to take things to an extreme in order to fully understand it. So bear with me. While it’s easy to look back on Hitler’s life now that it’s over and see it as ultimately bad and worthless, we have to admit that wasn’t always the case. When Hitler was born, he had just as much value and potential as anyone else. Perhaps if he had known that, he wouldn’t have needed to find an “out-group” to feel better than. If he had appreciated his own equality maybe he wouldn’t have tried to prove to himself, or to the world, just how far up the fictional hierarchy of human value he could climb. Or just how low he could try to force Jews, homosexuals, foreigners, and any other group that he found intimidating. Because delusions of supremacy are probably driven by the fear of their opposite.

This clumsy analogy highlights what I think is the real problem: we so often don’t feel valuable ourselves. We all go through those moments of crushing self-doubt. Usually immediately after asking ourselves the question, “What will people think?” Or when engaging in the dangerous art of comparison. To quote Mark Twain, “Comparison is the death of joy.” That’s because comparison functions on the assumption that one comparee needs to come out better than the other (Gandhi over Hitler, for example). So when you compare yourself to another person, you are essentially giving yourself a 50/50 chance of being Hitler lesser than. But even if you come out of a comparison feeling better than, you are still buying back into the fictional hierarchy of human value, which is shame. Comparison is an essential component of shame. It turns every human interaction into a subconscious competition for superiority. To quote James Gilligan once again, in regards to rehabilitating violent offenders:

“…they learn to recognize how they have been imposing a hierarchical structure on their relationships with people, in which one person (or sex) has to be regarded as superior, and the other as inferior, the corollary of which is that unless they impose the inferior role on the other person in the relationship, then they are not only in the inferior role themselves, they have lost their masculinity, since masculinity is defined as superiority. This is a recipe for violence, of course, when other people resist being treated as inferior, as they often do.”

No matter how good it may feel in the moment to think you are “superior” to someone, it is actually an extremely precarious and dangerous position for your own mental health. Because what goes up, must come down. When you live on a hierarchy, one of the most painful things that can happen to you is a perceived “status shift”. That’s when your younger brother beats you in an arm wrestle. Or your wife starts making more money than you. Or your less attractive friend gets the guy. Or you lose the promotion to your junior colleague. Or a black guy becomes the president (to say nothing of a woman). A status shift is when you are forced to acknowledge that someone you assumed was below you on the hierarchy of human value is suddenly, unequivocally above you. Did they rise in value? Or did you drop? Or were they always above you and everyone else knew it all along? In this way, someone else’s success becomes your shame. Even if their life has nothing to do with yours, the comparison itself can feel deeply real and humiliating. As if everyone in the world can see your stock value as a human being plummet in relation to this other person’s.

I think these status shifts also help explain why we love celebrity gossip so much (or any gossip, for that matter). To see faults in our stars (or neighbours) is to see them slip down the hierarchy. As they get closer or even lower than our own status, it seems to raise our standing by comparison. But the truth is, just like human “value”, there is no objective reality to comparison at all. It’s literally just something we invent in our minds. And it’s important to remember, even when you think you’re just judging someone else in isolation, you are in fact always creating a comparison. Judgment may feel like it only goes in one direction, towards Lindsay Lohan for example, but it’s actually just a comparison that you subconsciously assume you’ve already won. Judging people is just another means of clawing your way up the fictional hierarchy of human value. Which is shame. So the next time you find yourself feeling lesser than, remember that the solution is not to feel better than. The solution is to feel equal to.

Part 4: Shame vs Connection, here!