What’s Up Next?

Sunday, September 3, 2017  ~
Re-Calibrating the Dream/Nightmare
(read, ‘Houston, we have a problem…’)

Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where he delivered his famous, “I Have a Dream,” speech during the Aug. 28, 1963, march on Washington, D.C. (Credit: Marines via Wiki)

“[A man’s] moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.” ~ William Faulkner, interview in The Paris Review (1958)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking at the Civil Rights March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963.
(Credit: Army images)

“Shame.  The feeling that will save mankind.”
~ Screenplay for Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972)

Inquiry:  Are there certain feelings that you have more of an affinity for?  Or, conversely, an aversion to?  How does the context with which your interpret these feelings serve? And how might it be an impediment?

Cache of Inquiries

FYI ~ NVCa Advanced (for requests & support)

“Shame is for sissies.”
~ Baron Edward von Kloberg III,
American lobbyist (1942-2005)

Tools for working with emotional dream/nightmare states of consciousness:
Emotions are action-requiring neurological programs

See also:  Linnaea Marvell’s Dynamics of Self-Connection [PDF]

By Everaldo Coelho via Wikimedia Commons

Linnaea Marvell’s Magic-Wand [PDF]

1. For the “magic wand” exercise, link above, reflect on a time when you experienced shame (whether arising organically within yourself &/or prompted by an external stimuli),
2. Notice how you reacted: e.g. contraction, rebellion, silence/shut-down, etc.
3. When you consider your reaction — i.e. (potentially) restricted range of motion you may have experienced at the time — compost your recollection of the event a bit further by considering what might have mattered that elicited such an evocative emotion (an empathic inquiry, whether in the form of self-connection, &/or with the accompaniment of another).

Today (date posted), August 28th, is the 54th anniversary of…

By National Park Service Digital Image Archives [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

It’s worth noting — perhaps especially in light of current events (Neo-Nazis/White Supremacists parading through streets of Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia) — that two and a half weeks after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his infamous “I Have a Dream” speech, he then bore witness to a backlash against the Civil Rights Nonviolent movement he championed when four children were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham.

The Lasting Power of Dr. King’s Dream Speech – The New York Times

By Michiko Kakutani

“Excerpt:  The entire March on Washington speech reverberates with biblical rhythms and parallels, and bristles with a panoply of references to other historical and literary texts that would have resonated with his listeners. In addition to allusions to the prophets Isaiah (“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low”) and Amos (“We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream”), there are echoes of the Declaration of Independence (“the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”); Shakespeare (“this sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent”); and popular songs like Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” (“Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York,” “Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California”)….Along the way, he developed a gift for synthesizing assorted ideas and motifs and making them his own — a gift that enabled him to address many different audiences at once, while making ideas that some might find radical somehow familiar and accessible.” 

Within weeks of King’s “Dream” [speech], a nightmare was wrought:

Martin Luther King Jr. ‘Eulogy for the Young Victims’ September 18, 1963

MLK, “God still has a way of ringing good out of evil…”

I recall being struck by the proximity of these two events, when first I learned that the dream of August chilled, as the nightmare of September’s church bombing followed precipitously on its heels.

(Notice MLK’s rhetoric in the brief clip, directly below, a nonviolent ethos that seems deliberately infused with the emotion of shame, at least to my ears.)

Martin Luther King, Jr. — What Murdered These Four Girls?

MLK:  “What murdered these little girls?
Every negro who refuses to go down to try to register to vote participated in that act…”

One way that I have come to conceive of the variations amongst the ‘holy trinity’ of nonviolence:  Gandhi, King, and Mandela — is to note that each of these leaders was dealt a very different hand, in terms of the respective facts on the ground, and each consequently chose to play their nonviolent cards in distinctive ways.  Gandhi, perhaps the most overtly pure in his ahimsa quest, was (at least initially) primarily engaged in the expulsion of the Brits from India (so his form of nonviolence rested upon the conscience of an Empire’s unwillingness to unilaterally engage in violence against a colonized, indigenous peoples, unto perpetuity).  King & Mandela’s leadership was not one of turf expulsion of the powers that be, rather each had to re-calibrate the equality equation by appealing to a government in power to become increasingly willing to compromise and adopt alternate power sharing measures amongst those who co-existed on common ground.  MLK was able to appeal to the federal government for protection against various states with more segregationist policies.  Mandela, who was not considered a citizen under an analogous umbrella of an overarching government’s protection, felt he had to resort to other means (after a half century during which strict adherence to nonviolence proved ineffective).  All were willing to sacrifice, even to die (Nelson Mandela: An ideal for which I am prepared to die) for their cause, however the take away, for me, in considering these men and their varying, respective paths despite obvious heartfelt conviction, is that nonviolence is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all proposition vis-a-vis (social justice) efficacy.  One must be tactical in formulating strategies that will adequately attend to the needs in play.  In other words, what may initially seem to be ‘violent’ — not in alignment with ahimsa’s pure essence — may in the long run prevent even more suffering (a notion distilled in NVC’s idea of the ‘protective use of force’).

MLK:  “What murdered these poor young girls?  …The apathy and the complacency of many negroes who will sit down on their stools and do nothing and will not engage in creative protest to get rid of this evil system…”

And MLK said this despite…

John Lewis, American civil rights activist and (future) member of the House of Representatives (D-Georgia), at meeting of American Society of Newspaper Editors. (Courtesy of Marion S. Trikosko, U.S. News and World Reports via  Wikimedia Commons)

Via WaPo:  Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), then an official of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was the youngest speaker at the march. “We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here — for they have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages…”

Each of these men were egalitarian game-changers, even if at times their strategies  inevitably provoked violence (with a more harmonious end in mind), and while each may have conceived of their principled stance to diminish long-term suffering in rather differing ways — in my estimation — neither MLK nor Mandela would necessarily pass a stringent NVC ‘litmus test’ (e.g. MLK’s intentional evocation of shame, Mandela’s tactical rather than principled approach to nonviolence).  A bit of “heterodoxy” that demonstrates that the historical evolution of nonviolence — a movement that tipped the balance of power in three separate nations — cannot be viewed as monolithic; something well worth considering (methinks), especially in light of the strategic efficacy necessary given the contemporary stakes of our Anthropocene era.

Bertrand Russell’s Advice for Future Generations

“Policy advocates engaged in changing public opinion rarely pay much attention to what the academic literature says about how public opinion is formed and how and why it changes.  That’s too bad, because while political scientists disagree about a lot of things, this is not one of them.  Several decades of robust empirical tests offer a pretty good road map for those who want to effectively go about ‘waging and winning the war of ideas.’  …Elite discourse—not interpersonal discourse or influence—is the dominant means of transmitting political messages.” ~ Jerry Taylor — How To Change Public Opinion

FYI ~ Common Dreams: Not Your Grandma’s Civil Rights Strategy

Excerpt from link above (via Jon Else): “…Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — and hundreds of decisions handed down by federal district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court all slowly expanded protections to African Americans and set precedents for all Americans. Unlike blacks within white-ruled South Africa who, at the time, were not citizens of their own nation and had little hope of federal protection, blacks across the deep South could succeed because they were citizens not only of their own states, but of the United States.”

President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Martin Luther King, Jr. at the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
(Credit: Yoichi Okamoto via Wikimedia Commons)

Ari Berman – Give us the Ballot

The GOP’s Attack on Voting Rights Was the Most Under-Covered Story of 2016

Waiting for a Perfect Protest?

Well-intended moderates have used unrealistic standards to judge anti-racism activism. But this is nothing new — just ask Martin Luther King Jr.

See also ~ Additional posts re: Mandela’s use of nonviolence as a tactic to transform South Africa.

 Crowd gathers for Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a Dream’ speech at the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963

By The White House from Washington, DC,
via Wikimedia Commons

This blog is about dialogue, so the historical retrospective as to nonviolence’s three most iconic figures is offered for the sake of examining why context can necessitate a more nuanced view when choosing which strategies will truly attend to needs.

Nonverbal communication – Wikipedia:

NVC theory

Overview

Via Wikipedia:  “Nonviolent Communication holds that most conflicts between individuals or groups arise from miscommunication about their human needs, due to coercive or manipulative language that aims to induce fear, guilt, shame, etc. These ‘violent’ modes of communication, when used during a conflict, divert the attention of the participants away from clarifying their needs, their feelings, their perceptions, and their requests, thus perpetuating the conflict.”

Certainly, the “what murdered these young girls” speech given by MLK could be translated from the ‘shaming, guilting, fear-ridden’ jackal dialect into something more resembling giraffe, toward better adherence with NVC’s ethos, however would it then be more persuasive?   Would MLK still be MLK if his speeches were all scrubbed in this way?  I have a sense that this whitewashing, pardon the pun, would drain some of the life and moral force with which MLK moved a nation.  To place these two speeches in an NVC context, one might note that the ‘dream’ speech was infused with the living energy of needs (perhaps Marshall Rosenberg was inspired by MLK when he first formulated his concept of wants/needs), while the four little girls speech could be viewed as employing ‘jackal’ as a kind of ‘protective use of force’ to buffer against the (ongoing) threat of physical violence.  So, it might be said, that MLK reserved his “bi-lingual” tongue.

MLK:  “…What murdered these four young girls?  …Was the negro business and professional individual who is more concerned with his job then he is with freedom and justice.”

Similarly, when the devastating consequences of certain social ills — such as climate breakdown — loom large, encroaching ever nearer with a sense of cataclysmic urgency, it can be difficult to know how widespread the appeal of an NVC type dialect, in all circumstances, nor envision that a crucial tipping point would motivate complicit actors/entities and galvanize sufficient masses in time.

The Strange Future Hurricane Harvey Portends – The Atlantic

CNN:  Now we have a moral duty to talk about climate change

Soldiers with the Texas Army National Guard move through flooded Houston streets as floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey continue to rise, Monday, August 28, 2017. More than 12,000 members of the Texas National Guard have been called out to support local authorities in response to the storm.

U.S. Army photo by 1st Lt. Zachary West (via Wikimedia Commons)

Trump’s EPA Claims Climate Scientists Are Politicizing Hurricane Harvey

Rick Perry Quote: [In regards to climate change] “The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy in jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is nonsense. I mean, and I told somebody, I said, just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said, ‘Here is the fact’…Galileo got outvoted for a spell.”

Borges opens his essay on The Art of Verbal Abuse, “A conscientious study of other literary genres has led me to believe in the greater value of insult and mockery. The aggressor, I tell myself, knows that the tables will be turned, and that “anything you say may be used against you,” as the honest constables of Scotland Yard warn us. That fear is bound to produce special anxieties, which we tend to disregard on more comfortable occasions…” (continues)

(FYI:  criticism referencing Nonviolence)  

My social-change agency preoccupations, these days, are primarily concerned with the issue of climate disruption and so for the duration of this post I will focus on shame with this in mind — rather than examine other kinds of deviations from a ‘higher octane’ ahimsa.

Diorama of Rosa Parks in Her Bus Seat – National Civil Rights Museum – Downtown Memphis – Tennessee – USA

By Adam Jones, Ph.D. via Wikimedia Commons

Three Cheers for Cultural Appropriation – The New York Times

Why We Should Put Women on Pedestals

Since statues tell us whom society deems important, more female figures are in order.

Athena holding a helmet and a spear, with an owl.
Attributed to the Brygos Painter (circa 490–480 BC).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In Praise of Equipoise – The New York Times

#Silence=Death

I do this as a cri de coeur, given the dire circumstances in which we find ourselves, as a species/civilization, and with the inspiration of King & Mandela’s creativity in nonviolent ethos adaptability.  In other words, historically nonviolence has not been monolithic, and has had to evolve in order to survive and thrive.  Similarly, I’m concerned with too monochrome an approach to NVC and, conversely, how a dialogic diversity of tactics, and a more nuanced (shades of gray vs. black/white) world view could play a role in retrofitting NVC to better address the pressing concerns of the anthropocene age in which we live..

Borges concludes, “…Let me add a certain virile reply recorded by De Quincey (Writings XI, 226). Someone flung a glass of wine in the face of a gentleman during a theological or literary debate. The victim did not show any emotion and said to the offender: “This, sir, is a digression: now, if you please, for the argument.” (The author of that reply, a certain Dr. Henderson, died in Oxford around 1787, without leaving us any memory other than those just words: a sufficient and beautiful immortality.)

A popular tale, which I picked up in Geneva during the last years of World War I, tells of Miguel Servet’s reply to the inquisitors who had condemned him to the stake: ‘I will burn, but this is a mere event. We shall continue our discussion in eternity.'”

[PDF] Borges:  The Art of Verbal Abuse – Gwern.net

The personal is political: the journey of a feminist slogan …

“All successful slogans are subject to misappropriation:
it is a sign of their success.  The personal is political – but mind the gap.” ~ Rahila Gupta

Four writers/researchers — Liv Larsson, Brene Brown, Karla McLaren & Jennifer Jacquet — all with differing takes on shame.  (Track how each might be assessed by MLK’s order/justice ratio &/or Gupta’s ‘mind the gap’ cautionary note.)

Liv Larsson author of Anger, Guilt, & Shame, “Shame has a natural core, but the way that it’s being lived out in the world, in our lives, it’s not helpful anymore…“

Brené Brown (Shame & Vulnerability Researcher), “Shame is far more likely to cause destructive behaviors than it is to cure it…”

Karla McLaren author of The Language of Emotions, “Yeah, shame and guilt are delightful!  Some of the best emotions ever…”

Jennifer Jacquet author of Is Shame Necessary?, “So, I’m interested in how we make six billion people get along and one way we can do that is through shame…”

Broader context, below, of remarks (above)…

Liv Larsson, “Shame is ruling people’s lives.  People are making choices that they would not do if they wouldn’t feel shame.  People run away from the shame, and the anger, and the guilt instead of making a free choice as to how they want to live.  So actually shame that makes the decisions, and not you, and you will never feel happy in that way…  So shame is also very often there in a mediation situation.  People are very often feeling shame when there is a conflict or when something happened that led to disconnection.  So in knowing shame is crucial for being a mediator.  I would say that shame is a bigger problem than a conflict.  Conflict is a natural thing.  Shame has a natural core, but the way that it’s being lived out in the world, in our lives, it’s not helpful anymore.  It’s stopping us living from our full potential, it’s stopping us from having deep connection, it’s stopping us from having empathy and care for each another.  And it’s not shame in itself but the way that we approach shame or the way that we deal with it that is the problem.”

YouTube:  Liv Larsson talks about mediation and shame

See also:  “Shame, guilt and anger are life-serving signals. We have misinterpreted these signals. We need to reinterpret them if we want to be able to manage them in ways that work for us.”  (continues: [PDF] Chapter 1 Shame, Guilt and Anger – NVC)

Brene Brown, “Shame is far more likely to cause destructive behaviors than it is to cure it…”

Via CBS This Morning:

Despite the positive stories coming out of Houston, there remains a deep political divide marked by heated rhetoric on both sides. Brown warns that dehumanization is a “subtle process” and it starts with language.

For that to happen, “We have to slowly move groups of people out of what we consider moral inclusion. We have to move them out of what we see as humanity,” Brown said. “If you go on Twitter today, or Facebook, or any social [media] we see people on the left and right using dehumanizing language about each other like that. And it is terrifying.”

What I find interesting about the NPR interview beneath, is that in discussing shame, Brene Brown does acknowledge that there are some people “who don’t experience shame” as they “have no capacity for human empathy or connection” (and certainly as a researcher she is likely away of the findings that those who are on this end of the continuum are disproportionately represented in positions of power, such as the heads of multi-national corporations).  Which begs the question of what kind of efficacy the ‘personal development’ type tools will have when extrapolated to a more realpolitik arena?  (A similar dilemma that was faced by MLK & Mandela — an opponent who would dehumanize without remorse — and thus needed to be met with some sort of force, whether by appealing to an even mightier ‘power-over’ as with MLK’s appeal to the federal government to crack down on state/local racism or the even trickier dilemma that confronted Mandela, representing a people devoid of such protections and whose appeals fell on deaf ears decade after decade.)

Brené Brown: Can We Gain Strength From Shame? : NPR

Brown: “…So very quickly, really about 6 weeks into this research, I ran into this unnamed thing that absolutely unraveled connection in a way that I didn’t understand or had never seen. And so I pulled back out of the research and thought, I need to figure out what this is. And it turned out to be shame. And shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection. Is there something about me, that if other people know it or see it, that I won’t be worthy of connection. The things I can tell you about it, it’s universal. We all have it. The only people who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it, the more you have it. What underpinned this shame, this I’m not good enough…”

‘Messages of Shame Are Organized Around Gender’ – The Atlantic

Dr. Brené Brown: “Shame Is Lethal”

Shame is Your Friend!

Via YouTube channel — Emotion Dynamics:  “Shame is a crucial social emotion that supports your integrity, your behavior, and your moral structure. Shame is also necessary for the development of empathy. When you can understand the vital purpose of shame and learn to work with it, your life will improve in remarkable ways. See Embracing Guilt and Shame: http://karlamclaren.com/embracing-gui… This Empathic Mindfulness practice called Burning Contracts is particularly helpful for addressing toxic shame: http://karlamclaren.com/reworking-a-t…“

 What Happens When You Shame Other People?

Shame: The excruciating, exquisite, and indispensable emotion – Karla McLaren

The Gifts of Shame: Restoring Integrity
Integrity ~ Atonement ~ Self-respect ~ The capacity to amend your behavior

Emotional Vocabulary List (you can download this list here):

Lite (free-flowing) Shame

Hesitant ~ Flushed ~ Self-conscious ~ Speechless ~ Discomfited ~ Awkward ~ Humble ~ Reticent ~ Abashed ~ Flustered ~ Withdrawn

Shame in its Mood State

Ashamed ~ Guilty ~ Embarrassed ~ Intimidated ~ Penitent ~ Regretful ~ Remorseful ~ Chagrined ~ Culpable ~ Reproachful ~ Sheepish ~ Rueful ~ Contrite ~ Humbled

Intense Shame

Humiliated ~ Guilt-ridden ~ Guilt-stricken ~ Disgraced ~ Stigmatized ~ Mortified ~ Self-condemning ~ Self-flagellating ~ Degraded ~ Shamefaced ~ Belittled ~ Demeaned ~ Ostracized

Karla McLaren:  “As I’ve gone through my life working with emotions  And I found this definition which was created by a neuroscientist of emotion, Antonio Damasio, and he says thats emotions are action-requiring neurological programs.  And that’s such a wonderful definition because it doesn’t call emotions good or bad.  It doesn’t say they’re negative, or they’re evil, or they’re the best things in the world, or you should stop having them, or you should have more of them.  But if you can look at emotions as action requiring neurological programs and turn towards the emotion rather than running away from it and turn toward the emotion and ask ‘what action do you require from me?’  You can start to develop a brand new relationship with your emotions where you can access the skills, gifts and abilities that they bring you rather than treating them as something that happens to you…”

Antonio Damasio: The quest to understand consciousness | TED Talk

Karla McLaren (3 mins), “Yeah, shame and guilt are delightful!
Some of the best emotions ever…”

Jennifer Jacquet, “So, I’m interested in how we make six billion people get along and one way we can do that is through shame…”

(Opens with shame pictures of totem poles, carved by indigenous Americans since the 1700s,) 

Jennifer Jacquet at the NYS Writers Institute

“Shame is nothing without the norm that it’s attached to…”
~ Jennifer Jacquet

Jennifer Jacquet, “Is Shame Necessary?”

Jennifer Jacquet, “…These emotions, like personal shame, are painful and very memorable.  That is not what this book is about. .. This is not about the personal shame that doesn’t allow you to connect with people or form deep relationships.  It’s not about the deep personal shame that prevents you from getting up in the morning.  It’s about a different form of shame.  It’s about the type of tool that you can use to change behavior.  Often times this form of shame actually requires a lot of courage.  And it’s the type of shame that can obviously do good or bad, but has been used by groups to stop mountain top removal, it’s been used to stop entire governments from executing juvenile offenders… It’s more about group help.  It’s not about the feeling of personal shame but the power of social disapproval and the power of reputation to change things at scale.”

“The personal is political – but mind the gap.”
~ Rahila Gupta

Shame evoked merely by bearing witness to the public square

“Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.”

-Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go From Here? (1967)

Charlottesville: Race and Terror – VICE News

Mark Bray v. Richard Cohen from Meet the Press 8-20-17

Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart

NYT:  “This chart captures the rise in inequality better than any other chart that I’ve seen.”

Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world
News | The Guardian

By Stephen Metcalf:  Last summer, researchers at the International Monetary Fund settled a long and bitter debate over “neoliberalism”: they admitted it exists. Three senior economists at the IMF, an organisation not known for its incaution, published a paper questioning the benefits of neoliberalism. In so doing, they helped put to rest the idea that the word is nothing more than a political slur, or a term without any analytic power. The paper gently called out a “neoliberal agenda” for pushing deregulation on economies around the world… (continues)

Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate as individuals –
The Guardian

@Martin_Lukacs‘s conclusion:  …Society, long said to be departed, is now back with a vengeance.

So grow some carrots and jump on a bike: it will make you happier and healthier. But it is time to stop obsessing with how personally green we live – and start collectively taking on corporate power.

Harvey in Photographs – The New York Times

Houston, you have a problem, and some of it of your own making

By Peter Hannam

Yes, Houston, you do have a problem, and – as insensitive as it seems to bring it up just now – some of it is your own making.

Let’s be clear upfront. I unreservedly wish that all of your millions of citizens get safely through Tropical Storm Harvey, and the biblical-scale deluge and floods that are forecast to swamp your city in coming days.

But, as the self-styled “world capital of the oil and gas industry”, there’s a connection between rising global greenhouse gas levels and the extreme weather now being inflicted that some of your residents have understood for decades and had a hand in.

Houston and its surrounds are home to some 5000 energy-related firms, 17 of which are counted among the Fortune 500 list of largest US companies… (continues)

 British journalist and author George Monbiot writes, “Our greatest predicament, the issue that will define our lives, has been blotted from the public’s mind.”

George Monbiot: We Can’t Be Silent on Climate Change

Why are the crucial questions about Hurricane Harvey not being asked

Harvey Didn’t Come Out of the Blue. Now is the Time to Talk About Climate Change – The Intercept

How G.O.P. Leaders Came to View Climate Change as Fake Science

Shame vs. Guilt

Notice both the semantic differences (how shame/guilt is defined) in addition to the distinct contexts in which these two emotions are discussed — which could be roughly delineated as the personal (Brenee Brown: guilt better than shame, individually) vs. the political (Jennifer Jacquet: shame better than guilt vis-a-vis societal efficacy), although this, too, is an oversimplification:

Shame verses Guilt – Brene Brown

Jennifer Jacquet on Shame

“Guilt came to eclipse shame as a tool…”
(7 1/2 minutes into the clip above)

guilt

shame

 Book Review of Is Shame Necessary?
It can be in the right hands | New Scientist

 

LET’S put shame to work for a good cause. That’s the provocative assertion of Jennifer Jacquet, a conservationist at New York University. In Is Shame Necessary? she argues that we need to rely more on shame, and less on guilt, as a way of putting pressure on people and institutions to act in environmentally responsible ways. While guilt is a private emotion, a failure to live up to one’s own standards, shame occurs when a transgressor is held up to public disapproval. And that, Jacquet says, makes all the difference.

For one thing, institutions such as governments and corporations lack the capacity to feel guilt but they can be shamed into changing their behaviour. The private nature of guilt also means, though, that people can find their own ways of salving their consciences, often in trivial ways. “Consumers are swept up in using reusable bags and mugs and turning off the lights,” she writes. “This is like taking vitamin C after fracturing your skull in a car accident: it is not wrong; it is just so far from what is needed to actually fix things.”

Shaming, by contrast, gives citizens a way to shine a light on the worst offenders, the bad apples that cause harm out of all proportion to their numbers. Think of the US and China and their carbon emissions, or the American coal-mining companies that level whole mountains in Appalachia. The bad publicity that results can sometimes change policies, much as the campaign for dolphin-safe tuna did in the late 1980s.

Jacquet systematically explores the nature of shaming and some of the psychological evidence that shows why it works. In doing so, she makes a strong case for the value of shaming for shaping and enforcing social norms… (continues)

Shame & Civil Rights

John Lewis
(Courtesy of Stanley Wolfson,
World Telegram staff photographer
via Wikimedia Commons)

Video montage of the Civil Rights Era & Trump rallies/today

It’s worth noting that, to my mind, MLK employed shame — whether in Selma (Sheriff Jim Clark) or Birmingham (“Bull” Connor) — rather tactically and intentionally towards bending the moral arc of the universe…

Segregation at All Costs: Bull Connor and the Civil Rights Movement

“The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957

Whether reconciliation is likely, or not — see:  Sheriff Jim Clark died believing he did right thing — I believe that MLK, was willing to use both shame and ‘power over’ (the federal might against the local, more segregationist forces) to the end of equality.

Drawing upon the conscience of a nation and the might of the federal government to appeal to the better angels of more provincial governments.

“Shame on you George Wallace for the wet ropes that bruised the muscles, for the bull whip that cut the flesh, for the clubs that broke the bones, and for the tear gas that seared the eyes, nose, nostrils and the lungs and choked people into insensibility.  This is not the American way…” ~ Senator Ralph W. Yarborough

President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the White House Cabinet Room
Courtesy of Yoichi Okamoto via Wikipedia Commons

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, look on.

By Cecil Stoughton, White House Press Office (via Wikimedia Commons)

Shame & Rising Above It

An example of shame being weaponized by the powerful against the less so…

What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals – The New York Times

Photo of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. being arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for “loitering” in 1958.

By Associated Press – Public Domain, Link

By Colin Mutchler from Brooklyn, United States via Wikimedia Commons

When Emotions Make Better Decisions – Antonio Damasio

How does emotion affect the way that we respond to the world?

“Maybe shame is the reason that we need a God.”
~ Jennifer Jacquet