Both shame and guilt are widely used in the raising of children and in the structuring of societies. They are both painful emotions, and therefore people who feel wronged by another person often wish to inflict either or both of these emotions upon the person who they believe wronged them. Thus shame and guilt have a lot in common and sometimes there is a fine line or overlap between them.
Yet at the same time, in many ways they are opposites. Therefore, both in the raising of children or in the structuring of societies it is crucial to understand the differences between them. Here are typical definitions of each:
Shame: The painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc.
Guilt: A feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc.
SpecificityThe most basic difference between shame and guilt is the specificity of the target. Guilt is much more specific than shame. It is targeted at a specific action, whereas shame is all-encompassing. If I accidentally bump into someone, knocking them down and injuring them, I might feel guilty about that specific action.
Shame on the other hand may or may not be based upon a specific action, and typically it is not. But whether or not it is based upon a specific action, it is directed at a person’s whole being rather than the specific action. Jeremy Rifkin explains this in his book, “
The Empathic Civilization – The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis”:
Shame denigrates a person’s being, making them feel worthless and inhuman. To be shamed is to be rejected. Shame is a way of isolating a person from the collective we. He or she becomes an outsider and a nonperson.
It is easy to see from this description that shame would usually tend to be much more painful than guilt – though it is of course possible that severe guilt could be more painful than a case of mild shame.
Consequences and relationship to empathyThe difference in specificity between shame and guilt is highly related to their radically different consequences. Guilt, since it is targeted at a specific action, has the potential to produce highly constructive consequences – with the help of empathy. That is, if a person feels empathy towards a person or animal whom he has harmed, then he may have the capacity to resolve his guilt by apologizing to his victim or in some other way making amends.
Rifkin explains the process with respect to the raising of children by noting that when a child’s behavior is hurtful towards another person, the parents should ideally use the event as a teaching tool to further the child’s capacity for empathy. They do this by gently attempting to get the child to acknowledge and understand the effect of his behavior on the person he harmed:
If the child’s behavior is approached in a nonjudgmental but concerned manner, it is likely to trigger the empathic distress and a sense of guilt and the consequent desire to make reparation to the victim. What induction disciplining is really teaching the child is the substance of human morality – responsibility for one’s actions, compassion for others, a willingness to come to another’s aid and comfort, and a proper sense of fair play and justice. The maturation of empathy and the development of a moral sense are one and the same thing… Helping a child reflect on his own behavior, feel a sense of guilt and remorse, and make an effort at reparation is a deeply therapeutic process.
The consequences of shame, however, are wholly destructive. Since a person’s whole being is involved, shame cannot be resolved simply by making amends for a wrong. Indeed, there is usually no wrong involved. The all-encompassing nature of shame, far from involving empathy, actually tends to shut it off. Rifkin explains:
Shame has the effect of turning off the innate empathic impulse. If one feels like a non-being, socially ostracized and without self-worth, he is unable to draw upon his empathic reserves to feel for another’s plight. Unable to emotionally connect with others, he either shrinks into withdrawal or acts out his sense of abandonment by exercising rage at others. Why rage? Because it is often the only way he has open to him to communicate and engage his fellow human beings.
Raising children in such a manner can and often does have disastrous consequences:
By shaming a child the parents are letting him know that he is not living up to their expectations and, therefore, not worthy of their consideration. The child is left with the impression that his very being is a disappointment and that he must conform to an “ideal image” of what his parents expect from him or suffer the consequences of rejection.
Such a process can be extremely destructive. It can destroy a child’s self-esteem, paralyze his ability to act constructively, and cause him to grow into an angry and violent adult.
SourceAs guilt is intimately rooted in empathy, its source is primarily internal. One person may
attempt to cause another person to feel guilty about having wronged her. But unless that person actively participates he will feel no guilt. Guilt ultimately must come from within – rooted in a sense that one has wronged another person, and a feeling of empathy towards the wronged person which leads to a determination to reconcile the wrong. Rifkin explains that “Guilt is an internal mechanism that reminds one of his deep social connection to others and the need to repair the social bond”.
Some people refuse to feel guilty about anything. They have no sense of guilt – meaning that they probably lack a sense of empathy and morals.
Shame on the other hand is imposed on a person through an external source – usually by an authority figure or by society as a whole. Typically shame is imposed by majorities upon minorities or by the powerful upon the vulnerable. It is used as a method of control, and it is often achieved through intimidation and violence – such as in rape.
It is theoretically possible for a person to resist the feeling of shame, even when violently imposed by a powerful authority figure or majority of society. But few people have the internal force to resist it when forcefully imposed.
ReasonablenessIt follows that the process leading to guilt has the potential to be reasonable, whereas shaming usually lacks any component of reasonableness. It is reasonable (and useful) for a person to feel guilty when he inflicts suffering on another person – whether purposefully or through carelessness. As noted above, the guilty feelings often lead to a process of reconciliation between the two parties.
But when the powerful impose shame upon the vulnerable, rationality is almost always lacking, except in the sense that one person or group uses it as a
tool to control another person or group. For example slave masters routinely used shame against their slaves as a tool to keep them in line. In addition to imposing shame through violence, they used special vocabularies to impose shame (and justify their own actions). The word
drapetomania, for example, was used to define a mental illness in which black slaves were plagued by an excessive and “abnormal” desire to flee captivity.
Shame is often used against sexual desires and practices. For example, men often use words like “slut” or “whore” to refer to women who, in their opinion have too much sex. In the good majority of cases, the sexual activities for which women are shamed are not activities for which there is any good reason to feel guilty about.
Nor is there anything reasonable about the shame that societies inflict upon homosexuals, simply for being who they are. That shame is simply something that the powerful inflict upon the vulnerable for whatever sick reason it is that motivates them.
Motivations of those who attempt to instill shame and guiltSince as noted above, guilt potentially has highly constructive uses whereas shame is usually a highly
destructive emotion, it follows that those who attempt to instill guilt (in their children for example) often do so out of love, whereas those who attempt to instill shame almost always do so out of hate. Rifkin describes the loving aspect of guilt instillation from the standpoint of loving parents attempting to instill a sense of guilt in their children:
By explaining how the other person (whom their child wronged) might feel and asking him how he would feel in the same situation, the parents are letting him know that they trust his innate goodness and desire to empathize with others and make amends…
Shame on the other hand is such a painful and destructive emotion that nobody would ever attempt to instill it in someone whom they loved.
Shaming culturesAs noted above, shame is often used as a means of societal control. For example, when a nation’s leaders need young men to use as cannon fodder for their wars, they often attempt to use shame as a form of blackmail to recruit volunteers. Majorities use it against minorities to keep them in line. The word “unpatriotic” is used against those who criticize their nation’s leaders, as a means of shaming them into silence.
Right wingers, especially those who occupy positions of great power, make wide use of shame. When their nation’s economy goes to hell, leaving millions unemployed they attempt to shame those who are unable to find a job. By doing that they relieve themselves of the responsibility – as our elected representatives – to create jobs or lend a helping hand to the unemployed. They also use it as a political tool. The shaming of the most vulnerable (immigrants, minorities, homosexuals) of our population is used as a divide-and-conquer technique designed to win the votes of the rest of the electorate.
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett explore in their book, “
The Spirit Level – Why Greater Equality makes Societies Stronger”, the relationships between inequality, shame, and indicators of societal pathology such as violent crime. Unequal societies tend to impose shame on those of lower status. Shame leads to violence and other pathological consequences for society. The authors explain this relationship:
So what factors explain why some societies seem better than others at preventing or controlling these impulses to violence? The simple answer is that increased inequality ups the stakes in the competition for status… The impact of inequality on violence is even better established and accepted than the other effects of inequality…
Cultures that make wide use of shame are ugly to behold. Jeremy Rifkin describes the hypocrisy and tragedy of shaming societies:
Ironically, while a shaming culture pretends to adhere to the highest standards of moral perfection, in reality it produces a culture of self-hate, envy, jealousy, and hatred toward others. Shaming cultures, throughout history, have been the most aggressive and violent because they lock up the empathic impulse, and with it the ability to experience another’s plight and respond with acts of compassion. When a child grows up in a shaming culture believing that he must conform to an ideal of perfection or purity or suffer the wrath of the community, he is likely to judge everyone else by the same rigid, uncompromising standards...
It is not uncommon to hear (in a shaming culture) about a woman who has been gang-raped and who is then stoned to death by her own family and neighbors, because she has brought shame on herself and her family. Rather than empathize with her suffering, the community inflicts even greater punishment on her… In the eyes of the community, she bears the shame of the rape, despite the fact that she was the innocent victim.
Towards a more constructive societal use for shameAs described above, shaming is almost always a highly destructive process. But it need not necessarily be so. The reason that it is so is that it is used primarily by the dominant culture to suppress those under its control. The dominant culture has lots of assets to use in that cause.
But shaming is a
psychological process. People can only be shamed by those whom they respect. Unfortunately, way too many people have too much respect for wealth, power, and authority rather than for the best human qualities, such as empathy, honesty, and courage (intellectual as well as physical). Even psychopaths, when they hold great power, command the unwavering respect of millions. Those who hold great respect for psychopaths are highly susceptible to their manipulation and control.
Shame is a tremendously powerful force because it is so terribly painful. People will do almost anything to avoid it. Wilkinson and Pickett describe the power of shame:
Our sensitivity to shame continues to provide the basis for conformity throughout adult life. People often find even the smallest infringement of social norms in the presence of others causes so much embarrassment that they are left wishing they could just disappear…
But our society puts shame to all the wrong purposes. We are bombarded by messages aimed at shaming us into buying things that we are led to believe will provide us with status. We are shamed into withholding criticism of our leaders, for fear of being branded “unpatriotic”. We are shamed into supporting our nation’s wars of aggression and all the
crimes against humanity which that entails.
Shame could be put to much better use if it was pointed
away from the powerless and
towards those psychopaths who hold positions of great power. Shame could be an important tool for the control of psychopaths since psychopaths lack a sense of guilt. What if instead of low status being a cause of shame, shame was instead attached to actions that actually
deserved to be labeled as shameful?
For example, what if causing great damage to our planet became a source of shame? What if white collar crime became a major source of shame? What if it became shameful for our nation’s leaders to prosecute unnecessary wars? What if it was considered shameful to kill civilians in war? What if police brutality was widely considered shameful? If all these things became a deep source of shame they would begin to go away immediately. We wouldn’t even need any laws to make them go away.
That could all happen. But it will happen only when enough people develop the psychological fortitude to attach shame to those activities that really warrant it. It will happen only when enough people learn to respect the human qualities that really matter rather than the false gods of wealth, power, and status.
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