Stop Shaming Shame

Less shame, more blame.

I can’t think of anything worse than having judgments about things people do and sharing those feelings with friends and acquaintances.

Only a truly vile and disgusting person would assess another person’s behavior, have a visceral reaction to it, and want to share this assessment with the largest and most vehemently agreeing group of people they could possibly find. It’s hard to imagine what anyone even gets out of the practice. A stronger sense of self? Increased feelings of what sociologists like to call “belongingness?” I mean, do people actually feel that by publicly disliking things they’re actually giving other people information about their values and personal boundaries? Give me a break.

Human beings have to stop having strong opinions about each other. They need to stop allying themselves with other human beings who share those opinions. And they definitely need to stop getting pleasure out of feeling that they are superior to others who don’t conduct themselves exactly as they do.

And what we simply cannot stand for anymore is people then forming actual groups that are essentially centered around their opinions of how to do things right, and which constantly reference, as a way of defining themselves, how other people do things wrong.

It would be relatively simple to get the entire human race on board with this. We could start young, in schools, by simply teaching kids it is not ok to make moral judgments about other people’s behavior that they then have a pressing, primal need to see reflected by other human beings. And then when people get older, and they find themselves wanting to judge other people and share those feelings, they can just remind themselves of what they learned in school, and gently coach themselves to get back on track.

We can totally beat this shame thing! And then we can get start eradicating guilt, a useless emotion! What possible good could come from having lingering, unpleasant feelings of regret about a past action? And anger! Another silly one. What could be stupider than allowing your adrenaline to rise and your sense of safety to feel compromised when someone personally threatens you or does something you consider outside the social contract?

There is no reason for human beings to go on behaving as we have.