The Shame Industrial Complex Is Booming. Who’s Cashing In?

The Shame Industrial Complex Is Booming. Who’s Cashing In? (behind paywall), Alissa Bennett, The New York Times.

Where “The Shame Machine” seems to rattle off its tracks is in O’Neil’s discussion of what she refers to as “healthy shaming” — let’s call it a lateral punch. The lateral punch is the blow that we strike against people who do not share our social value systems; it’s the self-righteous bravado we feel when we tell an internet stranger, after the fact, to put his mask on; it’s the thrill of watching someone be reprimanded when they violate our understanding of how things should be. Though O’Neil outlines how the lateral punch often successfully influences behaviors that result in a genuine collective benefit (she provides Covid-19 vaccinations as an example), she neglects to fully excavate what role sheer pleasure plays in our impulse to shame in those situations that have neither obvious victim nor victimizer. It seems disingenuous to ignore what is quietly at play in even the “healthiest” of shaming: a request for compliance that is hinged to a threat of ostracization. The basic “us” versus “you” dichotomy that foregrounds even the most benign of shaming always stands in the shadow of the hierarchical tower.

sted on Domination/Partnership.

The Shaming-Industrial Complex

The Shaming-Industrial Complex, Becca Rothfeld.

,,,the book ends by recommending that we “detoxify our relations.” It’s self-improvement that’s paramount. We should stop feeling shame, and we should stop inflicting it. “Don’t get outraged—or at least don’t make a habit of it.”

But how much does it matter whether we make a habit of it? The suggestion that our emotional practices have such outsized political import belongs to a dubious theory of cultural change. There is little evidence that electoral havoc is an offshoot of private insecurities, to be discussed and dismantled on the psychoanalyst’s couch. Vicious gerrymandering and laws that continue to disenfranchise millions are at least as consequential as a handful of private outbursts.

The force of shame stems from its status as a social condition, not from its emotional resonance. The bad feelings that shamings instill are incidental to the material injuries they inflict. No matter how supreme our sanguinity, how unshakable our equipoise, people who get raked over the coals online can expect to find themselves jobless in the aftermath,….

“The trolling works only when the target is ashamed,” she writes sunnily, concluding that “shamelessness can be a healthy and freeing response.” But if fat-shaming is the result of the weight-loss industry’s machinations, we almost certainly cannot alter our feelings without altering the institutional arrangements that support them. Flanagan may be right that emotions are culturally specific—but we will still have to change a culture in order to change the emotions that it generates. How effective can a personal crusade really be when the gears of the shame machine go on grinding? (Posted in Systemic Resources/Domination-Partnership)

Intergenerational Poem: Where I Come From

— presented to the Voice of Witness group, March 2022 in response to:

Where do you come and what is your identity?

From dust to dust

Filled with spirit briefly

Dying from the moment of birth

Living with cancer

Multiple myeloma

Treatable but not curable

Progression-free at the moment

Cancer-drug side-effects troublesome

Prognosis uncertain

Death knocks at my door

As it knocks at your door 

Nevertheless

I live as fully as possible

As long as possible

A human being

Nothing more

Nothing less

Trying to make the most of my time

Trying to reverse humanity’s downward spiral

Trying to spread commitment to compassion and justice 

Planting seeds for a global moral humanity movement

Cultivating a world that serves humanity, the environment, and life itself

Trying to be a better human being

Trying to avoid demonizing others

Trying to be a more effective activist

Trying to learn, learn, learn

Taking care of myself so I can better serve others

Loving the universe

Communing with Mother Nature

Enjoying life

Promoting Truth, Justice, and Beauty

Three sides of the same coin

Looking for more soul mates on the same path

Soul mates who don’t 

Always 

Ask, What’s in it for me?

Soul mates who realize they’re not the point

Humanity is the point

Life is the point

Looking for soul mates who protect life

Protect the planet

Relieve suffering

Eliminate the causes of preventable suffering

Soul mates who 

Identify as a member of the human race

Looking for more soul mates who do the right thing

Organize, educate, agitate

Push, push, push

Take chances

Nurture peace

Holistic democracy

Human rights

Civil rights

Economic rights

Labor rights

Voting rights

Environmental sustainability

Democratic equality

Compassion and justice

Everyone’s infinite value

Demand Washington respect the will of the people

And establish economic security and justice for all

Looking for soul mates who are true to themselves

True to their higher angels

Soul mates who 

Live the way they want everyone to live

And recognize others will do the same

Soul mates who are humble
Make judgments without being judgmental

Refrain from assuming moral superiority

Soul mates who neither dominate nor submit

Who know how to be a partner

Co-equal

With mutual respect

Soul mates who listen as much as they talk

Soul mates on the same path

Who seek the Beloved Community

Help each other unlearn divisive social conditioning

Internalized oppression

That undermines unity

Soul mates who are simply a human being

Enspirited flesh

Enfleshed spirit

Seeking, seeking

Always seeking

As death knocks at the door

Whether or not 

You know it

–Wade Lee Hudson

Where Does American Democracy Go From Here?

  • Where Does American Democracy Go From Here? New York Times (behind paywall), March 17, 2022

    Freedom House: The United States had slid down its ranking of countries by political rights and civil liberties — it is now 59th on Freedom House’s list, slightly below Argentina and Mongolia.

    Mason: The word “identity” keeps coming up, and this is a really crucial part of it. And remember that we have research about intergroup conflict, right? Don’t look at this as, like, a logical disagreement situation. We’re not disagreeing on what kind of tax structure we should have. We’re not just disagreeing about the role of the federal government in American society. What we’re disagreeing about is increasingly the basic status differences between groups of people that have existed in America for a very long time. One of the things that Nathan Kalmoe and I found in our forthcoming book is that if you look at Democrats and Republicans who really, really hate each other and call each other evil and say the other party is a threat to the United States, the best predictor of that is how they think about the traditional social hierarchy. (read more) (behind paywall)

American “Progress” and Putin’s Mysticism

  • American “Progress” and Putin’s Mysticism

    Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Timothy Snyder

    “…So by the politics of inevitability, I mean the notion that sometimes goes under the heading of progress. I mean the idea that some kind of outside force is going to guarantee that the things that we desire and wish for are actually going to come about. And if that seems abstract, then what I mean in particular with reference to the United States after the end of communism in 1989 is the notion that there are no alternatives left in the world.

    To quote Margaret Thatcher or to quote Frances Fukuyama, history is over. And it’s inevitable that a larger force, namely capitalism, is going to bring about the thing that we desire, namely, democracy and freedom. And that idea was in the air. That idea shaped everything else. And I think that idea has a lot to do with the crisis of democracy and freedom that we’re in right now.”

    READ MORE

Correction: Ezra Klein Interviews Fareed Zakaria

This post/email originally included a bad link for Political/Foreign Policy), which has been corrected.

  • Ezra Klein Interviews Fareed Zakaria

    Transcript: March 4, 2022

    Fareed Zakaria Has a Better Way to Handle Russia — and China

    The case for thinking strategically, not ideologically, about great power conflict.

    I’m Ezra Klein, and this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

    It is eerie knowing that you have lived through the end of an era and that you’re now witnessing the birth of another. For most of my life, foreign policy has not been dominated by great power conflict. And that is a defining characteristic of that period. There have been crises. There have been wars. There have been horrors. But America was too strong and other countries too weak to really worry about world wars or even cold wars, to see the world as this great power chessboard.

    That’s changed…. (Posted in Political/Foreign Policy).

Putin Wants a Clash of Civilizations. Is ‘The West’ Falling for It?

  • Putin Wants a Clash of Civilizations. Is ‘The West’ Falling for It? (behind paywall), The New York Times, March 11, 2022, Thomas Meaney.

    …The more we hear about the resolve of the West, the more the values of a liberal international order appear like the provincial set of principles of a particular people, in a particular place.

    Of the 10 most-populous countries in the world, only one — the United States — supports major economic sanctions against Russia… Nor do non-Western states appear to welcome the kind of economic disruptions that will result…

    The rest of the world is concerned not only about wider economic immiseration but also about the global escalation of a conflict between two “civilizations” that share the preponderance of the world’s nuclear weapons between them.

    (read more) (Posted in Political/Foreign Policy)

Ezra Klein Interviews Fareed Zakaria

  • Ezra Klein Interviews Fareed Zakaria

    Transcript: March 4, 2022

    Fareed Zakaria Has a Better Way to Handle Russia — and China

    The case for thinking strategically, not ideologically, about great power conflict.

    I’m Ezra Klein, and this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

    It is eerie knowing that you have lived through the end of an era and that you’re now witnessing the birth of another. For most of my life, foreign policy has not been dominated by great power conflict. And that is a defining characteristic of that period. There have been crises. There have been wars. There have been horrors. But America was too strong and other countries too weak to really worry about world wars or even cold wars, to see the world as this great power chessboard.

    That’s changed…. (Posted in Political/Foreign Policy).