Long Live Shame

Long Live Shame!

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

A generational split appears in Eric Hoffer's polemical essay: he writes to criticize the youth culture which he deems "flauntingly shameless." Hoffer cites historical traditions that promote what he considers to be a necessary, decent sense of shame, whose purpose is to instill and maintain a civilized way of life. Whether the high standards whose loss he mourns ever truly existed is a question worth pursuing.

The ancient Hebrews were alone in envisioning a troubled paradise. The Garden of Eden was not an abode of bliss but a place tense with suspicion and anxiety. For no sooner did God, in a moment of divine recklessness, create man in His own image than He was filled with misgivings. There was no telling what a creature thus made would do next. So God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden where he could watch them.

It is plain that Adam and Eve were ill at ease under constant observation, and in their isolation from other living things. They welcomed the snake's visit, confided in him, and listened to his advice. The expulsion from Eden was not the terrible fall it has been made out to be. It was actually a liberation from the stifling confines of a celestial zoo.

Now, what concerns me is the puzzling fact that when Adam and Eve followed the snake's advice, disobeyed God's commandment, and ate from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" they felt not guilty but ashamed-ashamed of their nakedness.

What connection could there be between the knowledge of good and evil and the impulse to cover the genitals with fig leaves?

It is conceivable that, to begin with, good and evil were not individual but social concepts. That was good which preserved the group, and evil that which threatened its survival. Now, there is one dangerous threat that no society can escape: namely, the recurrent threat of disruption by juveniles as a young generation passes from boyhood to manhood.

Since sexual drives are at the core of the destructive impulses characteristic of the juvenile phase, sex is seen as a threat, hence an evil. The primeval association of sex with shame is, like the taboos of incest and endogamy, I part of an apparatus devised to defend a society against rape by juveniles inside the tribe.

Through the millennia societies acted as if their safety depended upon the preservation of female chastity. Sex, of course, is not the sole threat to the group. Cowardice, weakness, bad manners are as dangerous, and they, too, are associated with shame.

Shame, far more than guilt, involves an awareness by the individual of being watched and judged by the group. It is to be expected, therefore, that the more compact the group, the more pronounced the sense of shame. The member of a compact group carries the group within him, and never feels alone.

Anthropologists distinguish between the "shame culture" of primitive groups and "guilt culture" of advanced societies. Actually, what comes here in question is not social primitiveness but social compactness.

It is true that the most perfect examples of social compactness are found in primitive societies. But a technically advanced country like Japan, in which the individual is totally integrated with the group, has as strong a sense of shame as any primitive tribe.

By the same token one should expect the sense of shame to be blurred where socialization of the young becomes ineffectual, and social cohesion is weakened.

In this country at present the inability of adults to socialize their young has made it possible for juveniles to follow their bents, act on their impulses, and materialize their fantasies.

The result has been a youth culture flauntingly shameless. You see well-fed good-looking youngsters, obviously the sons and daughters of well-to-do parents, beg in the streets, pet in public, line up for pornographic movies, and vie with each other in taking advantage of every opening for skullduggery offered by a social system based on trust.

The disconcerting thing is that loss of shame is not confined to juveniles. The adult majority is not ashamed of its cowardice, workers are not ashamed of negligence, manufacturers of marketing shoddy products, and the rich of dodging taxes. We have become a shameless society.

Our intellectual mentors strive to infect us with a sense of guilt--about Vietnam, the Negro, the poor, pollution--and frown on shame as reactionary and repressive. But whether or not a sense of guilt will make us a better people, the loss of shame threatens our survival as a civilized society. For most of the acts we are ashamed of are not punishable by law, and civilized living depends upon the observance of unenforceable rules. One also has the feeling that shame is more uniquely human than guilt. There is more fear in guilt than in shame, and animals know fear. We blanch with guilt as we do with fear, but we blush with shame.

The fabulous Greeks made of shame a goddess--Aidos. She was the source of dignity, decency, and good manners. An offense committed against Aidos was avenged by the goddess Nemesis. Long live shame!

Questions for Discussion

1. What distinction does Hoffer make between shame and guilt, and why does he celebrate shame as a civilizing force? Provide examples to illustrate the distinction.

2. Is Hoffer's view a contemporary version of Puritan ideology?

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