The case for shame

At about 8 a.m. at O’Hare Airport, at the gate for an American Airlines flight bound for Pittsburgh, I spotted perhaps the least dignified flier I’ve ever seen. The bar for human decency is already breathtakingly low at an airport, but I felt myself turn into a pious nun as I kept stealing glances at this particular slob.

I quickly tapped out a description of the individual in question to my friend Tom.

“Bring public shaming back,” he responded.

My thoughts shot immediately back to the influencers who perturbed me to no end in the West Village the week prior: two young women who repeatedly stepped into other folks’ walking and bike paths, and who took up prime cafe table real estate, for the sole purpose of a perfect “candid” snapshot. What enraged me was their ignorance — willful or otherwise — of the people around them, including the staff who clearly hoped a Grubhub e-bike would turn them and their iced matchas into fashion roadkill.

I say this also as we await a decision from Graham Platner — alleged rapist and the latest and greatest Democratic misfire — on whether to drop his Senate bid. This should not be a hard decision! He should be riddled with shame! Alas, he (thus far) is only “taking time to reflect.”

Part of me wonders if we no longer naturally feel shame because of how much of our lives are out there in the open. Are we all so overexposed that there’s no point in bothering with the fig leaf? Even if we have made our best efforts at privacy, it may very well be for naught. Alex Stamos, a former chief security officer of Yahoo and Facebook, told The Atlantic that “Companies are getting hacked every single day” because of advances in AI. Neither your social security number nor your nudes are safe!

Even with all of this nakedness (literal/figurative, intentional/accidental), I still see the benefit of a little shaming. Maybe my Catholic upbringing is what makes me so certain of the power of shame (also, the power of guilt, fear, and a really lovely stained glass window), but we could probably all use a quick reminder that we are not alone in this world — and maybe it’d be nice not to make other folks so uncomfortable.

The topic of reducing others’ discomfort is fraught, to say the least. But is it really so bad to just… be cool? This past winter, in a similar vein, writer Lara Williams published a fantastic essay in The Dirt on the concept of being “willfully” cringe.

“One of the reasons we feel the violation of social norms so acutely as an empathetic response is because embarrassment is a deeply encoded evolutionary reflex—a ‘social corrective…instinct [which] probably helped our ancestors stay in the group, which was critical for survival,’ ” Williams writes. She goes on to say that cringe can be used deftly to affect something positive, perhaps creating tension in art or drawing our attention to a norm.

“[B]ut embodying cringe —being cringe—is actually antisocial and individualist,” she writes. “It feels an almost sadistic impulse—am I making you uncomfortable? Good! Cringe, I think, has a function, and is a useful gauge in order to check oneself, much like shame.”

When we’re made to feel uneasy just for the sake of it by others, it doesn’t come across as disaffected or transgressive. Instead, it feels regressive and isolating. Why wouldn’t you feel bad about causing some amount of irritation in another person’s day, especially when it draws people away from one another? Feeling shame, as Williams notes, is an evolutionary response: It helped prevent people from doing things that could result in being ostracized or devalued by their group. A little shame keeps us together!

I do think those influencers would’ve benefited to hear that they were in others’ way. They could use a reminder that the world does not revolve around their Instagram accounts (especially since the only one that matters is @marthastewart48). We do not exist in a vacuum, and what we do — whether we like it or not — affects others. I think a little admonishment every now and again is just a brief course correction to remember that we’re sharing the road. Lord knows I’ve had my fair share of rebukes, including ones that stung just enough to make lasting (and necessary!) change for the better.

Now. Do I think the individual at the airport would respond well to my asking her to (at the very least) zip up her hoodie? No. I believe the only thing corrected would have been my jaw alignment.