shame

2. quotes from Brené Brown’s talks/books in brown
quotes from Jon Ronson’s so you’ve been publicly shamed in red

3. shame: I am bad
humiliation/guilt: I did something bad
I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or
experience of believing we are flawed and
therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

4. Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.
The less you talk about it the more you've got it.
Shame grows exponentially with secrecy, silence and judgment.
Along with many other shame researchers, I’ve come to the
conclusion that shame is much more likely to be the source of
dangerous, destructive, and hurtful behaviors than it is to be
the solution.

5. The movement against public shaming was already in full flow in
March 1787 when Benjamin Rush, a United States founding father,
wrote a paper calling for their outlawing—the stocks, the pillory, the
whipping post, the lot. Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a
worse punishment than death . . .
It would seem strange that ignominy should ever have been adopted
as a milder punishment than death, did we not know that the human
mind seldom arrives at truth up on any subject till it has first reached
the extremity of error.
—BENJAMIN RUSH, “AN ENQUIRY INTO THE EFFECTS
OF PUBLIC PUNISHMENTS UPON CRIMINALS, AND UPON SOCIETY,” MARCH 9, 1787

6. This exposure to pulbic shame utterly extinguishes it (self-respect).
Without the hope that springs eternal in the human breast,
…. no criminal can ever return to honorable courses.
Robert Graham Caldwell

7. It took some of them a while to confess it to me.
It’s shameful to have to admit you feel ashamed.
James Gilligan
Violence: Reflections On Our Deadliest Epidemic
Universal among the violent criminals was the fact that they
were keeping a secret. A central secret. And that secret was
that they felt ashamed—deeply ashamed, chronically
ashamed, acutely ashamed. It was shame, every time.

8. So they grew up and—“all violence being a person’s attempt to
replace shame with self-esteem”—they murdered people. One
inmate told him, “You wouldn’t believe how much respect you get
when you have a gun pointed at some dude’s face.” Gilligan said,
“For men who have lived for a lifetime on a diet of contempt and
disdain, the temptation to gain instant respect in this way can be
worth far more than the cost of going to prison or even of dying.”
And after they were jailed, things only got worse.
..on prison guards having even more psych problems.. and too…
thinking torture would make them behave.
..on suicides from shame.

9. The word
had been coming up a lot during my two years
among the publicly shamed.

10. on the
of
inciting us to be murderers..
of ourselves/others.

11. let’s that.
our need for
do over ness. ad infinitum.

12. Maybe in other ways feedback loops are leading to a world
we only think we want.
Maybe they're turning social media into "a giant echo
chamber where what we believe is constantly reinforced by
people who believe the same thing.” – Adam Curtis

13. Maybe in other ways feedback loops are leading to a world
w e o n l y t h i n k w e w a n t .

14. The tech-utopians like the people in Wired
present this as a new kind of democracy,”
Adam’s e-mail continued. “It isn’t. It’s the
opposite. It locks people off in the world they
started with and prevents them from finding
out anything different. They got trapped
in the system of feedback
reinforcement. The idea
that there is another ..
..world of other
people who
have other ideas
is marginalized in our lives.”

15. The tech-utopians like the people in Wired
present this as a new kind of democracy,”
Adam’s e-mail continued. “It isn’t. It’s the
opposite. It locks people off in the world they
started with and prevents them from finding
out anything different. They got trapped
in the system of feedback
reinforcement. The idea
that there is another ..
..world of other
people who
have other ideas
is marginalized in our lives.”

16. The tech-utopians like the people in Wired
present this as a new kind of democracy,”
Adam’s e-mail continued. “It isn’t. It’s the
opposite. It locks people off in the world they
started with and prevents them from finding
out anything different. They got trapped
in the system of feedback
reinforcement. The idea
that there is another ..
..world of other
people who
have other ideas
is marginalized in our lives.”

17. The tech-utopians like the people in Wired
present this as a new kind of democracy,”
Adam’s e-mail continued. “It isn’t. It’s the
opposite. It locks people off in the world they
started with and prevents them from finding
out anything different. They got trapped
in the system of feedback
reinforcement. The idea
that there is another ..
..world of other
people who
have other ideas
is marginalized in our lives.”

18. … a lot of them are bored, understimulated,
overpersecuted, powerless kids, .. they know
they can’t be anything they want. So
they went to the internet. On the internet we have
power in situations where we would otherwise be
powerless.

19. We are defining the boundaries of normality by
tearing apart the people outside it.

20. The important thing to know about worthiness
is that it doesn’t have prerequisites.
Shame loves prerequisites.

21. I suddenly feel with social media like I’m
tiptoeing around an unpredictable, angry,
unbalanced parent who might strike out at any
moment.. (friend)
It felt like we were soldiers making war on
other people’s flaws, and there had suddenly
been an escalation in hostilities.

22. shame is perpetuating not us ness

24. If our shameworthiness lies in the space between who we are and how we present
ourselves to the world..

25. The antidote to shame is empathy. Shame cannot survive empathy. It depends on
me buying in on the belief that I'm alone.
The two most powerful words: me too.

27. As soon as the victim steps out of the pact by refusing to feel ashamed the whole thing
crumbles.
- Max Mosley