Welcome to the age of post-shame??♂?

??????Podcast version right here! ??????

Something odd is going on.?

Have you noticed people’s behaviour, especially those in the public eye, has become a little, well, shameless? Public figures have been, it seems, living in a world where the effects of shame that rule over so many of us seem to not apply.?

Whether it’s disgraced TV personalities using the same medium to prove that they’re not that bad after all, or movie stars using their wealth and status to convince others how relatable and ‘normal’ they are, to our politicians saying and doing whatever they want, to influencers, to Elon Musk, who requires no such explanation for why he’s the perfect encapsulation of a post-shame attitude.?

The age of shame appears to be ending, and the rise of post-shame is beginning. So in this week’s Brink I’m going to be getting to grips with what this new age looks like, and more importantly, trying to understand why it has emerged.?

Shame on you???

Before we get started, it’s worth defining a few things. First, and perhaps, most important is shame.?

Shame is the internal, uncomfortable feeling that comes from an awareness we have done something wrong in the eyes of another. Whether it's mispronouncing a word, how we look in swimwear, or a loved one witnessing us telling a bare face lie, shame is that feeling of being judged by another.??

It’s different from guilt. Guilt is the idea that we have done something bad, whereas shame is the more all-encompassing belief that we are bad. So instead of feeling guilt that we ate the last bit of pie in the fridge, shame is the feeling that we are inherently flawed because we love to eat delicious pastry goods in the first place.?

While it’s an awful feeling, and we’ll explore it in more detail later, it plays an important part in how groups form and regulate themselves. Shame creates a set of unspoken rules that nudges and prods members of a group to behave in a way.?

Of course, shame can also be awful and inhibiting when left unchecked, but the important part for now is to understand that shame is old as humans are, and for better or for worse it’s a necessary part of living among others.??

Without shame, those same forces that bind us together no longer apply, meaning members of that group can behave without consequence, especially when it causes damage or pain to the other. This can erode and damage a group and lead to an increase in conflict between members. Not caring about the feelings of others means we are no longer held by them.?

Before we get too meta, let’s look at a more concrete example of how this works. So I’m heading into the world of political science, as they’ve been writing about post-shame in politics for years.?

From post-truth to post shame ??

In olden times, typically post-war, public life, and the politicians that were in it, were held accountable for their actions by shame. That shame typically came from journalists and media pointing out the hypocrisy, corruption, or lying as a way of stopping them from doing it.?

Politicians resigned, or were sacked for their behaviour, even if no criminal laws were broken. The shame of being labelled as someone who carried on in a certain way was enough for them to fall on their professional sword.?

Take the Watergate scandal. When members of a group associated with Richard Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign broke into and planted listening devices in the Democratic National Committee headquarters, the public outcry over that event eventually led to Nixon resigning.?

Extramarital affairs, or taking money from people they shouldn’t, or just being bad at your job were all levers of shame that forced people out of their jobs.?

But more recently, political scientists have noticed a shift: politicians embroiled in scandal are no longer so quick to resign. A case in point:?

• UK politician Matt Hancock refusing to resign after being caught kissing a colleague during Covid.?
• When Dominic Cummings refused to resign after breaking all the Covid rules.?
• When US Senator Bob Menendez was re-elected after his highly publicized trial on corruption charges.?
• That time when Virginia law maker Justin Fairfax insisted he wouldn’t resign after sexual assault allegations by two women.
• US politicians Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter running for re-election — and winning — even though they're facing federal indictments.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu running for re-election even though Israeli police want him indicted for bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
• And let's not forget the obvious: Donald Trump being a convicted felon.?

No longer is shame and reputation damage enough to push politicians out the door. This led The Atlantic to proclaim the age of post-shame America all the way back in 2023. The same is happening in other parts of the public eye, too.?

A few examples:?

• Singer Chris Brown - and his long history of documented abuse - being nominated for a Grammy.?
• Controversial comedian Shane Gillis - who was fired from SNL for racist and homophobic remarks bouncing back with sold-out tours,?
• Louis C.K, who in 2017, The New York Times reported on the stories of five women who accused him of sexual misconduct. But now he's resumed stand-up comedy tours. He released a film, and he’s recently won a Grammy Award for best comedy album.?
• Russell Brand, who fled from the UK after dozens of allegations of sexual impropriety, reinventing himself as a far-right Christian evangelist.?
• Musicians accepting massive amounts of money to perform at the private parties of despots and dictators.
• Actors embroiled in the college cheating scandal of 2019 returning to work despite pleading guilty.???

Then there’s the proliferation of content creators and influencers who engage in behaviours that would historically be shameful: sex work, rampant self-promotion, spreading conspiracy theories, etc.?

Even corporations engaged in shameful behaviour - but carrying on as if it never happened. What’s important to recognise is that making mistakes and doing stupid things is one thing, but ignoring or refusing to atone for bad things is another.?

Why has this all proliferated? Lots of reasons, but mainly I believe because the social contract has changed.?

A new yard stick???

Our brains evolved a long time ago. In a time where judgement and feelings of inclusion were measured by how well we integrated with our immediate tribe or group. Today our world is infinitely more complex, meaning there is rarely one group or one tribe we must assimilate to.?

Throw in our digital world, and infinite amount of tribes we can belong to paired with a new set of yard sticks that seem unconcerned by shame and we can start to see where we’ve ended up.??

Likes, clicks, engagement and money are explicit measures that you ‘fit in’ or belong, even if there’s a hollow tinge to them. Historically if you engaged in something your group didn’t approve of, you’d be ostracised.

Today’s global internet allows you to find attention and inclusion anywhere. Shame has been side-tracked in today’s digital age. If you have a million followers, but few friends, do people feel the same pangs of shame, and a need to modify their behaviour like we used to???

"Cancel culture has been canceled." That's what Elon Musk posted on X in December. Now, I’m the last person to give Musk credit for his cultural awareness, but there is something in his statement that gives us a clue as to what might be happening with the death of shame: what came before it.?

Cancel no more???♂?

If the 2010s were defined by a theme (apart from Covid) it would be cancel culture. This was the idea of a public figure, and sometimes very non-public figures losing their income and means of making a living after a surge in public scrutiny. Shame was powerful enough to end careers.?

This was best encapsulated by the #MeToo movement, which while founded in 2006, gained prominence in 2017 after the allegations against Harvey Weinstein emerged. Shame became a leveller against powerful people using their influence to abuse and silence others.?

But that groundswell around shaming targeted the less powerful, too. Marc Ronson’s 2015 best selling book, “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” went in search of people whose lives had been pulled apart in the court of public opinion.??

Justine Sacco, a PR executive, had her life ruined after she tweeted, before getting on a plane: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get Aids. Just kidding. I’m white!” There is Jonah Lehrer, a journalist whose career was all but destroyed when it was discovered he had invented a quote. And then there’s Lindsey Stone, a US care worker who was promptly sacked when a private photograph of her messing around in Arlington National Cemetery suddenly became public.?

Ironically Ronson’s book about public shaming also suffered its own shaming witch-hunt after a public high school library in Texas came under from pressure from parents who complained that it touched on sensitive subjects like rape and suicide and should be removed.?

But looking back, cancel culture achieved surprisingly little, as the New York Times proclaimed. Instead what that movement did was two things:?

• Indiscriminately target the least able to defend their actions against an enraged public, like those in Ronson’s book,?
• Serve as a wound that could be weaponized by those with power.?

For those that could fight back, many hired companies to double their efforts. Enter the opaque world of reputation management: a peculiar corner of the PR world specialising in providing makeovers to celebrities, politicians, YouTubers, and even countries. This industry has grown 11% every year since 2020, and is now believed to be a multi-billion dollar industry in its own right.?

This creates a strange split in the world of shame: those who are constrained by it, and those who can pay to not be.?

So where does this leave us??

Shame’s my name ??♂?

As I mentioned earlier, shame has been around for a very long time, and it’s been studied for a while, too. According to recent studies, human beings developed the ability to feel shame because it helped promote social cohesion.?

Our survival for about 99% of human existence, really depended on close cooperation and adherence to tribal expectations for behavior. Members who violated the rules would be shunned and shamed; fear of that painful experience encouraged members to obey the rules and work together for the good of the tribe.

“The function of pain is to prevent us from damaging our own tissue. The function of shame is to prevent us from damaging our social relationships, or to motivate us to repair them,” said the lead researcher in one study.

This still rings true for many of us. Shame is important, but how it shows up in us gives us some clues about those who seem to exist in a post-shame world. Shame affects us differently as we age: our teenage years are when shame is most powerful, but it declines until we meet late middle age, where it creeps up again.?

In another study, researchers found men and women manifest shame differently, too. Indeed, women report much higher levels of shame and guilt than men. Brene Brown has some excellent work on this topic if of interest.?

In women: shame broadly speaking, stems from not meeting societal expectations, particularly in areas like appearance, motherhood, work-life balance, and relationships. That shame is typically expressed internally, with feelings of inadequacy, self-blame, embarrassment and withdrawal. It’s the feeling of not measuring up.?

For men meanwhile, says the authors, shame is often associated with the fear of being perceived as weak, a failure, or rejected. These shamed men then externalize those feelings, by blaming others or reacting with anger or aggression.?

In my completely anecdotal list of people living in a post-shame world, they do all seem to love attacking everything and everyone around them. And they, sadly, appear to be all men.?

A case in point: take a look at this tweet from Elon Musk.

It’s a bruised ego wrapped in barbed wire. Why do people hate me? Because I’m too powerful. This is shame on steroids. So what do we do with all this super shame??

Well, it really depends. When we think of shame in a therapeutic setting, we know that shaming the shamed often makes things worse. Nothing entrenches shame more than lumping more on top of it. To resolve it requires repairing the shamed person’s wound. And that really involves an exploration of the shaming act: what did that person feel shamed for in the first place??

But when we are experiencing this super shame in public figures, who seem to be engaging in harmful acts to others: the therapeutic approach falls apart. Because it requires the shamed to be willing to take part in a discussion and to want to heal that part of themselves. And so far, they definitely don’t.?

Mr. Musk, if you’d like to try it I’m all ears, and I’m sure every other therapist on the planet would love to help you too. But until that day happens, we’re really left with a set of choices: do we embrace this aggressive masculine form of shame - as the fashion industry seems to be doing at the moment with its “dark mode shift”ideology. Or do we try to create a different sort of community without these wounded individuals going round trying to wound everyone else??

For many of the people I work with in a therapeutic setting, that’s a tough one. Because one of the most affecting impacts of these post-shame supervillains is the impact they have on the lives of the people they love.?

Men have increasingly been inspired by many of these characters to weaponise instead of work with their sense of shame, in what some call the “mask off” era. See my solitude series for more on that one.?

Ultimately it comes down to a more existential question around shame and society: is it down to the individual to re-integrate themselves back into the group after they’ve been shamed, or the group’s job to find a way of bringing that person back in from the cold??

I’d say it’s some combination of both. But when it seems to be lucrative to set fire to everything around you instead of dealing with the fire within, we’re going to have to wait a while for a different approach to emerge.??

Things we learned this week ??

• ?? Your friends might be better for your mental health than your partner.?
• ?? Big conspiracy believer? It might be down to your sense of belonging.?
• ?? Stress blocks your body’s signals that you’re full, says study.
• ?? Zoom dysmorphia is now a thing - a life spent on Zoom is making us more paranoid about how we look.?

Just a list of proper mental health services I always recommend ???

Here is a list of excellent mental health services that are vetted and regulated that I share with the therapists I teach:?

• ???????? Peer Support Groups - good relationships are one of the quickest ways to improve wellbeing. Rethink Mental Illness has a database of peer support groups across the UK.?
• ?? Samaritans Directory - the Samaritans, so often overlooked for the work they do, has a directory of organisations that specialise in different forms of distress. From abuse to sexual identity, this is a great place to start if you’re looking for specific forms of help.?
• ?? Hubofhope - A brilliant resource. Simply put in your postcode and it lists all the mental health services in your local area.?

I love you all. ??