Wherefore Art Thou, Shame?

Once upon a time, there was a little thing called 'shame'. You may not be familiar with the concept of shame because at some point in time human beings in various 'advanced' forms of civilization began ejecting it from their emotional catalogs. Now, I am aware that addressing this topic makes me look like the proverbial old coot sitting on a random stoop dispensing advice about the evils of ankle exposure at the beach and rock 'n roll music, but hear me out.
Pain sucks, but sucking aside, pain is quite the life saver. As much as it hurts to hit your thumb with a hammer, the pain is telling you something: "You are a terrible carpenter. Put the tools away before you become a limbless lump with absolutely no pictures hanging on the wall". Trust me, if we could eliminate physical pain, we would nail toupee's on our head and tumble out of moving taxi cabs until the human race became extinct. Pain ensures our survival as a species.
Feeling ashamed sucks as well, but shame is a sort of pain for the soul. It can be a valuable safeguard against repeatedly compromising our morals, convictions and integrity.

I think the trouble started the moment we realized that far too frequently we were feeling shame at times when it was not only unnecessary, but flat out wrong to do so. If Uncle Abner sneaked into your bedroom at 3 AM and diddled your private parts when you were 12, that is not a reason to feel ashamed. On too many occasions throughout the history of mankind, people have felt shame for those unfortunate incidents in which they had little to no control over. Victims have been too often treated as perpetrators, and now it seems as though the opposite is more true. Once we realized that bona fide victims of heinous behavior were being locked in closets or pelted with stones, we made serious efforts to correct a history of backwards thinking as it related to 'shame assessment'. Unfortunately, we may have over-corrected. An overabundance of after-school specials and 'movies of the week' in which our hero was told, at some point, "you got nothin' to be ashamed of" have inspired generations of parents, mentors and counselors to tell an entire planet "you got nothin' to be ashamed of". Not only has 'shame' gone absent, but a boatload of 'pride ' is there to take it's place. You spray painted your initials on grandma's back? Nothing to be ashamed of...nice use of color! Took a dump on the living room carpet? No problem, look at the size of it! The result? We have shifted from one sort of injustice to another. Nobody is ashamed of anything. There are no personal 'checks and balances' anymore. Every body's knobs are set to 11, and we're prancing around like a bunch of peacocks because we were able to down 17 shots of tequila and still nail a transient in the face with an entire burrito from 30 yards away.

But wait...maybe shame isn't being replaced by pride, but simply covered up by it. Thanks to Access Hollywood and countless advertisers, we are able to realize that we can still be ashamed of ourselves for being fat and unattractive. Thanks to the sage wisdom of television commercials, we know that the girls aren't going to fuck us until we clear up our skin. Ladies, you should know by now that you have to by a dress that is 4 sizes too small, frown at it for a little while as you hold it up to your hideous, over-sized body, and then eat Special 'K' so that you can dazzle the pants off of every guy at your high school reunion. Since every kid in America is firmly planted in front of the television, they are all aware of these important 'life lessons' early on. No teen aged girl wants to be labeled 'fat', but 'slut' they can live with. Plus, it comes with the added bonus of validation because the boys are attracted to their easy access, yet painfully tight mini-skirts and baby T's. "Slut? sure, but I'm not fat, no siree. I must not be because I'm such a whore. Who would want me if I was fat, right Dexatrim?". Many young boys who find themselves on the wrong end of a bully's wrath and who only get the attention of pretty girls when they are 'pantsed' in gym class have an important decision to make: The Bowflex for three easy payments of a kidney, first-born and right testicle or a $3 bottle of eyeliner and a used black trenchcoat. You see, unpopularity is much easier to cope with if you can convince yourself that it is because your are feared, and not because of your bad complexion and Payless shoes. Is it more shameful to be fat rather than promiscuous? Is it less embarrassing to pretend to be some sort of suburban vampire than it is to be poor? I think that we determine how ashamed we are of something through our ability to reconcile those things within ourselves. The problem with that is that everyday, we become less and less in control of our own lives. We don't know what we want until MTV tells us.
So, let's all go out and bring shame to ourselves. Continue to do whatever you want, I'm all for that. After all, a 30 yard burrito shot to the face is impressive and deserves some praise, but please feel ashamed of yourself. For those of you with kids, please stop filling them with ideas that they are gods among mortals no matter how much of a crap-basket they are becoming. Your kid isn't special and deserves no sense of entitlement for having done absolutely nothing. Maybe if we can accomplish this we will one day only feel pride when it is deserved and shame when it is earned. I should be ashamed of myself--we all should.