Whatever Happened to Shame?

I blame Vatican 2: once the Catholics started with English, it was all down hill.

 

Shame
Burning, you keep my whole body yearning
You got me so confused
It's a shame
Sometimes I think I'm going insane
But still I want to stay

Wrapped in your arms
Is where I want to be, want to be
Wrapped in your arms
That's my high, my high

Shame, ooh
My mother says you're playing a game
And what you do to me is a shame
Ooh, gonna love you just the same
Mama just don't understand

 

Good song by Stabbing Westward.

 

HOW CAN I EXIST WITHOUT YOU

my man

 

I'm the King of Fire
I am anger
I am pain
I am savage in my fury
I'm the world beneath your feet

Fools revere your master
Thoughts of war you will disarm
I'm the nightmare with the Aegis
And I will not be denied

Harpies of no morals
Hands awash in ravaged lives
Witness your perdition as you writhe
In agony and shame

 

I think regret and remorse are more lacking with many these days than shame.

Oh, I posted that shit? Delete. I’m wrong to think that way? Oh look, here’s a Facebook group that agrees with me.

And I think social media pushes forward reprehensible people so we notice them. I think they have always been there, possibly in the same ratio, but we just never saw them.

That said, there are plenty of good people still left in the world.

 

Vatican 2, Electric Boogaloo.

 

One of the reasons I didn't mention names is I think that takes the question off course. People tend to take more offense, or any offense at all - when X person isn't "aligned" with them or they hate their music or movie choices or they play for another team. How many times do you see someone famous do something bad, and suddenly on air commentators who have no problem calling out others, suddenly hold their fire because they are friends with that person? Bad behavior is bad behavior. We have no problem dismissing things/people we have no use for anyway.
Social media obviously has made it easier to say something regretable and get a wide audience awareness. It has also greatly diminished the ability of mass media to be a social arbiter in what is allowed "out there" and at the same time made it easer to find a supportive audience of such bad behavoir. It's a double or triple whammy.

 

Is shame only of use to religion?



Or is it a necessary corrective in the wider society?



What does it teach?



Trump is driven in large part by his fear of shame.

Worth asking how that turned out for all of us.

 

I wonder if people will start to feel shame for supporting this guy four years ago?

 

The dunce cap today would face a lawsuit under the ADA laws - people would defend the differently abled. (Frankly I think the dunce cap should be reserved for those who don't give their best effort).
Hester Prynne is now a heroinne of the sexualized female. Don't have a problem with that (no wink, seriously) but it does strike me that male she fraternized with didn't get a similar shaming.
And I'd be fine with bringing back the stocks on the courthouse lawn for petty offenses and other seemingly minor transgressions of public decency if it helped cut down on costs for incarceration. Particularly on Wall Street.

 

What's the underpinning of the question here?