Communique from the Front Lines of Shame:
Dear Shamesters,
It is clear to me and my other comrades in the shame game that, at certain times, shame shares a valiant side kick, rage. Like Ike to Tina, Bobby to Whitney, or alcohol to coherent thought, shame often coalesces with rage to form what has been called by many as the double double. As with the chicken and the egg, recent scholarship has debated if the rage leads to shame or vice versa. It is clear to me that in most circumstances, rage undoubtably leads to shame.
If you retrospectively assess any nights fueled by consumption and then over consumption followed by the assumption that your consumption had yet to reach its peak, you know, the one you used to be able to achieve in the years when you had more gumption, that the persona created through this process began, for whatever diluted reason, to be overcome by rage. That rage, torpedoing down your blood and your soul, will most likely lead to a culminating incident, referred to as the ragegasim.
To quote Frost, "two roads diverge in the wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and it has made all the difference" What Frost was referring to in this piece entitled "The Rage Not Taken" was that rage blazes through the path not taken. In fact, it lights the whole forest ablaze, leading to your finial destination, shame.
Shame, to the contrary, cannot cause rage. Shame, by definition, shuts us out into a cave of self realization, a dark and cold place, a place with only the mellow glow of the DVD symbol bouncing around your television illuminates whatever half-eaten slice of pepperoni you have left. In the confines of this cave of shame, rage has no purpose and no flame to fuel the fire to blaze a path.
Of course, this debate is far from over and I open the floor to any representative of a district of shame to weight in.
From my shame to yours,
General Shame
I agree with your analysis, General Shame. Except in the most dire circumstances of shame...
ReplyDeleteAs shame PHD, you must, at some point, have read of people so deep in their shame cave... so unable to pull themselves out of shame, that their self loathing has turned to general rage at all others, whom with you've cut communication.
This is a dark place in the world of shame... let us hope none of our readers ever feel this shame. If you feel your shame turning to rage... see your shame doctor immediately.
An insightful analysis indeed, and I would agree that shame alone cannot cause rage, but I would contest the absolution of this inference.
ReplyDeleteIn the PhD literature to which my comrade Private shame refers, the studies specifically reference this causal relationship of shame and rage as a joint outcome. As has already been stated, we know the two are not mutually exclusive processes. However, unlike the easily derived causal relationship between rage and shame, this inverse causality is a bit more complicated, albeit existent.
On the one hand, shame alone may not cause rage -- even in the above-mentioned circumstance of dark and deep self loathing, shame may be perceived to lead to rage via a channel of self-loathing. i.e., does one rage at others because they exemplify qualities that one themselves cannot achieve? This could imply retreat to the cave as an avoidance of furthering this self loathing and shame under a fallacy of rage, (a self perpetuating process if you will...see shame cat's Saturday exchange with campus security for details).
But consider this notion further. In this perpetual process of shameful reflection and self loathing in this shame cave, one has the potential to create rage beyond the cloak of merely avoiding shame. In fact, consistent with a conclusion in the above post: "Shame, by definition, shuts us out into a cave of self realization". I argue that through this self realization, shame too, can cause rage.
For a more general example, suppose Bobby embarks on an evening of drunken debauchery, and at the bar sees Sally, with whom he engaged in relations with the previous evening. Unfortunately, Bobby has an STD. Perhaps Herpes.(footnote: 1) Which he did not tell Sally about. Hence, Bobby feels shame. Many possible outcomes could follow from this, initiated by shame and furthered by an attempt to alleviate or avoid shame, leading to rage. Consider one:
Bobby tells Sally (or she discovers herself). Sally is disgusted, may even tell others. Bobby feels rage at Sally for being an insensitive bitch (this helps alleviate his shame because he can channel it into rage, but it is true rage (and will later lead to more shame).
Now, note that, as is the case with many social sciences, this hypothesis is only valid under a series of assumptions. For example, one must assume that there exists no prior rage-evoking circumstances; that is, the original choice to engage in relations with Sally did not come from a place of vengeance against an ex. Rather, from a neutral ground, or even one of self loathing.
To conclude with a more theoretical proof from logical mathematics, let rage = R, shame = S, and some indirect outlet be called P (i.e., process of self realization in the shame cave). Then, by theory of real analysis (footnote: 2), we have the following true statements:
1) R is a sufficient condition for S.
2) iff S is a sufficient condition for P, and P is a sufficient condition for R, then PS ==> R
Thus, just as rage ==> shame, shame can ==> rage through it's process of self realization or another indirect outlet.
//As an aside: a rage-gasim is truly peaked whensoever it is channeled into a flurry of sexual release. This often alleviates the rage (and in some cases by association, perceived shame levels, but not necessarily the shame itself).
Footnotes:
1 -- this context would be interesting to consider a discussion of shame, rage and STDs in the context of a more empirical, and serious issue of our world: AIDS
2 -- see Pugh, C. (2008) "Real Mathematical Analysis" for further details on logical proofs.