Shame as a Cultural Tool
A month late, but in response to Elle Griffin's writing prompt of "What movement does the world need right now?"
The world needs a cultural movement to stop anti-social behavior by others that share the same political sphere as us.
It feels as though there are disparate groups of people in this country that all live in different realities. I won't say that it is Democrats versus Republicans because it is far more nuanced than that. The space of political beliefs is very high dimensional, and creating a classifier with only a few classes in this high dimensional space is extremely complicated. There are many ways you could create this classifier, and some ways are far more accurate than others. Political party does not capture the whole story.
I think one of the most accurate ways of classifying people is to separate them based on if they are individualistic or communal. Not specifically in how they actually act (the vast majority of Americans act individualistic), but in what they aspire society to be like. Do they see society as a zero-sum game where they only care for themselves, or do they think that people should care about the good of society as a whole when they make their decisions?
I fear as though the individualistic cohort has gained an outsized amount of political power in the past decade, and this makes me fear for the future of this country. And we have not developed the cultural tools to stop it.
The allure of self interest is very strong in the absence of punishment for selfish deeds. People keep buying bigger vehicles, emitting more CO2 and contributing to the increase of pedestrian fatalities. But none of those externalities matter to them because they simply want a bigger car. People keep building bigger houses on bigger lots, taking up land inefficiently that could be used for higher density communities. But those externalities don't matter because they simply want more space. If nukes provided utility to individuals, I have no doubt that nuclear proliferation treaties would never have been created. After all, people simply want nukes, so who are we to stop them?
One may say that the answer to these problems is to properly price-in the negative externalities of these goods. And for these examples, that's true – it's feasible to define and enforce the externalities of using these goods. The state could, for example, implement a CO2 tax or a land value tax.
But what about scenarios where it's not feasible, desirable, or efficacious to have state-led enforcement? This is where culture is a useful tool to drive society down a desirable path – specifically the usage of shame for undesirable behavior. A canonical example of this is Japanese culture, where it is expected of you to be quiet on public transit, stand in a orderly line, never litter, and be devoutly respectful to people in positions of authority. Sure, there may be state-enforcement solutions for these problems, but why spend the money on state bureaucracy when the invisible hand of culture enforces certain ways of being?
Our culture of Western Liberalism seems disgusted by the idea of doling out shame. It seems antithetical to liberal values of individualism. This is true for both individualists and collectivists. The individualist has no use for shame because he assumes himself and others freely living life is the ideal mode of being. In stark contrast, the collectivist does have a use for shame, but cannot rationalize using it in the context of a liberal framework – we must be accepting of people from all backgrounds to form community (good!), but shame goes against individual freedom, so we cannot shame others for acting against communal interest (bad!).
The individualist is ignorant to the problems that individualism at scale creates, while the communalist does not have a solution within a liberal framework for dealing with bad actors.
My proposal is that we need a cultural shift to be able to use shame as a viable cultural tool. The guy playing music on a bluetooth speaker on the bus? We, the community, should collectively have the will to stop his behavior. Shame the man for acting the way he is. Support those that shame him – there is strength in numbers. I won't go so far as to say you should use force to stop – the use of communal force, i.e. vigilantism, is another level of this topic that I won't discuss here – but I believe shame alone can get us 90% of the way there.
We need a cultural movement that encourages people to start saying "no" to anti-social behavior. It has to be a movement because it is a collective action problem. There is strength in numbers, and if you're the only one pushing against anti-social behavior, you are far less likely to be successful.