by Brian Taylor

Created on: January 25, 2010

Here, I will attempt to summarize how it is that America, like most first world countries, must hang their heads in shame.

“Humans should be ashamed of themselves.” This will be a predominant message of 2010. I know this is an accurate prediction because I'm one of the people who is going to be spreading the message. There seems to be a controlled shift in popular Western culture to move past Guilt and go directly to Shame. I believe these ends are achieved purposefully and professionally by many different sources but all seem to be cashing in on the following idea: Due to the much stronger emotional response to shame stimuli that to guilt, either individually or collectively, those wishing to take advantage of this response would be best served by promoting a message of fallibility rather than culpability. Your required action might be to buy a salad spinner, vote, or to save the Earth, the “range of possibility” is limitless. So in order for us to have this conversation we must delve deep into what guilt and shame are, what differentiates them from each other in individual circumstances as well as culturally and we must do all this while flipping between CNN and HSC. For simplicities sake , the idea of our opening sentence, “Humans should be ashamed of themselves,” can be thought of as “The Message.” The guided transference of collective guilt into collective shame we will refer to as “The Phenomenon.”

How is it that, in particular, Western Culture wants us to “be ashamed of ourselves,” now, more than ever? How is this different than having “the Message” be one of guilt? What is the likely result of such a manipulation? The manifestations of “The Message” actually need little explanation, we need only accept them as realities to see their relevance. They are as obvious as the info-mercial. “You flip... and they flop.” (You must be some kind of moron not to flip that pancake! Look, we have the solution for you.” They can also be as subtle as the things we get used to, the things we start to let slide and not bother us anymore. The final two messages utilize a rather complicated observation about complexity that is necessary to appreciate the overall effect of “The Phenomenon.” Consider the following movements, remembering at this point, we are not judging their worth,  We are only determining that they exist and that the clear

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