This is going to be didactic and it’s stuff you probably already know and if you don’t this won’t help much, so if you have something better to do I strongly urge you to do it. I was going to leave it in a private note, but it’s didactic enough to be insulting. Heh. I’m talking about ‘it’ as though ‘it’ were already a thing. It’s not. Yet.
Shame is a primary motivator, if not the primary motivator at least in the top one and a half. That is for humans and dogs and possibly dolphins, I don’t know, I’m a bit OCD like that, feels incomplete with only two. I know cats have no shame, so, you know, dolphins. Why the fuck not? How many dolphins do you know?
People tend to think of shame and guilt as synonyms or at least close cousins (not so much with dogs and dolphins). A really simple and not inaccurate distinction is that guilt is ‘I did something bad’ and shame is ‘I am something bad’. It’s a workable definition; anyone past puberty knows this (that’s not universal either, not even among different breeds of humans. For some reason here in the States we have a lot of shit wrapped up in sexuality including shame. Me, dogs and dolphins just like fucking. I’m sure we don’t have exclusivity in this, in fact, if people didn’t like fucking they wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with their proclivities, vanilla or otherwise, just as no one is ashamed of taking the garbage to the curb unless they secretly like doing it way too much or think their way of doing it is abhorrent or that their mom will think it’s abhorrent.).
There are two basic ways people deal with shame; I mean two ways as in the far margins of a bell curve which, ultimately, can be sliced up as thin as you’d like to slice it. One, and the one most common among those I call friends or would be attracted to for friendship; You do good deeds as compensation to the universe for being a bad person. The other is if you’re going to be a bad person you might as well relax into it or try to excel at being a bad person. In my experience people who aren’t between those edges of the bell are sociopaths; they are a person and all y’all are something else, a bad joke, entertainment, obstacles. Not all sociopaths lean towards evil, it’s not inherently evil, just indifferent. Although if they are the only person it doesn’t matter what harm comes to you by the same token causing you harm would be acknowledging your presence. That’s why some crime/thriller movies don’t work very well; a sociopath still needs a reason to fuck with people, it still takes time and energy and shit.
There are a lot of people that would shock you with what they are ashamed of. I mean shock you as in “Dude (meant in a non-gender specific way) I don’t even see the problem here”. This will also shock you in the respect that you must be really bad because your shame is pretty fucking shameful. Um, although you’re likely Dude, I mean the odds are that you’re dude. How the fuck would I know? I was a shame broker for a long time and I even occasionally was paying attention. You don’t even need to be a shame broker; you could be a hobbyist, if you occasionally pay attention. Like the sociopath, Dude could come down on either side of the fence. Shame like trauma isn’t measurable in an objective fashion; it has more to do with the tolerance of its owner.
I had a pretty hefty debt to pay the universe, I feel like I’ve paid it and the vig (criminal talk for interest). You’d think that’d be a good thing. It’s not. You run around the habit-trail for years then someone takes your gerbil ass and puts it in an open field and you’re like as not to develop a quick case of agoraphobia (Hmmm, that’s fear of outside and not fear of wooly sweaters right?) I mean what the fuck do I do now? Y’all know that shameless is not a positive virtue. Oh. Shit. This wasn’t supposed to be about me. Hey, can I trade dolphin for hamster or gerbil? Those little fuckers have to be ashamed; they all have a cedar chip stuck to their asses.
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