So you've been publicly shamed?

When preparing to go on holiday earlier this month, I decided to check out some reviews of the best books of 2015 to help me choose my holiday reading.  So you've been publicly shamed by Jon Ronson was one of Mark Lawson's recommendations.  I don't usually read nonfiction for fun, but this book was so engaging I actually finished it before my holiday started.  

Ronson explores the recent phenomenon of public shaming, particularly online shaming.  He considers several people's stories.  One of the most well known stories he investigates involves a tasteless racist joke about AIDS, which was apparently intended to be ironic, tweeted by a young unknown PR executive shortly before she boarded an international flight.  I won't mention her name here as I don't want to contribute further to her Google results.  In the course of her eleven-hour flight, during which her phone was switched off, her poorly judged joke was retweeted and retweeted, mostly by people who were horribly offended by it; people with thousands of Twitter followers passed it on; within hours, she became the number one worldwide trend on Twitter.  People were angrily calling for her to be sacked; a representative of her employer tweeted a message disassociating themselves from her; by the time she landed, she had been fired.  Yes, the joke was at best foolish and at worst highly offensive, and she should have known better.  But the relish with which people demanded the termination of her employment, and wondered when her plane would land and she would find out what had happened to her career, was quite disturbing.  

Ronson looks back to the use of public shaming in previous centuries, for example when people were publicly flogged or put in the stocks, and comes to the conclusion that these punishments ended because they were considered too severe.  And yet, it seems, they've made a comeback.  Just look at the social media reaction to the death of Cecil the Lion.  It seems that we love to have a hate figure.  But the guilty ones punished by means of this online vigilante justice suffer agonies.  Many lose their jobs (apparently it's a lot easier to terminate someone's employment in the States); some find it difficult to leave their houses and slip into a deep depression.

Over the last few years I've become less interested in guilt and more interested in shame when considering the human predicament as expressed in contemporary British culture.  Analyses of the difference between guilt and shame always emphasise that guilt is a feeling that we have done wrong, whereas shame is a feeling that we are wrong.  Furthermore, guilt is individual (I have done wrong and I need to make amends), whereas shame is social (I have done wrong therefore you will have nothing to do with me).  We all, I think, fear abandonment to one degree or another: all humans need social relationships and human contact.  Shame cuts us off from others, however, whether it's internalised (I'm not good enough to be their friend) or external (I can't believe she tweeted that!  What a horrible person.  She deserves to be fired).  

The rather marvellous shame researcher, Brene Brown (can't seem to do accents on my iPad - her name is pronounced brenay), argues that while guilt serves an important function, shame is always unhelpful.  We need to have a sense of guilt because it corrects our behaviour when we make mistakes.  None of us, however, should ever be made to feel that we are fundamentally unacceptable to others.  Christians sometimes express the gospel or 'good news' as the knowledge that our guilty actions have been forgiven by means of Christ's sacrifice and our slate has been wiped clean.  Personally, however, I find it more deeply healing to know that Jesus wants a friendship with me, and to restore me to friendship with others.  'I am enough', to use Brown's phrase.  I am enough because he made me.  I am enough because he is enough.