The Uselessness of Shame

Shame, or embarrassment, is the emotion that many people feel when others learn something about them that they wanted to keep hidden. This something could be a personal preference (ex. a man who enjoys watching ‘chic flicks’), a personal attribute (ex. what your backside looks like naked), or an action performed (ex. extra-marital sexual relations).

For whatever reason, you want to keep one of these kinds of things hidden from other people, or at least from most other people. It could be that your career prospects, your reputation, and/or the fruitfulness of your personal relationships depend on you keeping such a thing hidden. Fair enough; it is often wise to keep certain things hidden from other people. But shame is the emotion that pops up after the thing has been revealed. The consequences of the thing having been revealed will occur whether or not you feel internal shame after the fact.

This being the case, adding the painful emotion of shame on top of the negative external consequences of the thing being revealed is really just a form of useless self-flagellation. The more intelligent approach to take is to be discrete and diplomatic in order not to divulge potentially damaging information to the wrong people; but if for whatever reason the information is divulged, it is better to be internally shameless. Shame is a form of self-torture and self-torture is only for fanatics; the practical person is shameless on the inside, even if he must appear to be repentant for external purposes.