Shame

PRIDE HUMILIATES

1 Our pride puts us to shame

Some people’s pride is good for nothing but to find the best way to make fools of them. I am often put to shame, but I’m not much chastened. And though my pride humiliates me time and again, it never learns humility.

The furthest point of pride comes close to self-contempt, where pride judges that its possessor falls short of its own high standard. False pride is proof against such shame.

Some people are so anxious to fill embarrassing silences, that they keep embarrassing themselves by jabbering nonsense.

Pride, like a madcap billionaire, would be insolvent in a few days, if he didn’t appoint discretion to be his steward. He is a potent monarch but a bumbling captain, who must hand on the command of his feuds to temperance and astuteness.

Some people are so uncomfortably proud that they can’t feel at ease with you, till they have put themselves to shame in front of you, and have no more to lose.

What embarrassing get-ups our vanity tempts us to put on.

2 Ridiculous dignity

How ludicrous I make myself by struggling so hard not to seem so. If you don’t want to look ridiculous, learn to be laughed at with a good grace.

How much of my dignity I forfeit by striving so clamorously to assert it. ‘Honour,’ Aristotle said, ‘does not consist in possessing a good name, but in deserving it.’ And by pressing my claims to it, I show that I don’t deserve it.

We must each work out our own rank with fear and trembling. Like Raskolnikov, we must show that we have the right to our post by brusquely commandeering it. But most of us by doing so prove that we don’t.

Dignity is the solemn face that plodding self-importance wears. It is the swollen gravity of a ponderous and inert body. ‘Gravity is of the very essence of imposture,’ as Shaftesbury wrote.

Some people are so proud that they have to act as if they were vexed by their own success as a ruse to veil how pleased with themselves they are. And when embarrassed, they try to scarf it by pretending to be elated. They need to ham up their affectations, since they blush to seem so affected. What laughable airs I have to put on, in order to appear as if I were behaving naturally.

Some fools want to prove that they are more than just plain fools, and so by indulging their pretensions they make themselves ridiculous as well.

3 The insulted

By endeavouring to redress an immaterial or fancied slight, some people heap a pile of real ignominy on their heads. How egregiously they dishonour themselves, to avoid incurring the dishonour which they scarcely seem to feel.

Some people smart at the most venial affront, yet fail to spot any but the grossest libel. They fear all the time that they’re being defamed, yet they fail to scent real disrespect. Having painlessly digested humiliations that should poison them, their gorge rises at the most unoffending jibe. They bleed at the least snub, but sturdily brazen out the most cutting discredit.

If I had more pride, I might not bristle at such small slurs.

The blows that fell us are those that lower us in the eyes of others.

4 Mad consistency ends in shame

Life is so humdrum. Yet now and then it turns shabbily operatic, and tempts me to improvise some bogus role which my pride then forbids me to give up. I hope to prove that I’m not playing a part by continuing to play it in the same vein.

Some proud people would have you believe that they were all the while purposing to do the very thing that exigencies have forced them to do, or else that they are behaving on impulse when they have in fact computed minutely how the world will view their acts. They become the captives of chance, in order to prove that they are free. And they make fools of themselves by pretending that they don’t mind what others think of them.

Some people own up to their blunders in order to prove that they don’t mean a thing to them, or else they persevere in them for the same reason. They put themselves to shame by persisting in the antics that have shamed them, in order to show that they have not. So they hope to hide that they have gone wrong by continuing to go wrong in the same way. Thus they exacerbate small indiscretions into dire calamities. They fancy that if they behave with unswerving absurdity, no one will notice how absurdly they are behaving.

MODESTY

5 Modesty

Modesty is not a virtue. It is good taste or good tactics.

Most people are as self-effacing as they have to be. But they are as pretentious as they can get away with.

Shrewd climbers speak reticently of the success they have gained, to screen how insistently they sought it.

By observing people who do modest jobs with an unselfconscious grace we can learn to bear our own dull lot. But the largeness of a great mind might also help to reconcile you to your own littleness.

Most of us pretend to be meek from prudence and good policy. But some do so out of a circuitous pride. I speak bashfully so as to savour my strength in overmastering or underestimating myself. And I take pride in my good taste when I judge my own efforts so astringently.

Some proud people put on a front of modesty, to show how far they are above what they are prized for, and how cheap they count most praise. They decline some plaudits, since they know how valueless they are. And they class their worth so much higher than most people’s, that they feel no call to boast to them. They parry compliments which they feel fail to do full justice to their vast talents.

6 The vanity of modesty

I am ashamed to expose my pride, but I am proud to flaunt my meekness. Watch out that you don’t overplay your lowliness, lest others spot how haughtily you rate yourself.

Those who are sincerely modest are chary of advertising their modesty, since they are loath to draw attention to it. But the falsely demure turn down praise that has not even been proffered to them. The winding trail of their humility leads straight to their pride. ‘All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise,’ as Johnson wrote.

Few people have the patience to use modesty as a hook to fish for compliments. Most just scoop them up in the dragnet of their self-flattery.

If you can’t flatter yourself that the world appreciates you, you can at least flatter yourself that it undervalues you.

Even unfeignedly modest people take themselves more seriously than you could guess. ‘The most humble,’ Ebner-Eschenbach wrote, ‘think better of themselves than their best friends think of them.’

7 Modesty overvalues itself

Some people have to overdo their humility, since they overrate their success. The vastness of their exploits shocks them into modesty. They feel obligated to ascribe it modestly to luck or to the gift of God. So they prank up their self-worship as gratitude to some superhuman source.

Some people may strike you as modest, since they seem so content with their small and peripheral post. But they are awestruck that they have arrived at the centre and have done so much. They owe both their modesty and their vanity to their low horizons.

I know my place so well, that I am the hub of the world, that I feel that others ought to know theirs too, that they are not. So how is their sight so clouded, when I see so clearly?

All of us are modest, since none of us is quite so mad as to let slip how well we think of our own merits, because we know that the world is too foolish to share our view. I take care not to boast to those who might not agree with me, or to run myself down to those who might. ‘We find it easy to reprimand ourselves on one condition,’ says Ebner-Eschenbach, ‘so long as no one else concurs with us.’

Many people feel that they have no need to brag, but they think that others still need to hear of their phenomenal success.

Some people will go to a world of trouble to prove to others that they have nothing to prove.

8 Shame and self-deprecation

Pride prods some people to flaunt themselves, and some, like T. E. Lawrence, to bury themselves. Some who lust to be noticed still long to be anonymous, ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot,’ as Pope phrased it. Infected with a fever for renown, they find relief in dreams of obscurity. And though they may be glad to stay in the shade, they still begrudge others when they shine.

Hermits dream of adoring crowds who wait at the mouth of their cave to hear the world-redeeming wisdom which they have gleaned in their retreat.

Some people are so proud that they refuse to laugh at their own foibles, and others are so sure of themselves that they are always game to. Pity those who have no one to contest their compulsory self-deprecation.

Season your boasts with a spoonful of self-deprecation, and most people will swallow them whole.

How obscenely our natural self-belief shows through our skimpy and synthetic modesty.

9 The pride of shyness

Some people who seem inordinately proud are just excessively shy. But most of those who seem uncommonly shy still nestle an overgrown pride in their breast. They curl up into shyness, not because they doubt their own gifts, but because they don’t trust the world to grasp how remarkable they are. They may seem to be uncertain of their own talents, but they in fact suspect that the world is too unwise to do them justice. When they drop their guard, they don’t let show their submerged diffidence, but lay bare their buoyant vainglory. Give them the occasion, and their conceit will more than rise to it. And any occasion will do.

10 The insincerity of modesty

Our modesty is fake, but we love to flaunt it. And our conceit is sincere, but we sense we have to hide it.

I think that others ought to be modest, but that they only fake it, whereas I really am modest, but ought not be. We don’t believe what our modesty makes us say. And that is precisely why we do believe that we are modest. If modesty were sincere, it would not be modesty.

I trust that people will discern that I am unreservedly but mistakenly meek. So I want them to doubt what my humility feigns to believe, and yet still see that I am humble at heart. I am convinced by my own self-effacement, but I trust that others won’t be. This is the one pose of mine that I hope they will have the wit to see through. I count on them to read between the lines of my lowliness, and I’m chagrined when they take it literally. ‘He who speaks humbly of himself,’ wrote Multatuli, ‘grows angry if you believe him and furious if you pass on what he says.’

I presume that my meekness will make people see how much they have underestimated me. But unfortunately I overestimate how insightful they are.

True humility would be the death of any living thing. And yet society could not go on, if most of us did not keep up a false show of it.

HUMILITY

11 Inhuman humility

A creature that was genuinely self-effacing would straightway cease to exist. How could it dare to claim for its own use a mere breath of air? If my pride failed to trounce my humility in a frontal assault, my greed would still overrun it in its inexorable march.

We may not believe that we are the most important beings in the world, but each of our desires drives us to act as if we were.

A person who was truly selfless would be an object of contempt to all. They would be so put upon, that their soul would soon corrode, and they would be eaten up by spite, misanthropy and suspicion. And they would be of no more use to us than they are to themselves. We think that they ought to be unselfish towards us and selfish towards the rest of the world on our behalf.

12 Assumed humility

The one kind of humility that we think much of is the kind that makes much of us.

I trust that unimportant people will be meek, but I overrate their meekness, as they overrate their importance. I think too well of them when I judge them to be modest, and they think so well of themselves that they are not.

We deem that obscure people ought to be modest, seeing that they are so obscure. And we deem that the great ought to be modest, seeing that they are so great. We think that the first have nothing to boast of and that the second should have no need to boast. But when did that ever stop anyone?

13 Pride’s grotesque perversion

Humility is one of pride’s most grotesque perversions. It is conceit flattering itself that it can mortify itself. Would-be saints, like Tolstoy or Weil, who are racked by their inordinate pride, trust that they can harrow their hearts into self-abasement. Their itch to mortify their pride is a clear symptom of its gross inflammation.

If I were to knock down the high tower of my pride, I would have to use the tools of pride to do it. And when I had done it, I would take a fiend’s pride in my work.

I don’t doubt that there must be a host of humble people, since I know that I at least am one.

Nothing beats the presumption of the lowly soul which can conceive of nothing more exalted than a lowly soul. They are all the time bragging to God about how meek they are.

How seriously the most ridiculous people take themselves. And how brightly the most obscure people feel that they shine. With what gravity we treat our lightest desires.

How do humble people dare to assert that humility is a duty, and expect all the rest of us to emulate their own laudable lowness? They presume that the great must be as meek as they are. ‘One law for the lion and ox is oppression,’ as Blake wrote. Isn’t it better to do great things and not be modest than to be modest and lose the power to do great things? ‘Humility to genius,’ Shenstone wrote, ‘is as an extinguisher to a candle.’

14 We don’t doubt ourselves

‘No cause,’ Johnson said, ‘more frequently produces bashfulness than too high an opinion of our own importance.’ Some people’s very self-conceit leads them to put on an unneeded diffidence. They make too much of the difficulties of doing a thing, since they make too much of its size and significance. And they make too much of its size and significance, since they make too much of their own.

Those who look dubiously at the rest of the world still trust steadfastly in their own integrity. And those who suspect all appearances still have faith in their own feigning. My overall scepticism steels my belief in myself. But even those who never have a doubt of their worth still need to give new proof of it each day.

Most of us mistrust completely anyone who would tempt us to mistrust ourselves a touch.

I shun those who seem stricken with self-doubt, for fear that it may be catching, though I have shown no signs of it myself.

SHAME AND GUILT

15 The pride of shame

Nothing but love or self-love is strong enough to win out against shame.

People as a rule are at least a little proud of anything of which they say they are ashamed. Or if they are not, they are proud of being ashamed of it.

Any slander can be borne with, save one that all know to be true.

Your hearers will be willing to wink at most of your gaffes, so long as you don’t blurt out the truth, since this would spatter them with as much mud as it does you.

My shame flatters me. I glory in the gash that it makes in my pride.

Who would not prefer to shoulder a world of shames than grant that they have called them down on their own heads? Pride, having pricked me to act inexcusably, then robs me of all my excuses.

Shame is a competitive imaginist, which vies with its rivals to live up to some socially sanctioned pattern of perfection.

Shame tells you to conform, and it tempts you to rebel. It varies with all the various mores that it hedges. And it shifts in what it prohibits or prescribes. It may make you mild or make you a monster. It might tell you to slit your own wrists or to assassinate an enemy.

16 Shame and guilt

Shame can inhibit you or incite you. It may make you brazenly own up to your faults or brazenly deny them. It may stay you from doing wrong, but it will bind you to requite small insults by the most disproportionate means.

Shame is shallower than guilt, and so sticks faster in us. ‘It is easier to cope with a bad conscience than a bad reputation,’ as Nietzsche points out.

No one lacks a good conscience. What we crave is the good opinion of others.

It is not our sins but our failures that prick our conscience. And so in order to soothe it, we blame the sins of others and try to besmear them with as much shame as we can.

Even the most devout people dread the condemnation of an unknowing by-stander more than that of an all-seeing God.

We don’t blush to do in God’s sight the indecorous acts that we would squirm to have witnessed by the world. And he doesn’t blush to be privy to them.

Guilt torments, but shame prevents. Guilt may sting you, but it won’t stop you.

Shame may warn you not to do real harm, but embarrassment will hold you back from doing positive good.

17 Shame and embarrassment

Embarrassment may spread like a blush over a whole life.

Egoism makes some people proof against shame, and others all too prone to it.

I’m mortified by the least frailties which should in no way embarrass me, and I’m far less embarrassed by more grievous ones which should. The smallest faux pas might abash us, yet so few things shame us.

In most cases, the person who is making an ass of himself is not at all put out. It’s the onlookers who cringe on his behalf.

Bashfulness is shame’s tender infancy, in which you wince at each slight graze to your social self, before you’ve had time to grow the tough hide of your self-assurance.

Embarrassment is to shame what vanity is to pride. They are shallow lakes, more readily stirred up than the deep sea.

 

See also:       Pride,            Vanity,            Praise