(chutzpah alert!)

Saving Face: America and the Politics of Shame by Stuart Schneiderman

(a review)

By Patricia B. Ross Collective Responsibility of Shame

Every culture should have to face its own shame. Unfortunately, shame is a variable concept according to the times, and the ability of the culture to properly identify what is shameful, who can be shameful, and the events that constitute a shameful event. Prior to the 1960's and 1970's nearly everything was "shameful," in that women without gloves, and men without hats were considered shameful. Characterized much as the course of civil rights and the recognition of individual rights for humans, shame has always been a public evaluation, and measured by group politics so that propriety became the urge to resist, if not to rebel against.

In a shameful culture, inhumane things were possible - lynchings, torture, animal sacrifices, etc. - even while upon the surface, propriety was worn like a badge of honor. The hypocrisy revealed in years hence, is that shame did not exist where it was private or unrevealed, adding to a culture where transparency became the idol rather than to embrace the boundaries of what constituted shame. Fortunately, America has moved beyond the narrowminded principles that so bound one to another that behavior and conduct, as well as dress, has been allowed a degree of freedom that embraces the ideas of difference so people need not examine each and every action, including speech, that brands them improper. While there are a few, generally job related, environments where rigid and shame-oriented cultures prevail, the concept of freedom has taken on greater significance recently as a privilege, if not a right, provided no laws are broken.

This healthier environment that honors the individual works for all persons previously discriminated against, and offers breathing room for those who were not quite attuned to the proprieties of life who were interested in watching their every movement to be evaluated by the group or community. Neither healthy relationships nor flexibility in thinking were aided by former designs of acceptance, and many were condemned by society for that reason, many of whom were simply responding to their own unique social environment, or ethnic environment. While guilt still survives as an effort to restrain, it is fortunately much less likely to be the "blackball" it was years earlier, allowing everyone to breathe much easier.

Coming through that period of gender bias, racial bias, ethnic bias, and even religious bias is not totally behind us, but great progress has been made to minimize the importance of those effects. We now are making inroads and efforts at behavior or conduct bias by everyone to overcome the tendency to typecast persons by superfluous events that are not considered within the mainstream but still cognizant of safety, and dignity in the things we do as humans, to each other, and the things we do to animals, or the environment, offering the new design of social freedom with responsibility but without social restraint, definite progress in the eyes of most people.

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Face-America-Politics-Shame/dp/0679409696"]Saving Face: America and the Politics of Shame: Stuart Schneiderman: 9780679409694: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]