“Put on the Diamonds”: Notes on Humiliation
harpers.orgDoes a humiliated person bear any responsibility for their feeling? I ask because while I sympathize with her examples, I can also think of many unsympathetic examples of humiliations, and the person's response to it, and I'd wonder whether humiliations are the result of power shifts. Many people I know are sympathetic to violent responses to humiliation, and even in the article, the interviews with convicted muderers showed their decision to kill someone was often over a related issue of respect.
Being witty or funny gives you the power to shame, and often it's unintentional, to where we might consider the target of a well aimed observation to be fragile for being offended. And yet, we wouldn't blame someone or hold them morally culpable in a disadvantaged relationship for turning the tables, even with a pair of scissors in the back. I don't have answers, but I'd wonder if there is a more general idea of where the responsibility for humiliations and their consequences lie.
Communication is a two-way road. We need to be tactful and mindful of how we're communicating and empathizing with people. Simultaneously we need to work on ourselves so that we don't spontaneously react when we're triggered. When conflict arises, often times more than one person is at fault.
Indeed, the empathy piece I'm often suspicious of because the personalization of an interaction causes at least as many problems as it solves. We can't fake empathy, we can't empathize with everyone, and it's presumptive to expect others to treat us as a peer, so I err on the side of civility over empathy. The conventions of civility are designed specifically to avoid humiliating people unintentionally, where empathizing can get into personal business where humiliation and its conseqeunces become inevitable.
This is a good question.
I imagine there is at least a 2x2 matrix of humiliation: on one axis, there's intention (did A intend to humiliate B, or was it inadvertent?). On the other axis, there's public versus private: is the person humiliated in a way that other people will know and remember?
There may be more axes, but those are the big ones, to me.
It seems like it's fairly uncontroversial to say that someone who inadvertently inflicts a private humiliation known only to the humiliated deserves the least amount of blame, while someone who intentionally humiliates someone in public deserves the most.
For example, an inadvertent, private humiliation might be that you and I are talking privately, and you make a joke about my alma mater, which I care a lot about. You didn't mean it personally: you didn't even know I went there, let alone that I was sensitive about it. No one else hears you say this, and two minutes later you've forgotten about it. On the other hand, I take it to heart, and carry a grudge for years.
Most people would say you're not really at fault at all. You could have been more circumspect, but I'm the one who needs to lighten up.
On the other hand, if you and your partner are at the beach, and I come up to you and kick sand in your face, and everybody around you laughs, that's a public humiliation, and I'm 100% responsible for it.
These feel like different situations, and the distinctions between them just aren't captured by the single word 'humiliation'. Perhaps these more precise words exist in English, and we just don't use them very well, but it feels like if we did then this confusion wouldn't even arise.
It's like having 50 different words for snow, because snow is such a large part of your culture. Our vocabulary for talking about humiliation is limited. On the other hand, I'm not sure I want to live in a culture that has 50 different words for humiliation!
I'd say about half of the responsibility.
Humiliation us about the percived damage inflicted on the self constructed self image. One is responsible for one's perceptions and constructs.
I would say all of the responsibility even if they're not the cause.
Unless we want some kind of thought police making sure we don't think the wrong things or - worse - cause bad thinking in others.
> I'd wonder whether humiliations are the result of power shifts.
Advantages, privilege, power imbalances... All of these are at the core of humiliation. It's all about the violation of a person's sense of self. You believe you have worth but someone else comes along and strips you of it.
> the interviews with convicted muderers showed their decision to kill someone was often over a related issue of respect.
This is universal in human nature. When one person humiliates another, consequences are likely. Even in civilized society, there are consequences. They just tend to be more formal and indirect. They come in the form of simple exclusion from a group, not being elevated for a prestigious position, trials at a court of law, things like that. In less civilized circles, people are held accountable for their words and actions immediately, directly and violently. For certain kinds of people, a man getting his respect is more important than his life.
Humiliation causes violence. In so many cases, physical violence was not going to happen until the victim said or did something that humiliated the perpetrator. Challenging a man with a gun by saying he doesn't have the balls to shoot it will provoke an attack. It humiliates him, makes him less of a man and leaves him no option but to shoot. It's really easy to end up making this sort of challenge while under a stressful situation. There are no shortage of cases where a violent person starts to leave the area but the victim just has to get that last insult in, they just need to have the last word, teach them a lesson and put them back in their place. "Yeah, crawl back to the shithole you came out of." Is it any wonder the situation escalates to violence?
> And yet, we wouldn't blame someone or hold them morally culpable in a disadvantaged relationship for turning the tables, even with a pair of scissors in the back.
It's interesting to observe who is and isn't blamed. For example, incels also fit this description and they are certainly unsympathetic to the vast majority of people despite the constant humiliation they endure.
There is such a thing as forgiveness.
In Buddhism there is a form of meditation called "metta", sometimes translated as "loving-kindness" meditation. The way I've been taught to do it is to wish sincerely to yourself, "May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe." Then bring one's attention to those one most loves and think, "May they be happy, may they be healthy, may they be safe." Then repeat that for the people around you, then your neighbors, then your town or city, your country, then the world. The most advanced form of the practice is to sincerely wish this for one's enemies and people one most dislikes or hates.
In Buddhism it is often taught that hatred and ill will towards others is a poison that hurts oneself. It is more constructive and healthy to forgive and move on, rather than fixate or seek vengeance.
In many other traditions also, forgiveness is greatly valued.
In the article, the author writes:
"There are many things we can live without. Self-respect is not one of them. One would think the absence of self-respect would resemble much of a sameness, but the circumstances that can make people feel bereft of it are as variable as persons themselves. A psychiatrist who interviewed a group of men imprisoned for murder and other violent crimes asked each of them why he had done it. In almost all cases the answer was "He dissed me.""
I wonder if the outcome would have been different had these people been taught the value of forgiveness and how to detach and let go from their negative thoughts, rather being in environments where lashing out in violence is modeled as the norm for how one reacts when faced with humiliation.
Also, obviously most people don't react to humiliation with violence. There is something unusual going on with the minority that do, and I wish the article had explored that.
It should go without saying, but just in case: If you happen to be on the other end of the spectrum - someone who tends to blame themselves and easily forgives others. If you find yourself constantly forgiving someone who is damaging you then you need to focus on getting out of harm's way first. Then, by all means, forgive them from a distance.
Weirdly, I myself have apparently learned not to forgive. (Want to be humiliated? Wait until someone you've forgiven does whatever it is again.)
But I have learned to forget. Which is likewise useful.
This is interesting to me. Your description of metta is very similar to one aspect of how I... guess I must have been taught... to pray. Not that I do that much these days. Not even sure what I believe. But I could.
The main difference seems to me to be the form of speech. Rather than using the subjunctive ("may they be safe"), here the "second person" is more explicit; you are using a kind of supplicating imperative to speak with -- well, God: "Please keep them safe." Feels funny to say out loud, that you're "talking to God". But there it is.
There are also the established, formulaic prayers, of course. But the theme of forgiveness is big there too, like you hinted at. The most obvious being in the Lord's Prayer, which includes "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us". I assume these lines are famous, but, y'know, not everyone grew up with the same tradition; it may be worth me saying it here.
I've begun to think mantras have a real effect. I know, for example, a person who used a mantra to overcome a fairly minor personal issue. That was a good enough thing to do, and was for personal ends.
Well if mantras work -- are the prayers of Christian tradition really so different from them? What does it do to you, to repeat every day a prayer, one of whose stanzas is about forgiveness? Presumably it changes how you think? Maybe that's a good thing?
I may yet return to religion. The older I get the more sense it makes. Without it you end up thinking other things, which maybe you wish you didn't.
"Right thought, right speech, right action." These affect thought.
Does Buddhism talk at all about the difference between acquiescence and forgiveness? I think that's usually among the thoughts on the minds of people who might hesitate to forgive, and I'd imagine it's come up before.
The approach I've most often heard taken is one of opposing the action, but not hating the person. You can have forgiveness and even compassion for the person while opposing what they do.
Basically the entire luxury goods market is about purchasing status.
If you think about it, lowering or threatening someone's status ("dissing them") is robbery, from a certain point of view.
Alexander Hamilton died in a duel with Burr, after Burr "dissed" him at dinner...
I feel like this comment might change the course of my life and I'm going to try this practice you suggested. Thank you. It's really relevant to me right now.
Anyone else disappointed not to hear more about the Sheila interaction?
I think she should have left it out. As anecdotes about humiliation go, it's not much. There's no mention that Sheila publicly shamed her (as the author, by the way, has now publicly shamed Sheila), she just didn't want to be friends anymore. And she's still holding a grudge against her erstwhile friend from when she was 13? People grow apart, especially around major life transitions like adolescence.
It's also the consequence of being shackled to a literary technique common to these long form articles, for authors to write themselves into the piece, in order to make the content more relatable to the audience. It's a form of exhibitionism, where the author has to come up with something recognizable, but not too revealing or truly heart wrecking. Something milquetoast form adolescence will do in a pinch.
I am sure these sort of confessionals used to come across as audacious. Now, it's just a tired trope of the format.
I think the proper form would have been to pause the Sheila narrative at the Edna reveal, and then at the very end of the story, have the 50 years later meeting as the wrapper.
haha, yes, you're right!
fwiw - I also wanted to know what happened there right after their encounter.
I couldn't agree with you more. I usually stop reading this format immediately. Got about 2/3 of the way through.
As noted in a upvoted comment above - resentment, hate, anger all poison/burn the one who holds it. The stronger it is held, and the longer, the more damage it does.
There is a lot of poison here, and I don’t think it is in Sheila.
The humiliation was when Sheila said she was best friends with Edna now. Being public has nothing to do with it, in that incident or at basically any point in the article.
> The humiliation was when Sheila said she was best friends with Edna now.
The "now" is especially important. It implies the friendship they shared was never real. Sheila was just keeping her around while she waited for someone better to be friends with.
I don't think that's implied at all. In particular I don't see any evidence that the "friendship" with Edna was any more real. I think kids are just fickle sometimes.
We're sure that Sheila is the other party's real name?
One consequence of this essay being published in a high-profile literary magazine such as Harper's, whether intentional or not, will be Sheila's sense of humiliation upon reading it.
I bet it's intentional.
My guess is that Sheila has a completely different recollection of the events described, if she recalls them at all.
Interesting you said that - i read the first part, scanned the rest looking for continuation of the story and then searched for 'Sheila'. Really wonder what happened next - was there a reconciliation, did the hurt run too deep, did Sheila even remember or did she think they just drifted apart?
I asked myself how a 63 year old would recognize a childhood friend on the street. My assumption is Sheila found her on purpose, because she had lived her whole life with this burden of regret, and wanted to apologize. I have a similar burden, and occasionally try to look up an old friend, but his name is too common.
What did you do?
Absolutely yes. For me, it somewhat upstaged the rest of the essay.
made me read to the end. brilliant!
Made me stop after searching for her name and not finding it in the rest of the article.
>Whose humiliation did [NY Times columnist] Bruni have in mind, Weinstein’s or the women’s? The answer is both. Think of all the taunting rejections Weinstein must have endured before he found himself in a position of power.
The article doesn't substantiate that Weinstein experienced past humiliation (let alone that this partially motivated his evil). This seemingly-speculative humanization doesn't seem fair to his victims.
>The problem is that the consciousness bestowed on us is just barely sufficient; if we are to achieve inner freedom, it is necessary that we become more (much more) conscious than we generally are. If men and women learn to occupy their own inspirited beings fully and freely, Fromm posited, they will gain self-knowledge and thus no longer be alone: they will have themselves for company. Once one has company one can feel benign toward oneself as well as others. Then, like a virus that had been stamped out, humiliating loneliness would surely begin to wane.
Oh, hey. Furries.
Coincidentally, I just finished reading Under an English Heaven by Donald Westlake. It's the story of the British invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla, and the invasion itself turns on an incident where a British diplomat (delivering more-or-less what the Anguillans wanted) humiliated the leaders of the 6000-person island, who in turn kicked the diplomat off the island, humiliating him.
(If you're interested, the book is in the Internet Archive freely. It's hilarious.)
Well, the action of the Iliad kicks of when Agamemnon disrespects first the priest Chryses, then Achilles. The verb shows up in line 11 of the first book of the Iliad.
I have found looking into practices around what ancient Indian religions refer to as "no-self" or "non-self" to be helpful in learning to respond better in situations where I have acted wrongly or otherwise felt ashamed.
It's so much easier to value yourself when someone else genuinely shows that they value you too.
Make sure the people you love know that you value them. Make it a habit to greet them at the door when they come home, and to always tell them sweet dreams when you go to sleep.
These affirmations build up an ablative layer that protects against life's daily indignities, I think.
It is easy however to become dependent on this affirmations (and hence other people and their sometimes fickle approval).
when people find themselves in this type of situation, sometimes they lash out, or try to be controlling/manipulative when they stop getting them, instead of being self reflective and figuring out why and addressing. Sometimes there IS nothing that can do to address it - a bogus accusation from someone else, or affirmations built on some material wealth that disappeared, or whatever.
Many people believe the affirmations they see are genuine, but when tested they turn out not to be.
It’s also easy for it to be a kind of hedonic treadmill, with someone chasing ever strong and strong affirmations to make up for a pain or fear that won’t go away, and is not faced, overdoing what you are describing to the point it is hostile and toxic.
If you look in the media, these patterns are very, very visible.
And inevitably, for any number of reasons, the affirmations will stop or reduce in number or impact - even if just due to normal variation - even if 100% genuine and healthy. Kids go to college, or partners drift apart, or everyone gets so used to it they stop noticing.
Some of the discussion from others above can be helpful here, as being ok just ‘being’ is a much more stable place, and requires only that which the person themself has (somewhat) control over - themselves.
good introduction, do we have any way to end humiliation of a country? this will be best way to end wars.
The ending of wars remains the same as always and will never change: the imposition of tremendous cost on the aggressor. That cost can come in numerous forms, including financial and domestic social (eg from human losses in the field), but that cost is overwhelmingly the primary thing that ends wars.
Covid plausibly more rapidly ended the US occupation of Afghanistan for example. It became increasingly politically untenable to disregard the cost of remaining in Afghanistan, while the US looks at raising taxes, deals with soaring budget deficits and mounting public debt (an ongoing context made sharply worse by the pandemic).
Most wars are fought due to resource scarcity - either commodity materials, food, or something else scarce.
Humiliating a country is often done through extreme resource extraction and/or subjugation (where existing resources are controlled, at a minimum, if not directly extracted).
Adding ideological humiliation on top of it can make the fire burn hotter once lit, but is rarely the direct cause.
WW 2 was a good hexample of this - the crushing penalties on the German economy + the ideological humiliation fed a fire the world has not seen for a long time.
But if Germany had been allowed to prosper, but been humiliated? Unlikely they would have been the aggressor. For evidence, see what happened Ww2, where that is essentially exactly what happened.
If they been made poor the way they were, but otherwise treated well? Hitler may not have been the figurehead, but someone would have, and a war would have been inevitable. It probably would have been less vicious and pointlessly destructive of lives and property - but not by that much.
I disagree with your first sentence - resource scarcity may happen and a country may be impoverished, but deciding to go to war is not an economic decision but rather a very personal one. Negotiations and deals are about resources, wars are about egos and beliefs.
Every war I’ve been able to find there was a clear resource issue that a ego, belief, nation identity, whatever reason was then pasted on top of to justify.
Even the crusades had a clear economic justification - massive overpopulation of fighting age males resulting in a shortage of jobs, opportunities, and money. Sending them off to die (and loot and pillage) solved both problems. Beliefs were used to paper over the obviously unpalatable reality on the ground and help recruit.
Besides whatever is captured, there are of course other things successful war gets you - fewer young men rattling around locally causing problems (including crime, revolts, general instability), your new ‘green’ military leaders get to cut their teeth in the field, ‘better’ female to male ratios for your traditionally male leaders, more space (aka conquered territory), looted riches and newly available natural resources, and it often reduces competition and neighboring populations that would get in your way within a region in general.
This doesn’t last that long obviously, as a generation or two later the population has again increased, your veteran leaders have retired, etc.
It’s not always so direct of course - most of the recent American wars are more about burning old excess material inventory, keeping domestic military manufacturing expertise alive, and ensuring domestic weapons manufacturers of all types are able to stay on the cutting edge, but it is still the same song and dance when you get down to it.
While you average solder may fight for a cause, a nation only goes to war when the books show it needs to happen.
I guess this is kinda judgmental on my part, but I feel like a lot of the personal anecdotes you hear about from.. older Americans.. seem totally anachronistic and bizarre. Like:
> On the other hand, I have a cousin, a doctor, who feels humiliated if he’s shortchanged in a grocery store. His wife, too: if another woman is wearing the same dress at a party, she feels humiliated.
Like -- who are these people? They just _suck_. They need to get over themselves. I'm sure there are new people like this still coming of age, but probably not at the rate they used to... These sound like very 'boomer' problems, and I think a larger part of millennial culture is collectively rolling our eyes at this brand of arrogance. All over the country younger people grew up with parents and grandparents who were more concerned about pettily defending their pride than being good parents or doing good in the world, and understandably their children grow up with nothing but contempt for it.
Everyone grew up conditioned by a different context, and every generation has their idiosyncrasies. I'm sure millennials and gen-z folks have things that are humiliating to them which older folks would roll their eyes at (say, something that happens on Twitter or in a video game). I'm not meaning to criticize you; just saying it's good to remember that each person has their own story shaped by the environments they spent time in.
I'm a millenial and as I read this, I got a strong visceral feeling like the one you're describing but about you. Not you personally, but the narrative you just posted.
Do you really feel confident that millenials don't have any culturally systematic pettiness and arrogance? The social media generation, the neurotic depressed generation, the generation that has originated no novel politics... they are categorically more serious and more humble than the previous couple generations?
The minute details you point to seem essentially irrelevant, exactly the kind of thing that varies generation to generation as culture changes -- anachronistic, as you say.
Oh, I'm sure millennials (as a generalization) have their own new varieties of petty pride. Just, the particular brand described the article feels like its age has passed and I'm glad for it.
Petty prides are petty prides.
Some people are very self-conscious. As a doctor, he recognizes the amount of change is minuscule, the effort expended to point it out is barely worth it, the clerk may have done unintentionally, because schools suck and this is the best the market could get at the wage they are willing to offer.. all sorts of reasons not make a big deal.
But.. deep down, internal scales are off. Because it is not about the money. It is about balance. it is about principles. It is about getting what I am god damn paying for, which includes courtesy of getting the right change.
It is insignificant in the long run, but it isn't completely without merit.
This does bring up the general question of who is sensitive or insensitive to humiliation.
I am reminded of something Michael O. Church wrote a few years ago [0] in connection with agile/scrum and the issue of intense observation of an employee's work process:
"Another topic coming to mind here is status sensitivity. Programmers love to make-believe that they’ve transcended a few million years of primate evolution related to social status, but the fact is: social status matters, and you’re not “political” if you acknowledge the fact. Older people, women, racial minorities, and people with disabilities tend to be status sensitive in the workplace, because it’s a matter of survival for them. Constant surveillance into one’s work indicates a lack of trust and low social status, and the most status-sensitive people (even if they’re the best workers) are the first ones to decline when surveillance ramps up. If they feel like they aren’t trusted (and what else is communicated by a culture that expects every item of work to be justified?) then they lose motivation quickly.
Agile and especially Scrum exploit the nothing-to-hide fallacy. Unless you’re a “low performer” (witch hunt, anyone?) you shouldn’t mind a daily status meeting, right? The only people who would object to justifying their work in terms of short-term business value are the “slackers” who want to steal from the company, correct? Well, no. Obviously not.
The violent transparency culture is designed for the most status-insensitive people: young, usually white or Asian, privileged, never-disabled males who haven’t been tested, challenged, or burned yet at work. It’s for people who think that HR and management are a waste of time and that people should just “suck it up” when demeaned or insulted."
[0] https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-an...
> Agile and especially Scrum exploit the nothing-to-hide fallacy. Unless you’re a “low performer” (witch hunt, anyone?) you shouldn’t mind a daily status meeting, right? The only people who would object to justifying their work in terms of short-term business value are the “slackers” who want to steal from the company, correct? Well, no. Obviously not.
That's an interesting take on agile culture, thanks for sharing it.
What a truly invalidating and humiliating take! Clearly you need to be warred upon for a thousand years for this unforgivable slight :D
As it happens I agree with you here, at least personally, and here is why: humiliation is an EMOTIONAL feeling and you cannot assume it is justifiable. Narcissists can feel humilated over not being treated like they are God almighty. Bigots can feel humiliated over having to engage with subhumans as if they are people. I've got a brother who is humilated if he has to bag his own groceries at the grocery store, and goes into rather well-disciplined and civilized rage over it. Likewise if he's served food and something is wrong with it or with the service: he, in a dignified way, punishes everyone as hard as he can and goes to war.
We cannot go by feelings like this: it can't be personal. There has to be a contextualization where you say 'no, you cannot beat that passing lady to death because she rolled her eyes at you and sneered'.
That's why humiliation is so dangerous: both for individuals and for societies. It spurs these extreme, vengeful reactions, but there seems to be NO requirement that it is over some justifiable slight. We're far too subjective to trust this reaction in anyone or anything. Being able to take a broader view is indispensable.
Some of the most capable, powerful people in the world are walking wounded, forever acting out revenge on past, unreachable humiliations. It's tragic, but also dangerous. It's why we have laws and police and such: we've never not had this problem.
People can't help how they feel, they don't suck: they're just normal human beings whose feelings exist. Each generation will feel humiliated at something someone else considers or will consider to be stupid.
People vary, and some people are offended by things that others aren't.
I do wonder if there are lessons to be learned regarding climate change specifically. I'm thinking of my parents, but there are a lot of boomers who would never think of tossing a pop can or candy bar wrapper out their car window, and who regard that sort of thing as absolutely inexcusable. And yet they're now being told that burning gasoline is far worse than lowly littering. And it's a thing they've been doing most of their lives, thinking it's normal and doesn't cost anything beyond what it costs at the pump and maybe (if they're reasonably self-aware) the geopolitical issues around being dependent on a few major oil producers in the middle-east.
Accepting that climate change is a serious issue implies acknowledging their role in creating it, which is a kind of humiliation. Just saying "fine, get over it" may be satisfying, but in order to get them on board maybe we need a kind of messaging that isn't moralistic and doesn't assign blame. How would that even work, though? I don't know.
I think most younger people have grown up in a world where climate change is an acknowledged fact and that burning gasoline is known to be problematic even if there isn't a practical alternative if you need to get to work or whatever. So there's no mental transformation that has to happen.