In his analysis Rousseau and Romanticism, Irving Babbitt says that Rousseau held the same principle as Irish novelist George Moore (1852-1933): Both believed “that the only thing a man should be ashamed of is of being ashamed” (p. 129).* Apparently, that principle derives from a belief in the importance of individualism.
That shame derives from cultural contexts seems undeniable. Why would an individual feel shame except in violations of dogma, regulations, rules, precepts, and laws? That is not just a question for eighteenth- and nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century minds to answer. We all encounter the problem of individualism vs. conformity, the latter imposing shame upon those who do not conform.
We all sit upon a fence, even those who believe they have made a clear choice between individualism and conformity. And strangely, nonconformity has become a conformity of sorts. Those seeking “identity,” usually the young and impressionable, stumble across “models of individuality” they emulate. So, youth, for example, wishing to strike out on a different path from a more formal or traditional lifestyle might take up dressing in the Goth style or become, like George Moore and the French artists with whom he associated, somewhat “Bohemian.” When individuality is identifiable, it is no longer individual. To be identified in the late 1960s through the late 1970s as a “Hippie” and a member of a counterculture meant being one in a group of self-identifying members that had its own dogma, regulations, rules, precepts, and laws.
Unless we are reared by wolves, we are all enculturated, and our “individuality” faces the prospect of “being ashamed.” That means that all of us deal in some way with ideals as they impose shoulds and oughts upon our behavior and sometimes even on our thoughts.
You might have acquired through enculturation a political inclination toward the shoulds and oughts of complete unfettered capitalism or complete socialism. Both bodies politic and economic require some conformity to ideals, and that means a relinquishing of individuality to some degree based on a level of shame. This isn’t a new dilemma; it is one version of the dilemma that reaches the very core of the question about how we live as individuals in a societal context. Probably because he inherited the unresolved dilemma the question poses, the Buddha addressed the matter more than two thousand years ago, and philosophers and psychologists have struggled unsuccessfully toward its resolution ever since.
You will probably never completely resolve the problem of conformity vs individualism, but examining your vacillating stand on the dilemma is worth your effort. Shame might influence members of a society to act ethically or morally even as it imposes limitations on individuality and complete freedom. Too much of anything, however, never seems to be good. So, too much shame burdens and restricts every individual. Somehow each of us has to find a balance between just being ashamed of being ashamed and not being ashamed because of being unashamed.
*Babbitt, Irving. Rousseau and Romanticism. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Company, Riverside Press Cambridge, 1919.
That shame derives from cultural contexts seems undeniable. Why would an individual feel shame except in violations of dogma, regulations, rules, precepts, and laws? That is not just a question for eighteenth- and nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century minds to answer. We all encounter the problem of individualism vs. conformity, the latter imposing shame upon those who do not conform.
We all sit upon a fence, even those who believe they have made a clear choice between individualism and conformity. And strangely, nonconformity has become a conformity of sorts. Those seeking “identity,” usually the young and impressionable, stumble across “models of individuality” they emulate. So, youth, for example, wishing to strike out on a different path from a more formal or traditional lifestyle might take up dressing in the Goth style or become, like George Moore and the French artists with whom he associated, somewhat “Bohemian.” When individuality is identifiable, it is no longer individual. To be identified in the late 1960s through the late 1970s as a “Hippie” and a member of a counterculture meant being one in a group of self-identifying members that had its own dogma, regulations, rules, precepts, and laws.
Unless we are reared by wolves, we are all enculturated, and our “individuality” faces the prospect of “being ashamed.” That means that all of us deal in some way with ideals as they impose shoulds and oughts upon our behavior and sometimes even on our thoughts.
You might have acquired through enculturation a political inclination toward the shoulds and oughts of complete unfettered capitalism or complete socialism. Both bodies politic and economic require some conformity to ideals, and that means a relinquishing of individuality to some degree based on a level of shame. This isn’t a new dilemma; it is one version of the dilemma that reaches the very core of the question about how we live as individuals in a societal context. Probably because he inherited the unresolved dilemma the question poses, the Buddha addressed the matter more than two thousand years ago, and philosophers and psychologists have struggled unsuccessfully toward its resolution ever since.
You will probably never completely resolve the problem of conformity vs individualism, but examining your vacillating stand on the dilemma is worth your effort. Shame might influence members of a society to act ethically or morally even as it imposes limitations on individuality and complete freedom. Too much of anything, however, never seems to be good. So, too much shame burdens and restricts every individual. Somehow each of us has to find a balance between just being ashamed of being ashamed and not being ashamed because of being unashamed.
*Babbitt, Irving. Rousseau and Romanticism. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Company, Riverside Press Cambridge, 1919.
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