Shame Guilt Power


Today I was checking all my links to make sure they are working, deleting some of them. One link, which I had speed read, and keep thinking about, I re-read more carefully. It is called, "Honor and Shame in a Middle Eastern setting." It took awhile to read it carefully, but it was well worth the time. It is the best short course I've seen on the differences between some of the world's major cultures, and why we don't "get" each other.

Roland Muller writes that all civilizations have grappled with fear, guilt and shame.

The purpose of a civilization is to bring people together around a symbolic center instead of just a family or tribal center. The tribal totem becomes larger than any single person, and in old matriarchal societies, the tribal totem was considered the magical source of fertilization of females. In matriarchal society the female does not belong to any particular man, and so the father is not source material. This is in contrast to a highly patriarchal system, where the father is not only the source of the family, but is elevated to an all powerful position, having the power of life and death over the other members.

This is of course reflected in an all powerful male god who is the Law. In less patriarchal society, the one god concept is centered around the sense one has of always being oneself. This sense of connection to the one thing is the sense of connection to something much larger than the ego identity.

The Power dynamic comes into play in societies in which the god, or gods, are in charge of everything and there must be rituals and dances and all kinds of things to appease them. It's pretty easy to see this dynamic at play in the New Age religions, with the emphasis on magical healing properties of stones, prophesy in playing cards or tea leaves, and the sense of empowerment one gains by investing manna in these objects and rituals. This isn't a lot different from investing power in a rain dance or fertility rite.

Shame, power and guilt are all ways in which the individual is kept in service to the group, and thus is the glue holding it together. The very same New Age mind that casts spells to ward off evil spirits or attract benevolent ones is based in Christianity, which is based in statism. I had made the connection between the all powerful god and the elevation of Law over everyone, but I hadn't fixed the origins of it clearly until I read Muller's piece.

Muller writes:

The Roman Empire has come and gone, leaving us with a few ruined cities, and a wealth of stories about conquest and heroism. While most of what the Romans accomplished has disappeared, there is one facet of Roman life that has impacted the west, right down to the present. It is the Roman law, or the 'pax romana' (Roman peace) which was brought about by everyone obeying the Roman law.

Roman law introduced the concept that the law was above everyone, even the lawmakers. This idea was not totally new. The Jews under Moses understood this. Greek politicians developed a similar plan with their city-state, but with laws that were man made, not divine. The Romans, however, perfected the system, and put it into widespread use. They developed a type of democracy known as the republic. They put in place a complex legal system that required lawmakers, lawyers, and judges. This Roman system of law left a tremendous impact on western society. Even to this day, much of the western legal system is still built around the basic Roman code of law.

Western civilization today is littered with references to the Roman Empire. Much of their coins, architecture, and language have Roman roots. Legal and economic theories are so filled with Romanisms that westerners no longer see them for what they are. They have become so much a part of their mental furniture, that few people today question them.

As an example, Roman law during the Roman Empire assumed that the individual's rights were granted by the state (by government) and that lawmakers can make up laws. Under Roman law, the state was supreme, and rights were granted or erased whenever lawmakers decided. This philosophy is sometimes called 'statism.' Its basic premise is that there is no law higher than the government's law.

Roman politicians were not the first to invent statism but they did such an effective job of applying it, that the Roman Empire has become the guiding star for politicians in the west. Statists see the "pax romana," the period in which Rome dominated the Mediterranean world, as the golden days of statism. The known world was "unified" and controlled by one large government.

This unification was symbolized in Roman times by something known as the fasces. This was a bundle of wooden rods bound together by red-colored bands. In ancient Rome the fasces was fixed to a wooden pole, with an ax at the top or side. This symbolized the unification of the people under a single government. The ax suggested what would happen to anyone who didn't obey the government. The Roman fasces became the origin of the word fascist.

The anxiety that runs through at least half of Americans while George W. Bush is President is precisely the fear of the unitary executive growing into a statism that is fascism, whether or not it is called that. There has been an almost hysterical backlash from the right when observers of the political scene point out that there is an ideological preference for statism in Mr. Bush and even more in Mr. Cheney.

But this was true even during the campaign, when there were security people at the campaign appearances throwing out anyone who was not already a supporter of Bush and Cheney. This is statism on a local level, and there was no reason to think that those policies of concentration of power and exclusion of dissent would not carry over into policy decisions if the proponents of it were elected.

That of course happened, and the consequences are being learned, as one area of government after the other is revealed to be in the hands of inexperienced true believers, who unfortunately are about as adept at managing government as are Iraqi Shiites. One of the brilliant moves the administration made was to banish the Baath Party and Sunnis who were the only Iraqis experienced in running the government. This pretty much guaranteed the collapse of the government.

During the early years of the Bush Presidency, it was not unusual to hear him, or those around him, talk about "moral ambiguity." The logic was right out of Ayn Rand's "Cult of Moral Grayness." The gist of it was, "I know what's good and what's evil."

The problem was, this is a great attitude for a child, who needs to know no more than what to do and what not to do in order to stay in good stead with the parents, but in the real world it is hopelessly naive. What is good in one culture may not be relevant in another, and what appears to be evil may be based on a set of foundational premises foreign to the mind of a born again Texan. This is why there is usually some consideration of how well educated somebody is when he or she runs for President. Stupidity at that level has disastrous consequences.

Muller:

During Roman times, pax romana (the Roman peace) meant, "do as you are told, don't make waves, or you will be hauled away in chains." Roman Law was supreme. In contrast to this, there was the old way of obeying the supreme ruler. Under this system, the word of the ruler was law. With the Republic, the Romans elevated law, so that it was above the ruler. Now everyone, even the emperor of Rome had to obey the law. The law, not the ruler determined if people were innocent or guilty.

It is interesting to note, that as the early Christian church developed and grew, Roman law also had an impact on Christian theology. Since Roman law interpreted everything in the terms of right versus wrong, early Christians were deeply influenced by this thinking.

The problem with thinking in terms of guilt and innocence, damned or saved, good or evil, god or the devil, heaven or hell, is that it is cultural and not universal. A leader has to be able to function in the world as an educated man or woman, which means by definition that he or she has to overcome the limited perspective of the local cultural education.

Without overcoming the cultural consciousness, an American could never understand the Arab mind, because there would be an assumption that it is like our mind. For example, there is the assumption that with enough military force put to use, resistance can be overcome.

But if the underlying dynamic is shame and honor, then the capitulation to force might be impossible except as a gambit. They have demonstrated that they will turn themselves into human bombs to resist occupation. Muller gives this example from the confrontations with the Native Americans when they were being forced onto reservations:

In 1878 a band of northern Cheyenne left the reservation to return to their old lands "where their children could live." Overtaken by soldiers, a chief said "We do not want to fight you, but we will not go back." Clearly the shame of living on the reservation was too much for them. As they had broken the law by leaving, and now refused to return, the troops opened fire. Some Indians escaped and continued their journey.

They met up with soldiers at Fort Robinson where they faced an ultimatum. "Go south or go hungry." Court records tell us what happened next. "In the midst of the dreadful winter, with the thermometer 40 degrees below zero, the Indians, including the women and children were kept for five days and nights without food or fuel, and for three days without water. At the end of that time they broke out of the barracks." Troops hunted them down.

They chose death over returning to the shame and humiliation of reservation life. Today many natives still feel the sting of shame. Many have turned to the numbing effects of alcohol, and others have immersed themselves in their native religions as they seek answers to their problem of self-esteem.

I was surprised at the reaction to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's saying that we have to take a look at our own culpability in the World Trade Center attacks. Almost instantly the news stories were covering this without any understanding of the depth of the problem. It was all simplistic, like he was talking about the specific event of bombing Iraq instead of that event as one in a long list of events. One of those events, surely, was the establishing of American bases in the Middle East as a buffer against Soviet expansion, and then instead of removing them, just invading Iraq so they could be shifted out of Saudi Arabia.

Understanding that we were following a course of events that could not end in anything except revenge, as it did end, would have been helpful. In the Arab culture insulting a person is insulting the family and the tribe and sometimes the whole culture. There are two remedies for this. One is keeping it quiet. In a shame based culture telling a lie to preserve your honor is expected and laudable, whereas telling the truth when it brings shame or ridicule to your family is dishonorable. The other remedy is revenge.

What Paul was trying to point out was that we were not attacked by some crazy person who hates our freedom. We were attacked by somebody who wanted revenge for our occupying Arab lands with our military, when there was no reason for us to do so, other than the unfortunate circumstance of our oil being hidden under their sand.

The position of the United States in the world has plummeted in the past seven years because there was an expectation that by being ruthless enough we could force people to do what we want them to do. The question was who has the best weapons. We do, ergo, we will prevail. In Asia, Europe, Mexico, South America, and on the east and west coasts of America, people who were watching the Iraq invasion and occupation had a close look at the strangely disturbing event in which the United States started a war against a country with no navy or air force. We just flew over there and started bombing them.

Then we occupied the land, insulted people by behaving without regard for their culture, disbanded the ruling political party, disbanded the military, and set up a puppet government that would be responsive to Washington. This is not necessarily the best way to deal with the Arab people.

Muller:

The guilt/innocence perspective in which westerners live dictates much of our thinking in the west. However, not everyone in the world operates within this paradigm. As I mentioned earlier, while living in the Middle East I noticed that when the lifeguard at a swimming pool blew his whistle, the westerners all stopped to see who was guilty, but the Arabs kept right on swimming.

As I observed this and other phenomena, I began to realize that Arabs and Arab society were operating in another whole dimension. Guilt did not have the same power and influence as it did in the west. While they were aware of guilt, it didn't have the same strong connotations for them as it had for me.

If a policeman pulled me over, I immediately felt guilty, thinking that perhaps I had done something wrong. But when my Arab friends were pulled over, they didn't display any sign of guilt. They talked boldly to the policeman, and even argued loudly with him over the issues at hand.

It was only after many years of living in a Muslim culture that it started to dawn on me that the Arabs around me were not operating on a level of guilt versus innocence. Nor were they operating in a fear versus power paradigm. I had heard much about this from missionaries living in Africa but it didn't seem to apply to the Arabs of the Levant. Rather, I discovered that Arabs were living in a worldview where the predominant paradigm was shame versus honor.

Once I clued in to this, I began to explore this concept and tried to verify it on all social levels. I was amazed to discover what I found. When I would visit my friends, I would try to act correctly and they would try to act honorably, not shamefully. I was busy trying to learn the rights and wrongs of their culture, but somehow my framework of right versus wrong didn't fit what was actually happening. The secret wasn't to act rightly or wrongly in their culture. It wasn't that there was a right way and a wrong way of doing things. The underlying principle was that there was an honorable and dishonorable way of doing things.

Every part of the Muslim culture I lived in was based on honor and shame. When I visited my friends I could honor them in the way I acted. They could honor me, in the way they acted. Three cups of coffee bestowed honor on me. The first, called 'salam' (peace) was followed by 'sadaqa' (friendship), and the third cup of coffee was called 'issayf' (the sword). The meaning was clear in their culture. When I arrived I was offered a cup of coffee that represented peace between us. As we drank and talked, the cup of friendship was offered. The last cup, the sword, illustrated their willingness to protect me and stand by me. It didn't matter if I was right or wrong, they were bound by their honor to protect me.

I've selected just a few samples from Muller's excellent essay to give you some idea of how rich it is in information about why we are clashing with the Middle East shame-honor based cultures, while getting along swimmingly with the guilt-innocence faction. It explains why we can't just pay fifty million dollars and get somebody to turn in a person we consider a fugitive, and they consider a guest under their protection.

It reminds me of Burroughs' routine about the American businessman who, when he looks into the mirror to shave himself, says, "Other people are different from me and I don't like them very much."

One more quote:

When a poet appeared in an Arab family, neighboring tribes gathered together to wish the family joy. There would be feasts, and music. Men and boys would congratulate one another, for a poet was a defense to the honor of them all, a weapon to ward off insult from their good name, and a means of perpetuating their glorious deeds and of establishing their fame forever.

It is interesting to note that traditionally Arabs only wish one another joy, on three occasions: The birth of a boy, the coming to light of a poet, and the foaling of a noble mare.

The Arabic language is so powerful, that Arabs will listen intently to someone speaking well, whether he speaks the truth or not. "I lift my voice to utter lies absurd, for when I speak the truth, my hushed tones scarce are heard." Abu 'lAla, Syrian poet 973-1057.

Posted: Fri - August 10, 2007 at 04:33 PM