Bloody Revenge

Emotions, Nationalism, And War

Thomas J. Scheff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367158804
• eBook ISBN: 9780429720130
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As violence erupts in endless cycles and old grievances reemerge throughout the world, we are challenged to examine the underpinnings of protracted conflict. In this bold new work, Thomas Scheff argues that the roots of protracted conflict lie in unacknowledged feelings of shame and rage. Scheff builds from the assumption that the social bond is a real and palpable phenomena and that in every type of human contact the bond is either built, maintained, repaired, or damaged. He then demonstrates how damaged bonds are the basic cause of conflict. When one side or the other in a dispute is humiliated or threatened in such a way as to disturb fundamental bonds, the feelings that follow are often not acknowledged. Threats to the social bond give rise to violent emotions, shame, and rage. Unless these feelings are resolved, the stage is then set for cycles of insult, humiliation, and bloody revenge. According to Scheff, it is by recognizing the emotional source of conflict and repairing the broken social bond that both sides achieve cognitive and emotional understanding, allowing them to trust and cooperate, and perceive themselves as "all in the same boat." Thus, secure social bonds ensure clear boundaries–even during competition or conflict–that help keep wars limited and make disagreements productive.

PART ONE
Theory & Method

2
Pride and Shame: The Master Emotions

Suggesting that shame plays a significant role in producing conflict is a relatively new idea. Most discussions of the source of conflict concern material interests. Those discussions that do include emotions seldom mention shame; they focus instead on anxiety, fear, or anger. In fact, shame is hardly discussed in Western societies. If it is important, why is it so little noticed?

This chapter attempts to answer that question by reviewing what is known about shame and its obverse emotion, pride. It is clear that these two emotions occur in opposite situations: We feel pride with achievements, success, and acceptance and shame with errors, failures, and rejection. The opposing character of pride and shame can be seen with great clarity in small children. Children who succeed or are praised show obvious manifestations of pride: the smile of satisfaction with self, the direct gaze, and the increased expansiveness of the whole body, as suggested by the phrase "swelling with pride." The indications of shame in children are equally obvious: the lowered voice, the furtive gaze, and the hangdog or sheepish look.

Although we sometimes see clear signs of pride and shame in adults, these are much less frequent than in children. Does this mean that pride and shame are unusual emotions in adults or that they manifest differently? The latter seems the case: Pride and shame appear frequently in adults but in disguise. We put a good face on things to others and even to ourselves.

One indication of reticence surrounding pride and shame in Western societies can be found in the ways these words are used in ordinary conversations. (The situation in traditional societies, such as those in Asian countries, is somewhat different.) In Western societies, the word shame can be used in a casual way that does not refer to a particular emotion: "What a shame!" could also be said as "What a pity!" The word is used much less frequently to refer seriously to a particular emotion. Shame is seen as a crisis emotion and a very intense one at that. "You should be ashamed of yourself" is an extremely strong criticism, and "I feel ashamed" is a powerful indication of painful feeling.

Language and Culture

The English language itself places restrictions on discussions of shame. All other European languages, in addition to the crisis emotion of shame (for example, in German, Schande), have an everyday shame (in German, Scham) that means shyness or modesty (Schneider, 1977). This everyday shame is always a positive attribute. In Spanish, for example, verguenza has very much the same connotation as shame, the shame of disgrace, but pudor is a virtue, as are similar words in French and Italian. The nearest word to pudor in English is humility. Even though the word itself shows its original connection to shame (humiliation), in modern usage humility has lost its membership in the shame family. Lacking an everyday, positive dimension, the idea of shame has a dark, heavy, and threatening meaning in English.

Although the emotion of shame seems less dark and intense in French, German, or Spanish than in English, there is considerable evasiveness about it in all Western languages. Even the milder forms of shame, such as embarrassment, are likely to be evaded. For example, instead of simply saying, "I was embarrassed," most speakers are likely to use a circumlocution, such as "It was an awkward moment for me." Why would they say in a roundabout way what could be said directly?

To answer this question, we must investigate the origins of pride and shame, which will lead us into some fundamental aspects of the human condition. The origins of emotions such as fear, anger, and grief are widely recognized: Fear arises from danger to life and limb, anger from frustration, and grief from loss. Seeing the origins of pride and shame is not as straightforward. Shame seems to arise from our need to feel the right degree of connectedness with others. Shame is the emotion that occurs when we feel too close or too far from others. When too close, we feel exposed or violated; when too far, we feel invisible or rejected. Pride is the signal of being at the right distance: close enough to feel noticed but not so close as to feel threatened.

The need for the right degree of connectedness is so primitive that we take it for granted. The basic shame contexts—transgressing morally, making a mistake in public, being ridiculed or rejected—all involve the potential for exclusion or incorporation or the anticipation of exclusion or incorporation. The basic pride contexts—achievement or success, admiration or love—all involve notice and acceptance.

All societies train their members to balance closeness and distance, the interests of self and other. No society can long exist that vastly overreaches in one direction or the other. But different societies lean in different directions. Particularly pertinent for the present discussion, societies oriented more toward preserving traditional social forms than changing them lean toward being too close, what Bowen (1978) called "engulfment." In such societies, there is less focus on the individual than on the relationship and the group. These same ideas of closeness and distance were anticipated in Durkheim's ([1897] 1952) treatment of the cultures that have higher rates of suicide.

Societies that are more oriented toward change lean toward being too far, toward what Bowen called "isolation." In the world today, Western societies offer examples of relationships in which the mix of solidarity and alienation leans toward isolation. In Asian societies, the mix leans toward engulfed relationships. A mix that leans toward engulfment is associated with the overt style of shame; the mix that leans toward isolation is associated with the bypassed style. This is the reason that Western languages tend to evade mention of shame. Asian languages, tending toward the overt style of shame, feature prominent discussions of shame, even to the point of exaggeration.

The idea of connectedness between persons is slippery in Western societies. Our languages are hardly adequate for the job of describing it. The sociological term for connectedness is solidarity. Here I propose an intimate relationship between solidarity, pride, and cooperation, on the one hand, and alienation, shame, and conflict on the other. This chapter focuses on the emotional components of these relationships, pride and shame.

Although emotions have been a topic of serious discussion for thousands of years, they form one of the cloudiest regions of human thought. Any investigation of emotions is at hazard from its beginning since the concept itself is undefined. Even the most scholarly and scientific analyses depend on the use of vernacular terms such as anger, fear, grief, shame, joy, and love and the underlying presuppositions about emotion in our society. The field of emotions is less a body of knowledge than a jungle of unexamined assumptions, observations, and theories. Some of the roots of our contemporary attitudes toward emotion, and some of the puzzles we still share, can be seen in biblical and other historical sources.

Biblical Sources

The issue of shame arises very early in the Old Testament. Although the word is not used, it is implied in the story of Adam and Eve. When Adam tells God that he hid because he was naked, God asks, "Who told thee that thou wast naked?" God inferred that since Adam was ashamed of being naked, he had become self-conscious, that he had eaten of the forbidden fruit. In the biblical story, shame arises simultaneously with human self-consciousness. This event is portentous; it hints that shame may play a central role in the human drama.

The shame context of the story is shown in most portrayals of the expulsion from the Garden, with both Adam and Eve showing embarrassment or shame. In the painting by Massaccio, Eve shows her embarrassment by covering her breasts and loins, but Adam covers his eyes with both hands. Perhaps Adam is more profoundly ashamed than Eve since she covers only parts of her self. Adam, by covering his eyes so that he will not see or be seen, like a child does, may be trying to escape entirely from regarding God and from being regarded by him.

Adam and Eve are completely submissive to God's punishment: They are silent in the face of his harsh judgment. The very possibility of standing up to authority has not yet arisen. Their silence implies not only that God has condemned them but also that they have condemned themselves; their shame is complete.

The book of Genesis implies two crucial episodes in human development: the physical creation of humans by God and the shift from the paradisiacal life of human animals to that of self-conscious human beings. A third significant episode occurs in the book of Job. The protagonist does not suffer in silence under God's wrath, as Adam and Eve did. Rather, he confronts God with his misery, questioning the justice of his fate. The story of Job provides the first suggestion that hierarchy in the human social order is not inexorable, as it is in animal societies, but can be challenged. Job's confrontation with God is a stirring toward freedom from rigid compliance with the status quo just as the birth of self-consciousness created the potential for freedom from animal existence.

A historical equivalent can be found in Vico's ([1744] 1968) pronouncement, "The social world is the work of men" (rather than of God or nature). Unlike all other living creatures, humans have the potential for creating their own existence. Vico's statement was courageous; he was in danger of his life for challenging the absolute authority of the church and state.

Even today, escape from inexorable authority is still only partial. Most of us, most of the time, are emeshed in the status quo, the taken-for-granted social arrangements of our society, which seem to us absolute and unchangeable. Even though the status quo is only one particular version of many possible social orders, to those enmeshed in it, it seems eternal. To a large degree, human beings, like other animals but for different reasons, are cogs in a social machine. "Not for me the dark ambiguities of flesh. My maker gave me but one command: mesh" (John Updike).

The preceding three biblical episodes can be taken as emblematic of the physical, psychological, and cultural evolution of human nature. And shame may be intimately connected with these three dimensions of human existence. First, shame has a basis in biology, as one of what James (1910) called the "coarse" emotions, in that it has a genetically inherited component (Scheff, 1987). Second, shame arises psychologically in situations of self-consciousness, seeing one's self from the viewpoint of others. Third, situations that produce shame, the labeling of shame, and the response to it show immense variation from one culture to another. Shame may be the most social of all emotions, since it functions as a signal of threat to the social bond.

The Old Testament contains many, many references to pride and shame but very few to guilt. The New Testament reverses the balance: There are many more references to guilt than to shame. One possible interpretation for this reversal is the difference between "shame cultures" and "guilt cultures." That is, the writers of the Old Testament were members of a completely traditional society in which shame was the major emotion of social control. Conversely, the writers of the New Testament were members of a society in transition to its current form, where the social control of adults involves guilt. This line of reasoning proposes external control through shame in traditional societies and internal control through guilt in modern societies (Benedict, 1946).

This book, however, offers a different explanation. I argue that the distinction between shame and guilt cultures is misleading since it assumes that shame states are infrequent in adults in modern societies. It is possible that the role of shame in social control has not decreased but has gone underground instead. In traditional societies, shame is openly acknowledged; the word itself is used frequently in everyday discourse. In modern societies, references to shame still appear frequently but in a disguised form.

As already suggested, there are many words and phrases that seem to be substitutes or euphemisms for shame or embarrassment. For example, we say, "It was an awkward moment for me." This statement usually refers to a feeling of embarrassment. It contains two movements that disguise emotion: denial of inner feeling and projection of it onto the outer world. I was not embarrassed; it was the moment that was awkward (Scheff, 1984). Our very language in modern societies conspires to hide shame from display and from consciousness. Traditional societies emphasize, or even exaggerate, shame; modern societies deny it. That is, the isolated form of alienation, and its concomitant denial of shame, was extremely rare in traditional societies. Like modern societies, traditional societies were a mixture of solidarity and alienation. But in traditional societies, alienation was likely to be in the form of engulfment.

Another issue concerns the meaning assigned to pride in the Old Testament. Virtually every reference places pride in a disparaging light. Perhaps the most familiar example occurs in Proverbs 16:18: "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." (In everyday usage, this quotation is often shortened to "Pride goeth before a fall") A similar use occurs in 16:19: "Better it is to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud." Many more similar examples could be cited.

This usage might be one of the sources of a contemporary inflect...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: THEORY AND METHOD
• Part Two: APPLICATIONS
• Part Three: CONCLUSION
• Appendix: Cues for Shame and Anger
• About the Book and Author
• Index