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Chapter 1
Shame and temporality in the streets
Consumerism, technology, truth and raw life
Ladson Hinton
The cask of ages past is spent:
it’s final.
The plight of Anima Mundi’s song is
fatal.
We want to hear it sing again;
we try,
Refusing to believe that voice
did die.
We urge it to return;
we cry!
But nothing comes and nothing will—
the end seems nigh.
And mourning speaks as mourning must,
we sigh.
The Vanishing of the World Soul,1 Ladson Hinton, 2015
Introduction
Indeed, we sigh! No longer do we experience a world soul, an Anima Mundi that contains and connects all things. The view that there is an underlying unity between the world and all the entities of the world has tended to dominate western thought since the time of Plato (Plato, 2000, p. 16). The alchemists attempted to revivify this idea with the concept of the Unus Mundus, a unified world, with a Self that is a carrier of the unity of the individual (Jung, 1970, pp. 537–9). At this time in history, we have lost confidence in such an ‘enchanted,’ interconnected world sustained by the regularity of the heavens circulating around us. In the face of this loss, we feel troubled and bewildered (Hinton, Hinton, Hinton & Hinton, 2011).
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Freud wrote of the threefold narcissistic wounds suffered by humanity in recent centuries, namely the Copernican, the Darwinian and the psychoanalytic revolutions. In other words, an awareness that the earth revolves around the sun, and not vice versa; an awareness that humankind is descended from apelike creatures; and an awareness that reason itself is dubiously based and often blindly irrational (Freud, 1917/1955). Today, we would certainly add the terrible events of the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge and Rwanda genocides, slavery, apartheid and colonialism. Such histories of profound evil further shook our faith in human progress. Following upon these shattering blows, potent technologies, evolving at the speed of light in the twenty-first century, have far surpassed ordinary human capacities. This crescendo of happenings has created a state of shame and disorientation (Ross, 2006; Stiegler, 2008, pp. 64–96).
Time is speeded up, and our sense of continuity with the past and with our ancestors is tenuous. The world seems to be in a state of violent transition, and raw life greets us daily on the streets as we hurry about, equipped with our many electronic and smart devices, or technics. We have become addicted to spectacles of wonderment and terror, and each morning we glance at the news to see what disaster has transpired. Indeed, Virilio calls the contemporary world a Museum of Accidents (Virilio, 2003, pp. 40–57). When our containing traditions are stripped away, we search for ways to endure the screams and cries that run through us (Eigen, 2005, p. 51).2 We wonder whether this is, indeed, the end of the Anthropocene, also known as the time when the human being no longer dominates, the end of the era of homo sapiens (Ross, 2016). What cyborg or other technologized creature might replace us?
At such a time in history, we need, above all, a capacity for reflection. However, the relentless promotion of consumption promises access to immediate gratification and an escape from the truth of the present. Tempting spectacles are endlessly offered with all of the sophisticated attractions of advanced technics, ‘short-circuiting’ the deferral of pleasure that sublimates our desires for individual and communal goods (Stiegler, 2013b, pp. 102–8). As a result, there is an increasing ‘proletarianization of the mind,’ a deficiency in the capacity for long-term thought due to the automation of memory and a general loss of ‘savoir-faire’ (ibid., pp. 37–8, 123–6). We have become addicted to short-term fixes and are left with a psyche that is uncontained and unformed, in fact dangerous, because a surplus of unsublimated energy is the truth of the frighteningly ‘raw life’ that is emerging post anima mundi (Stiegler, 2013a, pp. 80–102; 2014, pp. 1–13).
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Sequence of discussion
Shame and temporality, along with truth, provide crucial lenses for reflecting upon our present condition, and I will begin by briefly delineating these basic concepts. Following this, I will describe a provocative encounter on the streets of Seattle that provides insight into undercurrents that are visibly emerging in contemporary life. My hope is that this detailed example, along with a few others, will contribute to a deepened understanding of the contemporary scene, enhance the reader’s knowledge of shame and temporality, and offer space to reflect upon these basic experiences. In the concluding part of the chapter, I amplify those reflections from the perspectives of several philosophers and psychoanalysts who share a deep concern about the future of the human being.
Shame, truth and temporality
The experiences of shame, truth and temporality are interrelated. In psychoanalytic work, it is difficult to discuss one without the others. The many levels of memory are deeply interconnected with temporality and lie at the core of the analytic process. Individual versions of the ghost of Hamlet’s father appear in their several voices, emerging from the past, making their claim to truth, and shaming those who survive into deep reflection about the future. In psychoanalysis, the analyst’s interpretations are intended to enhance awareness of unconscious truths, past and present, opening frozen dimensions of the patient’s world, and allowing fuller participation in the flow of time. Such insights often provoke turbulent evolution and shame, along with potential new openings towards the future; thus, a brief summary of some salient aspects of shame and temporality and their interrelationship with truth is necessary.
First, shame often involves the question, ‘What kind of person am I?’ It makes us wonder, sometimes with horror, ‘How could I have done such and such a thing?’ It stops us cold and makes us want to disappear. Its etymology has to do with covering or hiding. At times, shame seems to combine a sense of the immediate and the particular with questions about the very structure of being (Hultberg, 1986). Furthermore, it can open up further dimensions of temporality because it slows us down from the mad pace of our culture, and when we slow down, we can ‘see’ more.
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As shame often has a very social dimension, we flush with shame when we are seen, or see ourselves, violating our concept of an ideal self (Seidler, 2000, pp. 47–97). ‘Skin shame’ can be superficial and connected with self-conscious conformity, but deeper shame can motivate us to question our deepest core and most primal sense of meaning. This seems to be true across cultures, and there is evidence that it is biologically innate (Sznycer, Tooby, Cosmides, Porat, Shalvi, & Halperin, 2016; Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008). It seems to involve both emotional and metaphysical stirrings, often inciting us not only to acknowledge a factual wrongdoing but to engage with the question of the very nature of our humanity (Heidegger, 1956, p. 27).
The shamelessness of our times is alarming, but shame often goes unacknowledged and ignored (Giegerich, 2001, p. 34; Morrison, 1989, pp. 121–3). Indeed, Stiegler believes that shame is not lacking but rather that it is present in a pervasive although unarticulated form as ‘symbolic misery,’ that is, ‘the shame of being human’ (Stiegler, 2013a, pp. 105–6). In his view, the contemporary deficit of selfhood is a dimension of late-stage capitalism, and we are living through a decadence of industrial democracy. These feelings of shame, very often bypassed and unconscious, result in a ‘symbolic misery’ (Stiegler, 2013a, p. 5) that is expressed by apathy, disaffection and social collapse. It is, in many ways, a product of mass media and the technologies of consumerism to which we have become addicted.3
While we can often delineate guilt and obtain a pardon, it is much more difficult to atone for shame. It requires a full, total examination of self. However, throughout the history of psychoanalysis, shame has been perceived as an inferior emotion that is typical of women, cultural and racial minorities, and colonized others (Aron & Starr, 2013, pp. 51–64; Bewes, 2011). Western cultures are often portrayed as guilt cultures, and therefore supposedly superior. However, guilt may actually be an evasion of shame, a focus on something that appears to be specific and ‘solvable’ in lieu of facing the more intractable and searching questions that shame poses. Indeed, guilt can be a seductive way to explain and dismiss one’s deeper sense of responsibility (Stiegler, 2013a, p. 24).
Shame and truth are closely interconnected. I am not speaking of Truth as an absolute or foundational Truth, but truth with a small t. It is truth as a process, which the ancient Greeks called aletheia.
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Truth is related to temporality, ‘[and] we should view truth not as an absolute category that discloses itself in its entirety but rather as a contextual process that reveals itself a bit at a time and from many different perspectives’ (Stiegler, 2013a, p. 9). That is, it unfolds in time. ‘Authentic truth . . . seems to be a matter not of what one knows, but instead of how one lives’ (Guignon, 1983, p. 348). As new elements of truth are disclosed, others may fade into hiddenness or obscurity.
Giegerich discussed the importance of remembering that truth often has a violent effect on the psyche (2008, pp. 4–8). He employs the story of Actaion and the Hounds as an illustration. In this story, Prince Actaion was out hunting, and by chance, he found the goddess Artemis naked, bathing in a pool with her acolytes. When she realized that he was spying on them, she turned him into a stag, and he was then dismembered by his own hounds (Giegerich, 2001, pp. 105–11, 203ff.).
The story of Actaion dramatically illustrates how we may unexpectedly come across a naked truth about ourselves, thereby creating a dire sense of psychic disruption and inner crumbling that may provoke deep shame. In the longer run, such experiences can open the space for reflection and profound shifts in awareness. It is also the universal tale of the ‘otherness’ of time unfolding, impacting a psyche that tends to reflexively maintain continuity and an illusion of safety (ibid., p. 28).
This leads to my last theme, temporality, which is the experience of lived time, the time of our lives (Hoy, 2012, pp. xii–xiii). Temporality is uniquely human and is the basis of culture. Awareness of time drives us, inspiring both the nobility of our future purpose and our destructive paranoias (Johnston, 2005, pp. 300–32). However, time is strangely elusive, appearing to vanish as soon as we attempt to describe it: ‘Space contains both living and inert bodies, but only the living human – hence the living psyche – is subjectively concerned with time’ (Scarfone, 2006, p. 810, emphasis added).
Nothing occurs except in the context of temporality. In a profound sense, temporality is Homo sapiens.4 Our temporal being is also our tormentor, driving us on into an unknown future, evoking both shame and truth, which in turn can radically alter the experience of time.
Memory and our sense of the past disrupt us, and we can endlessly dwell on our memories. However, memory is always subject to revision, and its truth is never final. Our identity has changing levels with no final foundation. Due to the effects of Nachträglichkeit, or ‘afterwardness,’ there is a constant reconfiguration of memory, a factor that comprises much of the work of psychoanalysis. This process not only shifts the meaning of the past but also alters the qualities of the future that we envisage (Civitarese, 2010, pp. 96–108).5 A fear of the future and the projection of unassimilated traumas may result in a kind of frozenness in time (Hinton, 2015, p. 355). Temporality is uniquely human, and it denies us the peaceful complacency of the other animals on the planet as we anticipate our death and the death of others. Such awareness of the truth of our finitude may create deep shame.
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‘The Man in the Street’
New perspectives often come from the raw, disowned elements of our world. In that spirit, I will describe an experience that I had last year on a street in Seattle, near our home. This incident highlights shame, truth and temporality in a specific context, and it touches upon many questions about contemporary life and the state of psychoanalysis.
We live in the Capitol Hill area, a large neighbourhood adjacent to the urban core that is filled with old family residences in the north half, and apartment buildings, restaurants, bars, coffee houses and occasional halfway houses in the south half.
One day I stopped for bread at my favourite bakery, which is, more or less, in the centre of the Hill. When I returned to my car, I found a mildly dishevelled man, probably thirty years old, lounging against it with a large cup of coffee sitting on the hood. Vaguely wondering if there would be some sort of messy encounter, I started to unlock my door, saying quietly, ‘Sorry to disturb.’ The man suddenly sprang up to his full height – he was tall and solidly built – and his face dramatically reddened. His eyes became wide and wild, and he began to shout loudly at the surroundings and at me, ‘Do you know about what’s happening?! Do you know about what’s happening?!’ There was a sense of pa...
