Shame kills.

Guilt and shame are often thought of interchangeably, when in fact they are quite different. Guilt can trigger the desire to reach out and make amends, while shame makes a person feel worthless and inhuman.

To be shamed is to be rejected. Shame is a way of isolating a person from the “collective we”. He or she becomes an outsider and a nonperson.

If one feels like a nonbeing, socially ostracized and without self-worth, he is unable to draw upon his empathic reserves to feel for another’s plight.

This leads to withdrawal and in effect death.

When one is made to feel guilty, it is one’s humanity that is being called upon to do the right thing.

But when one is made to feel shame, he feels isolated from humanity.

Guilt is an internal mechanism that reminds one of his deep social connection to others and the need to repair the social bond.

But shame tells one they are not living up to other’s expectations, and, therefore, not worthy of their consideration. Other’s expectations, rather than his humanity, become the focal point of the discipline.

One feels as if his very being is a disappointment and that he must conform to the “ideal image’ of what others expect from him or suffer the consequence of rejection.

Cultures of shame create very different people than cultures of guilt.

Ironically, while a shaming culture pretends to adhere to the highest standards of moral perfection, in reality it produces a culture of self-hate, envy, jealousy and hatred toward others.

When one lives in a shaming culture, one believes that you must conform to an ideal of perfection or purity or suffer the wrath of the community.

In the Muslim community, it is not uncommon to hear about a woman who has been gang-raped and who is then stoned to death by her own family and neighbors, because she has brought shame on herself and her family.

In the Christian culture, a person who has made a moral mistake, is often ostracized and and treated as a non-being. Rather than empathize with his suffering, the community inflicts even greater punishment by treating him as an object of  disgust to be blotted out.

The power of shaming cultures to squelch empathy and transform human beings into non-beings is chilling to behold.

However, an empathic culture has the ability to experience a person’s pain as if it were their own.

An empathic culture is able to  emotionally and cognitively take notice of the whole of another person’s existence and develop an empathic response to the totality of their experience and being.

Question: Do you think religion promotes a shaming culture or an empathic culture?

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Note: These words are not my own. They are from the powerful book The Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin. The contextualization is mine.