Here we are. Again. As people. In a new moment, acting in new way; but not really new. The "external part" is my action, the new context, a different point in time. But the underlying tone, the way were doing it, hiding the evasive "why" of a meaningful dynamic. This doesn't show up so easily. At least not in it's full evolutionary contours.
I have experienced so many different states that comes with being human. I know shame like few people know it. I feel the feelings, and feel the "eyes", inverted inwards, as my own gaze, doing the work of the shaming other.
And what is shame? Few people have defined it in the way that it deserves to be defined. It's as if, the human beings who spend the most time around it, intelligent people, studied minds; its as if these people, known technically as "psychotherapists", or "clinicians", have the minds most suited to probing life in the "mid-range", as Merlin Donald describes it.
But in any case, eyes inward, but the body is bristling with an energy. Just before shame strikes me, there's this budding anticipation of a negative experience. I know that what is happening, here, in these sorts of experiences, is a process in me, my own thoughts, reflexively "looking", not at the present, but at some virtual mental place, performing some mental observer status, watching, until the feeling grows and reaches its apogee, in thought, in thinking, the specific fear thought that may give it away - my weakness, my fearfulness, my doubt in my abilities.
I know shame very well. These sorts of experiences, usually happen weekly, which, btw, is quite wonderful, as it used to be every other moment. Silence alone was enough to keep me from "engaging" me, from extending myself, and hearing myself, and suffering the look of my own gaze. Back then I did not see what I know now: the gaze is not my own, but that of another. Others, plenty of others. Inherently replaceable, changeable, offering the same potential circumstance, if I just happen to give it away. If I let them see that "weakness". Little tolerance, humans beings. We can't even keep our gaze very long in watching the suffering of another. Their "suffering" - the phenomenological quality of their perceptual experience of self in a state of shame - can actually, in fact, provoke a most horrendous mischievousness in particular others. Certain people can't tolerate, in the least bit, the sight of shame in other people. Shyness is basically shame, hidden behind a different word. The experiential beginnings of shyness intimate "I am afraid of you"; but it can also give away an even more intolerable dysfunction: a nervousness in the body, tension in the voice, and the most bizarre inflections in facial and eye changes. The very act of "diverting", which happens so impulsively and reflexively when fear or shame is evoked in social circumstances, speaks to its utter evolutionary vestige.
Shame reflects something of the evil in the natural world. A state imposed on certain creatures to indicate the weakness of their status, and subordination to the group. The psychologist Louis Cozolino suggested in one of his books, quite plausibly, that an act of suicide may function in the same way as apoptosis in the body. Programmable cell death, done for the aid of the body. Programmable suicide? Sometimes, indeed, this happens.
The human being, however, is a conscious personality, not a cell. And it does battle with its thoughts and isn't typically eager to just kill itself. The presence of good, of reflection, of kindness, received in ones life, stands as the "force" behind this eagerness to persist. To live. In this urge to survive, to remain conscious, to fight for the self. The qualities of surviving, consciousness, seems to hide the hidden force of love. Simple kindness, "imprinted" into your biology, called forth when thoughts of self destruction gain control. The only selves who "do it", were ones who had become too dissociated from the force of love to help themselves.
But yes, shame is a powerful reality. It hides behind actions, or, rather, is concealed by its opposite force, pride. Pride is also just "another word". But we understand intuitively the states which correspond with the general concept of pride. Downstairs, just a moment ago, I am communicating with my brother in a state of 'pride'. Confidence is another word, but it can almost have an obfuscating power in this particular conversation. What I mean is flowing in your experience in such a way that you look forward to your next statement, and also enjoy your own "style" of communicating. Indeed, there is even a subtle 'domination' quality, sometimes, when you communicate. You want to stifle and unhinge people, at least sometimes. Indeed, we do this mostly unconsciously, almost as if were hypnotized into acting these ways because of the pleasure that accompanies it. But make no mistake, there is a fundamental "wrongness" in these actions, because they are violent to the emotional states to the other. Not all, not always, and I'm not saying pride is bad; only a pride that turns the other into an object and 'does with him' whatever your unconscious mentation takes you. It's these sort of careless escapades into nihilism that human beings in our day and age have a difficult time resisting.
So, I've felt pride. I've felt it just as I watch others who speak and apparently appear to be experiencing it in a very similar manner to myself. And they're also likely doing it just like I do it.
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