[HN Gopher] "Put on the Diamonds": Notes on Humiliation
___________________________________________________________________
"Put on the Diamonds": Notes on Humiliation
Author : ryanf
Score : 66 points
Date : 2021-10-07 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (harpers.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (harpers.org)
| cafard wrote:
| Well, the action of the Iliad kicks of when Agamemnon disrespects
| first the priest Chryses, then Achilles. The verb shows up in
| line 11 of the first book of the Iliad.
| mitchbob wrote:
| https://archive.ph/WfKO6
| eutropia wrote:
| It's so much easier to value yourself when someone else genuinely
| shows that they value you too.
|
| Make sure the people you love know that you value them. Make it a
| habit to greet them at the door when they come home, and to
| always tell them sweet dreams when you go to sleep.
|
| These affirmations build up an ablative layer that protects
| against life's daily indignities, I think.
| lazide wrote:
| It is easy however to become dependent on this affirmations
| (and hence other people and their sometimes fickle approval).
|
| when people find themselves in this type of situation,
| sometimes they lash out, or try to be controlling/manipulative
| when they stop getting them, instead of being self reflective
| and figuring out why and addressing. Sometimes there IS nothing
| that can do to address it - a bogus accusation from someone
| else, or affirmations built on some material wealth that
| disappeared, or whatever.
|
| Many people believe the affirmations they see are genuine, but
| when tested they turn out not to be.
|
| It's also easy for it to be a kind of hedonic treadmill, with
| someone chasing ever strong and strong affirmations to make up
| for a pain or fear that won't go away, and is not faced,
| overdoing what you are describing to the point it is hostile
| and toxic.
|
| If you look in the media, these patterns are very, very
| visible.
|
| And inevitably, for any number of reasons, the affirmations
| will stop or reduce in number or impact - even if just due to
| normal variation - even if 100% genuine and healthy. Kids go to
| college, or partners drift apart, or everyone gets so used to
| it they stop noticing.
|
| Some of the discussion from others above can be helpful here,
| as being ok just 'being' is a much more stable place, and
| requires only that which the person themself has (somewhat)
| control over - themselves.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| There is such a thing as forgiveness.
|
| In Buddhism there is a form of meditation called "metta",
| sometimes translated as "loving-kindness" meditation. The way
| I've been taught to do it is to wish sincerely to yourself, _"
| May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe."_ Then bring
| one's attention to those one most loves and think, _" May they be
| happy, may they be healthy, may they be safe."_ Then repeat that
| for the people around you, then your neighbors, then your town or
| city, your country, then the world. The most advanced form of the
| practice is to sincerely wish this for one's enemies and people
| one most dislikes or hates.
|
| In Buddhism it is often taught that hatred and ill will towards
| others is a poison that hurts oneself. It is more constructive
| and healthy to forgive and move on, rather than fixate or seek
| vengeance.
|
| In many other traditions also, forgiveness is greatly valued.
|
| In the article, the author writes:
|
| _" There are many things we can live without. Self-respect is
| not one of them. One would think the absence of self-respect
| would resemble much of a sameness, but the circumstances that can
| make people feel bereft of it are as variable as persons
| themselves. A psychiatrist who interviewed a group of men
| imprisoned for murder and other violent crimes asked each of them
| why he had done it. In almost all cases the answer was "He dissed
| me.""_
|
| I wonder if the outcome would have been different had these
| people been taught the value of forgiveness and how to detach and
| let go from their negative thoughts, rather being in environments
| where lashing out in violence is modeled as the norm for how one
| reacts when faced with humiliation.
|
| Also, obviously most people don't react to humiliation with
| violence. There is something unusual going on with the minority
| that do, and I wish the article had explored that.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Does Buddhism talk at all about the difference between
| acquiescence and forgiveness? I think that's usually among the
| thoughts on the minds of people who might hesitate to forgive,
| and I'd imagine it's come up before.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| The approach I've most often heard taken is one of opposing
| the action, but not hating the person. You can have
| forgiveness and even compassion for the person while opposing
| what they do.
| discreteevent wrote:
| It should go without saying, but just in case: If you happen to
| be on the other end of the spectrum - someone who tends to
| blame themselves and easily forgives others. If you find
| yourself constantly forgiving someone who is damaging you then
| you need to focus on getting out of harm's way first. Then, by
| all means, forgive them from a distance.
| mcguire wrote:
| Weirdly, I myself have apparently learned not to forgive. (Want
| to be humiliated? Wait until someone you've forgiven does
| whatever it is again.)
|
| But I have learned to forget. Which is likewise useful.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Basically the entire luxury goods market is about purchasing
| status.
|
| If you think about it, lowering or threatening someone's status
| ("dissing them") is robbery, from a certain point of view.
|
| Alexander Hamilton died in a duel with Burr, after Burr
| "dissed" him at dinner...
| xrd wrote:
| I feel like this comment might change the course of my life and
| I'm going to try this practice you suggested. Thank you. It's
| really relevant to me right now.
| popcube wrote:
| good introduction, do we have any way to end humiliation of a
| country? this will be best way to end wars.
| lazide wrote:
| Most wars are fought due to resource scarcity - either
| commodity materials, food, or something else scarce.
|
| Humiliating a country is often done through extreme resource
| extraction and/or subjugation (where existing resources are
| controlled, at a minimum, if not directly extracted).
|
| Adding ideological humiliation on top of it can make the fire
| burn hotter once lit, but is rarely the direct cause.
|
| WW 2 was a good hexample of this - the crushing penalties on
| the German economy + the ideological humiliation fed a fire the
| world has not seen for a long time.
|
| But if Germany had been allowed to prosper, but been
| humiliated? Unlikely they would have been the aggressor. For
| evidence, see what happened Ww2, where that is essentially
| exactly what happened.
|
| If they been made poor the way they were, but otherwise treated
| well? Hitler may not have been the figurehead, but someone
| would have, and a war would have been inevitable. It probably
| would have been less vicious and pointlessly destructive of
| lives and property - but not by that much.
| cardosof wrote:
| I disagree with your first sentence - resource scarcity may
| happen and a country may be impoverished, but deciding to go
| to war is not an economic decision but rather a very personal
| one. Negotiations and deals are about resources, wars are
| about egos and beliefs.
| adventured wrote:
| The ending of wars remains the same as always and will never
| change: the imposition of tremendous cost on the aggressor.
| That cost can come in numerous forms, including financial and
| domestic social (eg from human losses in the field), but that
| cost is overwhelmingly the primary thing that ends wars.
|
| Covid plausibly more rapidly ended the US occupation of
| Afghanistan for example. It became increasingly politically
| untenable to disregard the cost of remaining in Afghanistan,
| while the US looks at raising taxes, deals with soaring budget
| deficits and mounting public debt (an ongoing context made
| sharply worse by the pandemic).
| mcguire wrote:
| Coincidentally, I just finished reading _Under an English Heaven_
| by Donald Westlake. It 's the story of the British invasion of
| the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla, and the invasion itself
| turns on an incident where a British diplomat (delivering more-
| or-less what the Anguillans wanted) humiliated the leaders of the
| 6000-person island, who in turn kicked the diplomat off the
| island, humiliating him.
|
| (If you're interested, the book is in the Internet Archive
| freely. It's hilarious.)
| e40 wrote:
| Anyone else disappointed not to hear more about the Sheila
| interaction?
| LukeEF wrote:
| Interesting you said that - i read the first part, scanned the
| rest looking for continuation of the story and then searched
| for 'Sheila'. Really wonder what happened next - was there a
| reconciliation, did the hurt run too deep, did Sheila even
| remember or did she think they just drifted apart?
| legohead wrote:
| I asked myself how a 63 year old would recognize a childhood
| friend on the street. My assumption is Sheila found her on
| purpose, because she had lived her whole life with this burden
| of regret, and wanted to apologize. I have a similar burden,
| and occasionally try to look up an old friend, but his name is
| too common.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| What did you do?
| ntxy wrote:
| made me read to the end. brilliant!
| russh wrote:
| Made me stop after searching for her name and not finding it
| in the rest of the article.
| allturtles wrote:
| I think she should have left it out. As anecdotes about
| humiliation go, it's not much. There's no mention that Sheila
| publicly shamed her (as the author, by the way, has now
| publicly shamed Sheila), she just didn't want to be friends
| anymore. And she's still holding a grudge against her erstwhile
| friend from when she was 13? People grow apart, especially
| around major life transitions like adolescence.
| trgn wrote:
| It's also the consequence of being shackled to a literary
| technique common to these long form articles, for authors to
| write themselves into the piece, in order to make the content
| more relatable to the audience. It's a form of exhibitionism,
| where the author has to come up with something recognizable,
| but not too revealing or truly heart wrecking. Something
| milquetoast form adolescence will do in a pinch.
|
| I am sure these sort of confessionals used to come across as
| audacious. Now, it's just a tired trope of the format.
| charlieo88 wrote:
| I think the proper form would have been to pause the Sheila
| narrative at the Edna reveal, and then at the very end of
| the story, have the 50 years later meeting as the wrapper.
| trgn wrote:
| haha, yes, you're right!
|
| fwiw - I also wanted to know what happened there right
| after their encounter.
| lazide wrote:
| As noted in a upvoted comment above - resentment, hate, anger
| all poison/burn the one who holds it. The stronger it is
| held, and the longer, the more damage it does.
|
| There is a lot of poison here, and I don't think it is in
| Sheila.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| The humiliation was when Sheila said she was best friends
| with Edna now. Being public has nothing to do with it, in
| that incident or at basically any point in the article.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > The humiliation was when Sheila said she was best friends
| with Edna now.
|
| The "now" is especially important. It implies the
| friendship they shared was never real. Sheila was just
| keeping her around while she waited for someone better to
| be friends with.
| Wistar wrote:
| Absolutely yes. For me, it somewhat upstaged the rest of the
| essay.
| leroy_masochist wrote:
| One consequence of this essay being published in a high-profile
| literary magazine such as Harper's, whether intentional or not,
| will be Sheila's sense of humiliation upon reading it.
|
| I bet it's intentional.
| mcbishop wrote:
| >Whose humiliation did [NY Times columnist] Bruni have in mind,
| Weinstein's or the women's? The answer is both. Think of all the
| taunting rejections Weinstein must have endured before he found
| himself in a position of power.
|
| The article doesn't substantiate that Weinstein experienced past
| humiliation (let alone that this partially motivated his evil).
| This seemingly-speculative humanization doesn't seem fair to his
| victims.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| https://outline.com/Dbc5Mc
| jes wrote:
| I have found looking into practices around what ancient Indian
| religions refer to as "no-self" or "non-self" to be helpful in
| learning to respond better in situations where I have acted
| wrongly or otherwise felt ashamed.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I guess this is kinda judgmental on my part, but I feel like a
| lot of the personal anecdotes you hear about from.. older
| Americans.. seem totally anachronistic and bizarre. Like:
|
| > On the other hand, I have a cousin, a doctor, who feels
| humiliated if he's shortchanged in a grocery store. His wife,
| too: if another woman is wearing the same dress at a party, she
| feels humiliated.
|
| Like -- who are these people? They just _suck_. They need to get
| over themselves. I'm sure there are new people like this still
| coming of age, but probably not at the rate they used to... These
| sound like very 'boomer' problems, and I think a larger part of
| millennial culture is collectively rolling our eyes at this brand
| of arrogance. All over the country younger people grew up with
| parents and grandparents who were more concerned about pettily
| defending their pride than being good parents or doing good in
| the world, and understandably their children grow up with nothing
| but contempt for it.
| lagadu wrote:
| People can't help how they feel, they don't suck: they're just
| normal human beings whose feelings exist. Each generation will
| feel humiliated at something someone else considers or will
| consider to be stupid.
| elihu wrote:
| People vary, and some people are offended by things that others
| aren't.
|
| I do wonder if there are lessons to be learned regarding
| climate change specifically. I'm thinking of my parents, but
| there are a lot of boomers who would never think of tossing a
| pop can or candy bar wrapper out their car window, and who
| regard that sort of thing as absolutely inexcusable. And yet
| they're now being told that burning gasoline is far worse than
| lowly littering. And it's a thing they've been doing most of
| their lives, thinking it's normal and doesn't cost anything
| beyond what it costs at the pump and maybe (if they're
| reasonably self-aware) the geopolitical issues around being
| dependent on a few major oil producers in the middle-east.
|
| Accepting that climate change is a serious issue implies
| acknowledging their role in creating it, which is a kind of
| humiliation. Just saying "fine, get over it" may be satisfying,
| but in order to get them on board maybe we need a kind of
| messaging that isn't moralistic and doesn't assign blame. How
| would that even work, though? I don't know.
|
| I think most younger people have grown up in a world where
| climate change is an acknowledged fact and that burning
| gasoline is known to be problematic even if there isn't a
| practical alternative if you need to get to work or whatever.
| So there's no mental transformation that has to happen.
| elefanten wrote:
| I'm a millenial and as I read this, I got a strong visceral
| feeling like the one you're describing but about _you_. Not you
| personally, but the narrative you just posted.
|
| Do you really feel confident that millenials don't have any
| culturally systematic pettiness and arrogance? The social media
| generation, the neurotic depressed generation, the generation
| that has originated no novel politics... they are categorically
| more serious and more humble than the previous couple
| generations?
|
| The minute details you point to seem essentially irrelevant,
| exactly the kind of thing that varies generation to generation
| as culture changes -- anachronistic, as you say.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Oh, I'm sure millennials (as a generalization) have their own
| new varieties of petty pride. Just, the particular brand
| described the article feels like its age has passed and I'm
| glad for it.
| mcguire wrote:
| Petty prides are petty prides.
| Applejinx wrote:
| What a truly invalidating and humiliating take! Clearly you
| need to be warred upon for a thousand years for this
| unforgivable slight :D
|
| As it happens I agree with you here, at least personally, and
| here is why: humiliation is an EMOTIONAL feeling and you cannot
| assume it is justifiable. Narcissists can feel humilated over
| not being treated like they are God almighty. Bigots can feel
| humiliated over having to engage with subhumans as if they are
| people. I've got a brother who is humilated if he has to bag
| his own groceries at the grocery store, and goes into rather
| well-disciplined and civilized rage over it. Likewise if he's
| served food and something is wrong with it or with the service:
| he, in a dignified way, punishes everyone as hard as he can and
| goes to war.
|
| We cannot go by feelings like this: it can't be personal. There
| has to be a contextualization where you say 'no, you cannot
| beat that passing lady to death because she rolled her eyes at
| you and sneered'.
|
| That's why humiliation is so dangerous: both for individuals
| and for societies. It spurs these extreme, vengeful reactions,
| but there seems to be NO requirement that it is over some
| justifiable slight. We're far too subjective to trust this
| reaction in anyone or anything. Being able to take a broader
| view is indispensable.
|
| Some of the most capable, powerful people in the world are
| walking wounded, forever acting out revenge on past,
| unreachable humiliations. It's tragic, but also dangerous. It's
| why we have laws and police and such: we've never not had this
| problem.
| 7402 wrote:
| This does bring up the general question of who is sensitive or
| insensitive to humiliation.
|
| I am reminded of something Michael O. Church wrote a few years
| ago [0] in connection with agile/scrum and the issue of intense
| observation of an employee's work process:
|
| "Another topic coming to mind here is status sensitivity.
| Programmers love to make-believe that they've transcended a few
| million years of primate evolution related to social status,
| but the fact is: social status matters, and you're not
| "political" if you acknowledge the fact. Older people, women,
| racial minorities, and people with disabilities tend to be
| status sensitive in the workplace, because it's a matter of
| survival for them. Constant surveillance into one's work
| indicates a lack of trust and low social status, and the most
| status-sensitive people (even if they're the best workers) are
| the first ones to decline when surveillance ramps up. If they
| feel like they aren't trusted (and what else is communicated by
| a culture that expects every item of work to be justified?)
| then they lose motivation quickly.
|
| Agile and especially Scrum exploit the nothing-to-hide fallacy.
| Unless you're a "low performer" (witch hunt, anyone?) you
| shouldn't mind a daily status meeting, right? The only people
| who would object to justifying their work in terms of short-
| term business value are the "slackers" who want to steal from
| the company, correct? Well, no. Obviously not.
|
| The violent transparency culture is designed for the most
| status-insensitive people: young, usually white or Asian,
| privileged, never-disabled males who haven't been tested,
| challenged, or burned yet at work. It's for people who think
| that HR and management are a waste of time and that people
| should just "suck it up" when demeaned or insulted."
|
| [0] https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-
| an...
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Some people are very self-conscious. As a doctor, he recognizes
| the amount of change is minuscule, the effort expended to point
| it out is barely worth it, the clerk may have done
| unintentionally, because schools suck and this is the best the
| market could get at the wage they are willing to offer.. all
| sorts of reasons not make a big deal.
|
| But.. deep down, internal scales are off. Because it is not
| about the money. It is about balance. it is about principles.
| It is about getting what I am god damn paying for, which
| includes courtesy of getting the right change.
|
| It is insignificant in the long run, but it isn't completely
| without merit.
| hairofadog wrote:
| Everyone grew up conditioned by a different context, and every
| generation has their idiosyncrasies. I'm sure millennials and
| gen-z folks have things that are humiliating to them which
| older folks would roll their eyes at (say, something that
| happens on Twitter or in a video game). I'm not meaning to
| criticize you; just saying it's good to remember that each
| person has their own story shaped by the environments they
| spent time in.
| [deleted]
| draw_down wrote:
| I feel sorry for this person.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Does a humiliated person bear any responsibility for their
| feeling? I ask because while I sympathize with her examples, I
| can also think of many unsympathetic examples of humiliations,
| and the person's response to it, and I'd wonder whether
| humiliations are the result of power shifts. Many people I know
| are sympathetic to violent responses to humiliation, and even in
| the article, the interviews with convicted muderers showed their
| decision to kill someone was often over a related issue of
| respect.
|
| Being witty or funny gives you the power to shame, and often it's
| unintentional, to where we might consider the target of a well
| aimed observation to be fragile for being offended. And yet, we
| wouldn't blame someone or hold them morally culpable in a
| disadvantaged relationship for turning the tables, even with a
| pair of scissors in the back. I don't have answers, but I'd
| wonder if there is a more general idea of where the
| responsibility for humiliations and their consequences lie.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This is a good question.
|
| I imagine there is at least a 2x2 matrix of humiliation: on one
| axis, there's intention (did A intend to humiliate B, or was it
| inadvertent?). On the other axis, there's public versus
| private: is the person humiliated in a way that other people
| will know and remember?
|
| There may be more axes, but those are the big ones, to me.
|
| It seems like it's fairly uncontroversial to say that someone
| who inadvertently inflicts a private humiliation known only to
| the humiliated deserves the least amount of blame, while
| someone who intentionally humiliates someone in public deserves
| the most.
|
| For example, an inadvertent, private humiliation might be that
| you and I are talking privately, and you make a joke about my
| alma mater, which I care a lot about. You didn't mean it
| personally: you didn't even know I went there, let alone that I
| was sensitive about it. No one else hears you say this, and two
| minutes later you've forgotten about it. On the other hand, I
| take it to heart, and carry a grudge for years.
|
| Most people would say you're not really at fault at all. You
| could have been more circumspect, but I'm the one who needs to
| lighten up.
|
| On the other hand, if you and your partner are at the beach,
| and I come up to you and kick sand in your face, and everybody
| around you laughs, that's a public humiliation, and I'm 100%
| responsible for it.
|
| These feel like different situations, and the distinctions
| between them just aren't captured by the single word
| 'humiliation'. Perhaps these more precise words exist in
| English, and we just don't use them very well, but it feels
| like if we did then this confusion wouldn't even arise.
|
| It's like having 50 different words for snow, because snow is
| such a large part of your culture. Our vocabulary for talking
| about humiliation is limited. On the other hand, I'm not sure I
| want to live in a culture that has 50 different words for
| humiliation!
| sorokod wrote:
| I'd say about half of the responsibility.
|
| Humiliation us about the percived damage inflicted on the self
| constructed self image. One is responsible for one's
| perceptions and constructs.
| warent wrote:
| Communication is a two-way road. We need to be tactful and
| mindful of how we're communicating and empathizing with people.
| Simultaneously we need to work on ourselves so that we don't
| spontaneously react when we're triggered. When conflict arises,
| often times more than one person is at fault.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Indeed, the empathy piece I'm often suspicious of because the
| personalization of an interaction causes at least as many
| problems as it solves. We can't fake empathy, we can't
| empathize with everyone, and it's presumptive to expect
| others to treat us as a peer, so I err on the side of
| civility over empathy. The conventions of civility are
| designed specifically to avoid humiliating people
| unintentionally, where empathizing can get into personal
| business where humiliation and its conseqeunces become
| inevitable.
| drewcoo wrote:
| I would say all of the responsibility even if they're not the
| cause.
|
| Unless we want some kind of thought police making sure we don't
| think the wrong things or - worse - cause bad thinking in
| others.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > I'd wonder whether humiliations are the result of power
| shifts.
|
| Advantages, privilege, power imbalances... All of these are at
| the core of humiliation. It's all about the violation of a
| person's sense of self. You believe you have worth but someone
| else comes along and strips you of it.
|
| > the interviews with convicted muderers showed their decision
| to kill someone was often over a related issue of respect.
|
| This is universal in human nature. When one person humiliates
| another, consequences are likely. Even in civilized society,
| there are consequences. They just tend to be more formal and
| indirect. They come in the form of simple exclusion from a
| group, not being elevated for a prestigious position, trials at
| a court of law, things like that. In less civilized circles,
| people are held accountable for their words and actions
| immediately, directly and violently. For certain kinds of
| people, a man getting his respect is more important than his
| life.
|
| Humiliation causes violence. In so many cases, physical
| violence was _not_ going to happen until the victim said or did
| something that humiliated the perpetrator. Challenging a man
| with a gun by saying he doesn 't have the balls to shoot it
| will provoke an attack. It humiliates him, makes him less of a
| man and leaves him no option but to shoot. It's really easy to
| end up making this sort of challenge while under a stressful
| situation. There are no shortage of cases where a violent
| person starts to leave the area but the victim just _has_ to
| get that last insult in, they just need to have the last word,
| teach them a lesson and put them back in their place. "Yeah,
| crawl back to the shithole you came out of." Is it any wonder
| the situation escalates to violence?
|
| > And yet, we wouldn't blame someone or hold them morally
| culpable in a disadvantaged relationship for turning the
| tables, even with a pair of scissors in the back.
|
| It's interesting to observe who is and isn't blamed. For
| example, incels also fit this description and they are
| certainly unsympathetic to the vast majority of people despite
| the constant humiliation they endure.
| bsanr wrote:
| >The problem is that the consciousness bestowed on us is just
| barely sufficient; if we are to achieve inner freedom, it is
| necessary that we become more (much more) conscious than we
| generally are. If men and women learn to occupy their own
| inspirited beings fully and freely, Fromm posited, they will gain
| self-knowledge and thus no longer be alone: they will have
| themselves for company. Once one has company one can feel benign
| toward oneself as well as others. Then, like a virus that had
| been stamped out, humiliating loneliness would surely begin to
| wane.
|
| Oh, hey. Furries.
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(page generated 2021-10-07 23:02 UTC)