Shame Less

I've written before about OOO and melancholia (my black metal shipmates coined the term melancology, brilliant). But some more reflection on shame, favorite affect of those seeking to think community, inspired me to post this.

Sure Levinas, Derrida and a host of others including restoration ecologist William Jordan, and some in queer theory, to name a few, rate shame.

But if we're going to get phenomenological--I don't see how we can't when we talk about affect--and even Derrida gets phenomenological when he talks about shame--then I reckon we should trust some of the pioneers of introspection, the contemplatives of this world.

They tend--and I'm drawing the net widely here around the likes of Rumi, John of the Cross and Milarepa, Julian of Norwich and Machig Labdron--to see shame as a hard kernel, yes. But there is more. Open up the kernel and you find sadness, a far less dualistic state of mind.

Shame depends on my picture of your picture of me. Sure it's intense. So intense that most intellectuals take it for an affective atom, uncuttable. It also has the advantage of not being guilt, which sounds too theistic (nay Abrahamic) for most intellectual tastes.

But sadness only requires mirror neurons. And 1+n coexistents. Put another way, You want basic? My two year old son still has no shame (quite right too). But he has sadness aplenty.

Why does simple reasoning about early mind states not happen with the shame fans? Is it perhaps because shame is a little bit meta--it appeals to our intellectuality, in a slightly S&M-y way? Watching yourself watching yourself...

Sorry Tarkovsky, shame is not the emotion that will save mankind (Solaris). If you want an eco affect, you need sadness.