Seeing, Feeling, and Thinking

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Nick

It has been said that small-minded people talk about things, the mediocre talk about people, and the intelligent talk about ideas. I think that approaches to religion, to the gods, can be divided in the same way. Such a division need not imply a hierarchy of ways of approaching the gods going from lesser to greater, although that hierarchy is often implied, which I want to get back to later.

First, there are the “things” of religion: cult objects, “fetishes”, idols, visual symbols, descriptions and iconography of the gods’ apearances, parts of the physical world that are associated with specific gods such as mountains, rivers, and forests, and also living things such as specific animals or birds; in short, all of those ways in which divinity is approached through the senses.

Second, there are the “personalites”: specifically, the personalities of gods as we know them from myths, and with whom we identify, or whom we identify against; these are the ways that the gods are approached through the emotions.

Third, there are the “ideas”: theologies, mysticisms, or the web of concepts that might be associated with a particular god, and that form lines of conjunction and relation between gods; these are the ways that the gods are approached through the intellect.

Sensory experience being basic to our interaction with the world, the sensory part of religion is the first experience of the gods for most people: for instance, one might see lightening, hear thunder, see an oak tree, see the famous bronze figure of Þórr from Iceland and think “This is Þórr”.

Later on in the development of one’s religious understanding, one might identify the figure of Þórr in the myths as the reality of the god, and reject the reality of what is available to the senses, as if to say “That was merely a symbol or a reflection of the reality, but this is the real Þórr.” This is where most people stop.

Some people might go further, and come to a theological understanding of Þórr, wherein “Þórr” seems to be a concept or a web of concepts, e.g. Force, Protection, Warriorhood, etc. one might then reject the mythological “person” of Þórr as likewise a symbol of the reality of Þórr, which are these concepts; the idea of Þórr is seen as the ultimate reality, of which the sensory and emotive elements are mere shadows and reflections.

It seems to me that this progression from sensory to emotive to conceptual is not enough, and there must be another level of understanding that very few these days have reached.

For one thing, the rejection of the visible, audible, and tactile apprehension of the holy for the emotional apprehension, and the rejection of the emotional apprehension for the conceptual apprehension, seems to privilege ever greater abstraction. If a linear progression of further abstraction is the key to understanding the Holy, then we might say that each god, even taken as an abstract web of concepts, is symbolic of some other thing, something beyond gods, and that we may as well then disense with the idea of gods altogether, and give idols, myths and theologies little or no credit for being about anything real. There exist such schools of thought today, and I think that that ground has been well-trodden, to the point that I have no interest in it as a direction of thought. I think there is another way, a more interesting way that does not result in the intellectual rejection of everything about our religion.

This is not to say that abstraction or intellectual understandings of our gods are going in the wrong direction; merely that they are incomplete. The problem lies in the rejection of the sensory for the emotive, the emotive for the conceptual. One who has reached the level of understanding gods as concepts must then make the full circle, and see that coming to know a god through the senses, through the emotions, and through the mind are all important: the idol, the mountain, the thunderstorm; the Þórr of the myths; the ideas and concepts associated with Þórr; all of these partake of the being of the god. Someone who has this insight can come back to the beginning, and see the idol, hear the myth, and know the concepts like they are new, and experience the presence of the god in all of these ways simultaneously.

There will always remain something of a god that is beyond knowledge, beyond human understanding, but exeriencing gods in things, in personalities, and in ideas, all together and at the same time, gives a broader and deeper understanding than any one of these singly.

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Theodish Fundamentals I

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Gerd

This is to be the first in a series of short entries covering the basic ideas behind Theodish Belief.

Garman Lord began a booklet entitled Handbook of Theodish Belief (Theod Books, 1993) with the following statement. “In eldritch days, if things went well for a man, it was said that “God saw him”. If things went ill, it was said that “God forgot him”. This is the importance of the quality of one’s religious life. The best way for a man to make sure that God will not “forget” him is to use religious observances such that he does not forget God.” Although he does not cite anything, I suspect that the ultimate origin of this idea for Garman is to be found in the chapter on God in Jacob Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology vol. I. Wherever Garman came across the idea, it is a useful way to consider what it is that Theodism is trying to do. Elsewhere, Garman described the initial religious experience he had that led him to found Theodish Belief. In this experience, he believed he spoke to the god Woden, who told him, among other things, that his religion was gift-giving. Even without hearing divine voices, one can easily come to understand heathen religion in this way.

We are accustomed, in the West, to thinking of religion in terms of belief. Most versions of Christianity, which has been the dominant ideological and religious paradigm in the West for 1000 years, claim that human beings exist in a fallen state, their fundamental nature having become, since the sin of Adam and Eve, that of damned sinners. All humans, no matter how nice they seem, require salvation, for which one prerequisite is to accept that Jesus Christ, the Son of God (who is also identical to God in light of the doctrine of the trinity) sacrificed himself for our sins and only through him can we be forgiven our sinful nature. This acceptance takes the form, in essence, of a sort of belief, so that fundamental to the goal of Christianity (salvation) is the idea of belief.

There is no evidence that ancient Germanic religion was overly concerned about precisely what any particular adherent believed. Ancient Germanic religion was a religion of deeds, not beliefs. One was judged on what one did, not on what one thought. Thus, the concern of the Germanic heathen hoping that his gods will not forget him was not that he have the right beliefs in his heart but that he did the right things, a central part of which were his religious activities.

In traditional societies, one of the primary tools used to create and maintain social bonds is gift-giving. The Icelandic Havamal refers to the importance of gift-giving both with regard to human relationships and with regard to relationships between humans and gods. Stanzas 41 and 42, for instance, suggest that gifts make friendships last and that a friend should repay gifts with gifts. Similar phrasing is used with regard to sacrifice when in stanza 146 it says that it is better not to sacrifice than to sacrifice too much, for a gift seeks recompense. Here the word blot is used for sacrifice, so we can see that the idea of religious sacrifice (blot) is intrinsically related to the idea of giving gifts. Blot referred specifically to animal sacrifice. Such sacrifices included feasting on the meat of the slain animal, apparently actually giving over to the gods primarily such things as heads and hooves. Elsewhere on this web site I have discussed the idea of blot in a bit more detail, and I will do so again in somewhat more detail further on in this series. For now, let us be content to understand blot as a form of gift giving, although I think it is that and somewhat more. Be that as it may, blot is not the only sort of gift-giving between gods and men. Other kinds of votive offerings are also possible and exist in the archaeological record.

Germanic heathen religion was not soteriological. Germanic heathens did not believe that those who did not follow their religion were automatically doomed either in this life or the next, it appears. They did believe, however, that practicing their religion properly was advantageous to the individual and the community of which they were a part. They felt this strongly enough that they were willing to impose proper religious acts and respect for religious activities and places on members of a community. In this regard, such testimonia as the section of the Lex Frisionum dealing with those who defile temples are instructive.

Nonetheless, there were those who did not participate in the religion of their community. Although these so-called godless men (as they are referred to in Heimskringla) are sometimes referred to as atheists, in descriptions of them there is no claim made that they disbelieved in the existence of the gods, only that they chose not to put their trust in the gods, and in this way are godless. One early example of such a man is one of the first settlers in Iceland, Hjorleif, who came to a bad end. When his friend Ingolf found him, he is described in Landnamabok as saying “It’s a sad end for a warrior, to be killed by slaves; but in my experience this is what always happens to people who do not hold sacrifices.” Now, I do not think that Ingolf is saying something strange like that the gods punished poor Hjorleif for not sacrificing to them. The sense I get is that, when things get bad, someone like Hjorleif can expect that no help will be forthcoming, and thus that unfortunate and undignified ends are more likely in such cases. In eras when life often takes on the character of an ordeal, one might expect that those who deny themselves the advantages of divine help are more likely to be killed by slaves or come to other undignified ends.

Next installment: What does the ‘hol’ in holy mean, and why does the Havamal tell us we shouldn’t give too often.

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Change and Continuity

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Nick

These days, one finds everywhere the notion that change has overtaken the world in the last few centuries. From the scientific advances beginning in the Renaissance and the erosion of faith in the dominant Christianity that accompanied them, on to the technological advances that enabled the Industrial Revolution and its attendant upheaval of societies’ means and aims of production to this day, change has been the byword of existence for quite some time. This change has been accompanied everywhere by philosophical trends that first lauded the dawn of the Age of Reason and the unshackling of human labor and intellect, but which have since gone to describing with horror the Age of the Titans, of Technology without Purpose, of the Machine.

These philosophers and their criticisms of the modern world deserve to be taken seriously, and the upheavals that occur with the greater changes in society are keenly felt when and where they happen; I’m thinking mainly (but not solely) of the change from primarily rural agricultural societies – and hunter/gather societies in many places – to primarily urban factory/technology/market societies that started with the Industrial Revolution and has continued until today, and all of the other changes that that greater change entails. It occurs to me as I write that this great change, whatever it might be, is not finished, and might never be finished until human life is snuffed out by the excesses and imbalances set in motion by this change. Suffice it to say that we have not yet entirely “changed over” into the mode of life that would seem to be the logical end of this particular centuries-long trend, and I’m not sure that we really ever entirely can (regardless of how much we might damage, in the meantime, by trying).

So, this is our “changed world”. One of the early victims of this “changed world” has been the authority of Christianity, a result that a Heathen like myself might well praise. However, it hasn’t been merely Christianity’s authority that has suffered, but the authority of religion itself in Western culture (Christianity itself having uprooted the authority of other religions). That result is, I think, less than praiseworthy, and has resulted in a number of unforeseen consequences which I won’t elaborate on here; I think that religion is, on the whole, a good thing (despite some highly pervasive bad examples of it), and that its loss is the loss of something ineffably valuable.

Many people disagree, of course, both on the worthiness of religion itself and, in a perhaps softer disagreement, on the role that religion ought to play in this “changed world”. People who, like me, pursue the practice of ancient religions and cultures often have to deal with the question of these religions’ and cultures’ relevance in the modern “changed world”; this is true for “mainstream” religions as well, for instance Catholicism, which has an uninterrupted history of practice going back to the Roman Empire. The question of relevance is ostensibly even more serious for religions like mine, which do not have such an uninterrupted history. For instance, people can (and do) question to what extent early Germanic culture, even only Germanic religion (as though the two were separable), should or could be brought into the modern “changed” world. Others argue that there is no place in this “changed” world for old religions like ours, which are better forgotten.

This whole line of thinking raises some questions for me. I think that there are many criticisms that could be raised about this point of view, not the least of which being that it is based upon a linear notion of progress that is ultimately derived from a specifically Judeo-Christian view of time. That is, the notion that things change over time generally for the better, and that one neither can nor should want to “go back” or “turn back the clock” is not a matter of objective fact so much as one of a worldview that is strongly pervasive in Western culture, but by no means universal or necessarily correct. One could simply (though certainly not easily) change how one views the world, and the criticism from the notion of “progress” loses all meaning.

In general, I see the role of religions like mine as having the same relevance in the modern world as a vaccine in a diseased body. If we are not a product of the main trends of the last few centuries, it is because these trends represent overall decay of a body that was, I think, already sick; Western Culture – seen as a whole – invited its own decline by its excesses and its poor foundations. Our goal is not to revive Western Culture; this goal is taken up by other radicals than us. No: we, and people like us, are here to revive the cultures that preceded Western Culture and which were, to greater or lesser extents, incorporated into that Borg-like collective. We are rebuilding cultures that were once viable and able to survive vast changes, because we think that they can be that viable and hardy now. Also, importantly, we revive these cultures because they are ours: they belong to us as an inheritance from our beginnings, and conversely, we belong to them as well.

Or, from another perspective: we are – to whatever in Western Culture remains of the organic cultures that preceded and were incorporated into it – something like an immune response, a reaction from within Western Culture to break free of this artificial thing and to return to a kind of culture more natural to us, more in line with our own manners of being. From this point of view it can be seen that the movement towards religions like ours has its roots in the Romanticism of the 19th century, which was a reaction against the industrialization and urbanization of the time. Romanticism, which inspired great art, also inspired a great deal of scholarship; it began the scholarly interest in pre-Christian European religions, in native European religious and cultural identities. Romanticism’s art and scholarship inspired the interest among some people to go back to practicing pre-Christian European religions. We, therefore are part of that same current of reaction against, rejection of, modernism and its tendencies to dehumanize and denature.

So, now that I have attempted to establish our roots and our place in and relation to the modern world, does this reaction against the changes of “modernity”, changes that now seem to define the everyday existence of many people, have any hope of success?

To answer that question with a question: has the world really changed that much, and are the evident changes fundamental, or merely on the surface of things? To many, these will seem like ridiculous questions. It seems obvious that the world has changed, doesn’t it? One might point to all the technology we have, and what it allows us to do, as evidence of the world’s fundamental difference from how it was a century ago, much less a millenium. I am uncertain whether technology is capable of changing existence in a fundamental fashion (or even the fundamentals of our experience of it), but technology certainly seems to have changed things: more powerful scientific tools give us a greater knowledge of physical existence; communications networks allow us to know what is happening around the world in an instant; weapons technologies allow us (at least in part) to wage war from afar; agricultural technology “liberates” the vast majority of people from having to grow food for a living (although I am by no means convinced that this is a good thing). All this is so, but I don’t know that any of these things really “change” the nature of the world in any fundamental sense. If anything, I think that technology gives an appearance of change that is ultimately a distraction from the underlying continuity of things, and thus from an interaction with – and understanding of – the underlying and eternal things about reality.

Nor do find much evidence that human nature has changed. People still have the same instincts and emotions, and largely want the same things as they always have. The change that people feel in the world is, I think, rather in their understanding of and relationship to the world. As an example, there is the notion that things are reducible to material, mere matter with no other meaning or existence than as objects to be shaped and transformed by human will. This kind of thinking enabled the Industrial Revolution, and the results of that revolution continue to lead to that kind of thinking.

This kind of sea-change in people’s understanding of and approach to the world leads, I think, to the flourishing of many lines of thought that would have been clearly absurd, if not unthinkable, in previous eras. I find that many people these days have a number of ideas that they seem to hold precisely because they are at odds with old wisdom. Of course, such a thing only makes sense from the point of view that states that things are fundamentally different now than they ever were before. If that isn’t true, though – and I think it’s not – if things haven’t really changed all that much, then old wisdom is still useful, especially in circumstances where the seeming newness of things has apparently deprived people of any wisdom whatsoever.

And that, when it comes down to it, is what religions like ours really are: old, traditional wisdom, ways of understanding and interacting with the world and with existence that we firmly believe have a great deal of value in the modern world; and this not despite the fact that these ways are old and from another time, but because of that very fact. Part of how people like us serve as an antidote to modernity is by questioning the modern rejection of traditional wisdom. Religious projects like ours are predicated on the belief that the world has not changed so much that traditional wisdom is useless, and that traditional wisdom helps to remedy the alienation from the world that is part of modernity.

In another essay, I hope to look at the implications the ideas in this essay have for how people these days approach the practice of ancient religions. Specifically, I would like to look at the fear of or disdain for tradition that I’ve seen among some Heathens and other Reconstructionists, and how that is contradictory and ultimately self-defeating.

Posted in Against Modernity, Germanic Reconstructionism | 2 Comments

Public and Private, the Internal and External Aspects of Guilt and Shame…

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Shane

Any discussion on the study of guilt and shame culture will inevitably result in the discussion of internal and external sanctions for controlling behavior.  This is of course necessary and is a result of the original distinction between guilt and shame culture proposed by Ruth Benedict.  According to Benedict, “true shame cultures rely on external sanctions for good behavior, not, as true guilt cultures do, on an internalized conviction of sin.”[1] Her distinction rested on the idea that shame sanctions required an audience or the fantasy of an audience.  Guilt on the other hand does not require an audience.  The veracity of this typology has been argued since her original proposal in 1946, with supporters and detractors adding their own research and opinion to the subject matter.

Maintaining reliance on the differentiation of guilt and shame cultures according to internal and external sanctions has proven problematic.  It has been demonstrated that guilt and shame are rarely experienced according to Benedict’s typology, though some still rely on her distinctions.[2] Studies have provided examples of a complete reversal of Benedict’s requirements[3] or a complete lack of reliance on public audience for inciting feelings of shame or guilt altogether.[4] The results of these studies are beneficial to heathens studying guilt and shame culture and have resulted in a widely accepted rejection of internal and external sanctions in guilt and shame cultures respectively.

In all cultures guilt and shame are expressed both internally and externally in various ways.  Benedict’s insistence that guilt was an internal conviction, a man’s feeling that “may actually be relieved by confessing his sin”[5] acknowledges only one aspect of guilt, the private side.  There is also a public side to guilt, the side that in Benedict’s examples are acted out by the Christian god.  Her examples assume that the individual has accepted the judgment and power of an authority (laws, codes of conduct, commands from figures of authority), necessary for a sense of guilt to manifest.  This authority serves as the guiding principle by which the individual judges his actions as a transgression resulting in his feelings of guilt.  The public side of guilt is the judgment of guilt, regardless of the individual’s own feelings of guilt, in which the public demands restitution for the transgression in order for the individual to be accepted back into good standing within the community.  Such judgments are an acknowledgment on the part of the community that an individual has violated the rules of the community[6]; rules that all members of the community are expected to follow in order to maintain the cohesiveness and health of the community.[7] Private guilt is expressed in the desire to make restitution for a misdeed and a “mild and often unconscious anxiety”[8] or “nagging focus or preoccupation with the transgression.”[9] It is possible for an individual to feel guilt even though no actual transgression has been made, or with no acknowledgment of the transgression on the part of the public.[10] Public guilt, on the other hand, is expressed in the punishment or demand for atonement for the individual’s misdeeds.  Until the individual has paid his debt, regardless of whether he confesses to the sin, his status in his community is altered.  Upon making amends he is able to return to his place within the community.  Guilt then is the result of a transgression of a code of conduct that serves to maintain the health of interpersonal relationships and prevent “actions that would violate obligations to family, the larger social group, and deities.”[11] Such transgressions result in a desire to make, or demand for, amends for the misdeed in order to reestablish the health and stability of the community.

Like guilt, shame has a public and private side as well.  Internal shame results from self-evaluation and the determination that the individual is falling short of an ideal.  This sense of shame is the response to the fact that the individual believes his failings are, or may become, known to other members of his social group and that such knowledge will result in a loss of respect, prestige, and/or position within the social group.  Feelings of worthlessness, powerlessness, and exposure accompany feelings of shame.[12] The opposite internal response to shame is the sense of pride in that an individual is living up to the ideal espoused by his social group.  Private shame does not require any participation on the part of other members of the social group.  It only requires the fear that such members may become aware of the individual’s inadequacies.[13] Public shame is the act of shaming an individual in the public sphere; an act that results in the loss of respect, prestige, and/or position within the social group as a result of the individual not meeting the community’s standards.  Public shaming is the effort to publicly humiliate the individual in order to incite conformity to the community’s beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviors.  Public shaming does not require a corresponding internal shame response in the individual.[14] Honor is the opposite of being publicly shamed.  Shame, either public or private, arises when the image of the self and its relationship to the idealized image of self is compromised revealing an inconsistency between the two.[15]

Benedict’s requirements of guilt cultures relying on internal convictions and shame cultures relying on external sanctions are an incomplete assessment of social mechanisms of enculturation.   Public and private shame and guilt both play a roll in inciting the individual to conform to a society’s beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviors.  It is necessary for individuals to internalize the authority behind external guilt and shame sanctions for them to be truly effective in inciting conformity.[16] Studies dealing with shame and guilt typology and their expression in social adaptation and interpersonal behavior illustrate the failure of Benedict’s model for differentiation.  This failure has resulted in various new methods of differentiation being proposed.  Takie Sugiyama Lebra proposes that guilt arises when the reciprocal obligations of members of a community are no longer maintained[17] and the result is “the sense of social injury unjustifiably inflicted by Ego upon Alter.”[18] She also states that shame is “generated or triggered…in conjunction with ‘status’ occupancy…Shame results from whatever happens to undermine or denigrate the claimed status by revealing something…of the claimer which is inconsistent with the status.”[19] Similarly, Anthony O’Hear states, “If an unjust action is conceived as a transgression against a moral injunction, it will provoke guilt, while if it is seen as something unworthy of an honourable man, it will provoke shame.”[20] Additionally, we are warned by Douglas Cairns that: “

It would be wrong to focus too closely on the supposed distinction between failure and transgression; any transgression of a boundary is a failure to observe it, and a failure to achieve a goal can be a transgression of an interdiction.  Thus, in dealing with agent-reports of shame and guilt, we cannot simply decide that any reference to transgression indicates guilt and any reference to failure, shame.[21]

More importantly than adopting any single definition of guilt and shame is the awareness that what we should take from such studies is the fact that these typologies should only be used to supplement our understanding of the expressions of guilt and shame in the public and private sphere of human activity.  They cannot be used to define individual or cultural activity themselves, but only aid in our comprehension of that activity.

[1] Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Mariner Books, 2006), 223.
[2] Paul Gilbert and Bernice Andrews, Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Psychopathology, and Culture (Series in Affective Science) (Oxford University Press, 1998), 227.
[3] Millie R. Creighton, “Revisiting Shame and Guilt Cultures: A Forty-Year Pilgrimage,” Ethos 18, no. 3 (September 1990): 282; Takie Sugiyama Lebra, “The Social Mechanism of Guilt and Shame: The Japanese Case,” Anthropological Quarterly 44, no. 4 (October 1971): 2.
[4] June Price Tangney and Ronda L. Dearing, Shame and Guilt (The Guilford Press, 2002), 13-15.
[5] Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, 223.
[6] R. E. Lamb, “Guilt, Shame, and Morality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 43, no. 3 (March 1983): 337-338; Anthony O’Hear, “Guilt and Shame as Moral Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 77 (1976): 73.
[7] Paul Gilbert and Bernice Andrews, Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Psychopathology, and Culture (Series in Affective Science), 228; Takie Sugiyama Lebra, “The Social Mechanism of Guilt and Shame: The Japanese Case,” 243.
[8] Paul Gilbert and Bernice Andrews, Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Psychopathology, and Culture (Series in Affective Science), 228.
[9] June Price Tangney and Ronda L. Dearing, Shame and Guilt, 19.
[10] Anthony O’Hear, “Guilt and Shame as Moral Concepts,” 73.
[11] Paul Gilbert and Bernice Andrews, Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Psychopathology, and Culture (Series in Affective Science), 228.
[12] June Price Tangney and Ronda L. Dearing, Shame and Guilt, 18.
[13] Thomas J. Scheff, “Shame and Conformity: The Deference-Emotion System,” American Sociological Review 53, no. 3 (June 1988): 97.
[14] R. E. Lamb, “Guilt, Shame, and Morality,” 339.
[15] Takie Sugiyama Lebra, “The Social Mechanism of Guilt and Shame: The Japanese Case,” 246.
[16] Millie R. Creighton, “Revisiting Shame and Guilt Cultures: A Forty-Year Pilgrimage,” 287.
[17] Takie Sugiyama Lebra, “The Social Mechanism of Guilt and Shame: The Japanese Case,” 243.
[18] Ibid., 244.
[19] Ibid., 246.
[20] Anthony O’Hear, “Guilt and Shame as Moral Concepts,” 82.
[21] Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford University Press, 1993), 2.

Posted in Germanic Reconstructionism | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Shame & Guilt, or, Are We Really Our Deeds?

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Shane

A recent eBook by a heathen chieftain made the statement that because heathen society is a shame culture we are our deeds.  He contrasts this with the fact that, at least according to him, guilt culture is based on internal character and promptly refers to Christianity as an example.  Similar blog entries and essays can be found by other heathens as well.  This entry is a follow-up to my previous post on asymmetry and reciprocity and will be directed at clarifying some common misconceptions about shame and guilt typologies.  It is the second post in what will likely be a series of posts dealing with shame and guilt typologies and their usefulness in studying Germanic heathen cultures.  I will attempt to err on the side of brevity, but those who know me are aware that I tend to be rather long-winded in my writing.

The premise that leads to the above conclusion is presumably based upon Ruth Benedict’s original, and quite outdated, division of shame and guilt sanctions into external and internal sanctions respectively — though they often fail to refer to her as the source for the dichotomy.  The external sanction is believed to affect the status occupancy of an individual in the form of shame (or more accurately honor-shame).  The individual is believed to hold a position within society based upon a social evaluation of his deeds which then results in the judgment that the individual should be honored (maintaining or elevating his position) or shamed (loss of position).  The motivation is the social threat of loss of status as a result of one’s deeds being judged negatively.  The claim by the above heathen chieftain, and other heathens as well, is that because a man is judged according to his deeds he is known by his deeds.  This then leads to the idea: “We are our deeds.”

On the other hand, the internal sanction is based upon an internal recognition of transgressing some code that deserves punishment.  The above heathen author made the claim that guilt culture as expressed in Christian culture is evinced in the notion of sin and that an individual is flawed from the beginning (an implied reference to the Original Sin of Christianity).  What follows is the judgment of an internally flawed individual subject to a sense of guilt as a result of some sin of which he partakes with little to no regard to his actual deeds in life. The idea is that the individual’s deeds are dissociated with the judgment of his internal character – i.e. bad or good.  The conclusion is that an individual is either bad or good and his deeds are judged separately, if judged at all.

The above assessments presented by these heathens ignore the extensive research on guilt and shame typology that has followed Benedict’s work.  Although the requirement that internal and external sanctions indicate guilt and shame culture respectively is a significant issue I am going to address that at a later date.  Suffice it to say that there must be a corresponding internalization of the validity of authority and sanction for guilt and shame sanctions to be effective in controlling the behavior of the members of society. For now I am going to focus on the misconception that the conclusion that shame culture can be expressed in the axiom “we are our deeds”, based upon status according to the social judgment of one’s deeds.  The corollary conclusion that in guilt culture an individual’s judgment is internal and a statement of character, irrespective of actions, is a mistake.

Common throughout studies on shame and guilt is the fundamental understanding that shame is concerned with the whole self and guilt is associated with one’s actions as a member of a social group.  Shame is made possible based upon its influence on status occupancy and the expectation of behavior corresponding to position within society.  Judgment, both internal and external, is a result of constant evaluation of an individual’s actions in comparison to the standards, whether explicit or implicit,  expected for the position he holds within society.  When an individual’s actions do not meet the standard the individual is shamed by society or feels ashamed.  In contrast, when the individual meets or exceeds those standards, he is honored for his actions and feels a sense of pride in his accomplishment.  Because shame is concerned with one’s position within the social hierarchy, which is then intimately related to one’s identity, it reflects a failure of the individual and is a statement of the whole individual.  The relationship between an individual’s position in the social hierarchy, his identity, and his deeds is not a result of judgment of his deeds defining his identity, but is in fact the opposite.  An individual’s deeds are a reflection of his character and a verification of his identity.  The statement in Germanic literature is that people behave according to their position, not that they receive their position according to their behavior.  No matter how kingly a man acts, he will not be elevated to a king solely as a result of his deeds.  On the other hand, a king is expected to behave in a certain manner because he is a king.  He is evaluated according to how well he meets those standards.  His identity is wrapped up in his status, not his deeds.  Considering this, we are not our deeds, but instead we are the position we occupy in society and our deeds are a reflection of the behavior expected of such a position.  Shame comes when we fail to be our position and demonstrate that we are not worthy of such a position in society and the honor corresponding to such a position.  As a result our identity is redefined for us by society.

Guilt, in contrast, is concerned with one’s actions.  When one transgresses a code, explicit or implicit, then one is judged guilty – either through self-reproach or societal judgment.  As a result, an individual is judged according to his deeds and is capable of making amends for his transgression.  The individual’s status in society is not based upon his character, but only upon judgments regarding his actions at any given moment.  His misdeeds, when he transgresses societal codes, allow for a social external judgment of guilt for which there will be a corresponding punishment.  In regards to guilt, an individual’s honor is a result of his deeds.  Once he has atoned for his misdeeds he can be reinstated to his original position in the social hierarchy, or even find himself in an elevated position.  This possibility for elevated status is a result of the underlying view that to atone for one’s misdeeds is a deed worthy of honor itself.

Both guilt and shame typology deal with judgment of an individual in regards the transgression of codes and ideals.  The difference lies in the fact that shame deals with the whole self, the identity of an individual, and guilt deals with deeds and actions.  In guilt culture, we are our deeds.  In shame culture, we are our position in society, our character, and our deeds are merely a confirmation of that identity.

Suggested Reading

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford University Press, 1993)

Elvin Hatch, “Theories of Social Honor”. American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 91, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 341-353.

Millie R. Creighton, “Revisiting Shame and Guilt Cultures: A Forty-Year Pilgrimage”. Ethos, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sep., 1990), pp. 279-307.

Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946).

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Reciprocity and Asymmetry, Guilt and Shame

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Shane

In The Social Mechanism of Guilt and Shame: The Japanese Case, Takie Sugiyama Lebra makes a case for the means to differentiate shame from guilt according to the distinction of reciprocal social structure and asymmetric social structure.  Lebra posits that guilt relates to reciprocity and shame involves asymmetric social structure.  In concluding, she states that guilt and shame will be generalized or specific depending upon the type of culture – monotheistic or sociocultic.  In a monotheistic culture guilt is generalized and shame is specific.  In contrast, guilt is specific and shame generalized in a sociocultic society.

Reciprocity and guilt, according to Lebra, pp. 243-4, are defined as:

“the rule by which two actors in interaction, Ego and Alter, expect each other to maintain a balance between mutual rights and duties, social assets and liabilities, debt and payment, give and take.  The rule of reciprocity urges the debtor to pay the creditor, the benefit-receiver to make return to the donor.  Guilt emerges..when such a balance collapses, that is, when Ego has over-exercised his rights vis-a-vis Alter without fulfilling corresponding obligations, when he is in debt over and beyond his capacity for payment, or when he has received a benefit which he has no means to reciprocate or does not deserve.  Guilt, then, is accompanied by the sense of social injury unjustifiably inflicted by Ego upon Alter.”

In the case of a monotheistic culture where guilt is generalized the rule of reciprocity is distorted by the generalization of the Alter to whom the debt is owed and as a result the specifics of the debt and what signifies payment is obscured.  Lebra suggests the Christian example of the original sin and the resultant debt owed to the Christian god as an extreme cultural example.  In the case of a sociocultic society, such as Japan in Lebra’s study,  guilt is specific.  The debt owed is to a specific Alter because the transgression that resulted in the debt is conceived of as being against a specific individual.  The debt is also specific and the Ego, the transgressor, knows  precisely what is necessary to rectify the debt.

Lebra, p. 246, states that shame is related to status occupancy, which results from an asymmetric society:

“[S]hame relates to the asymmetric dimension of social structure where the norm of reciprocity is not directly relevant.  Specificly, I refer to social status as a unit of an asymmetric social structure.  If guilt involves reciprocal ‘role’ obligation, shame is generated or triggered, I argue, in conjunction with ‘status’ occupancy.  It is assumed here that an actor is vulnerable to shame when and where he poses as a status occupant.  Shame results from whatever happens to undermine or denigrate the claimed status by revealing something…of the claimer which is inconsistent with the status.”

She is not concerned with what brings about the status incongruent situation only that status incongruency is a result of the transgressions of the individual which brings about shame.  In a monotheistic culture the terms of shame (status identification, exposure, as well as social sharing of shame) tend to be more specific.  In a sociocultic society generalized shame is expressed in the exhibition of status-indicators and conduct, which, according to Lebra, p. 253, “reflects the awareness of the fact that the individual is not trusted until his status, group membership, or origin becomes clearly known.”  Exposure is expressed terms of methods for status-protection and “a widely shared anticipation of exposure to an unlimited extensive aggregate of direct and indirect witnesses.”  The generalized social sharing of shame is expressed in the terms of the sharing of status by every member of the group which results in intolerance of deviance by other members of the group, facilitating conformity to the group’s expectations.

While she admits that her conclusion is open to empirical investigation and acknowledging that guilt and shame are distributed differently on the generality-specificity scale only, Lebra posits that:

“monotheism and guilt are mutually hooked up in that the transcendental God tolerates or even encourages ‘social aggressivenes [sic] which results in feeding guilt, as if guilt were constantly generated within the system.  A similar self-generating mechanism is found for shame in a sociocult.  Here the actor is not only inhibited by his status but wishes to display it for social recognition.  The ritually prescribed exposure avoidance is, thus, counteracted by the voluntary exposure of self as the object of expected deference.  Furthermore, inasmuch as striving for higher status on a competitive basis prevails…together with the actually available opportunity for mobility, vulnerability to shame is constantly reproduced and amplified.”

I am going to return to this in the future as I think this is an interesting model for comparison with Germanic culture.  Considering her study and conclusion, I would think it would be safe to describe Germanic tribal culture as sociocultic, exhibiting a clearly defined Alter in terms of guilt while expressing generalized shame related to group membership.

Lebra, Takie Sugiyama, The Social Mechanism of Guilt and Shame: The Japanese Case. Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Oct., 1971), pp. 241-255.

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