Shame

Shame is an emotion that I discuss with other people quite a bit, as a gay man I can say that it is something that is baked into our culture, something that most gay men would rather didn't exist at all I hasten to add. My interpretation of shame is slightly different to most people in that it's rare that I feel shame for anything, it does happen from time to time but for the most part I don't feel it. The reason for that is because I recognised at quite a young age that shame is not an emotion that originates within the self, it is an emotion that is put there by someone or something else.

I think one of the major criticisms of organised religions and belief systems is the idea that they are set up primarily to control and manipulate others, this idea stems from the fact that almost all of these systems at their core have a concept of shame and one or more religious texts which define what is shameful and subsequently encourages their adherents to shame others who deviate from their definition of normalcy. This concept isn't limited to religion however, I went to an all-boys Primary School and High School both were Private Schools maintained by the Catholic Church so I have an intimate understanding of indoctrination and the rigidity of these belief systems. I don't deny this is a problem within religion as a concept more broadly, and I don't apologise for it because it can't be justified.

What I say is an observation and conclusion that I have drawn through my life experience. The problem stems from human behaviour more broadly. The reason I assert this is because I knew I was gay from a very young age, I didn't have the words to describe what I was or to articulate how I was feeling but I understood enough to know that I was different, and that what made me different was something I perceived quite intuitively that I had to hide if I wanted to escape the persecution that I know other people like me were going through. Knowing this however, I also recognised the duality of faith in its ability to provide comfort and discomfort depending on conformity. I made a conscious choice from that young age to form my own independent belief system that I would choose for myself which elements of others I wanted to incorporate and which I wanted to reject. If something did not make sense to me then I didn't choose to live my life by that doctrine - I rejected Dogma.

At the age of 10 I remember distinctly one morning zoning out during morning prayers and hearing everyone around me droning in unison and it was an effort to stop myself bursting into fits of laughter, there was an out of body experience looking down on the scene recognising what was actually happening which only cemented my views.

The importance of knowing this mental state lie in my assertion that this behaviour does not originate with religion, it merely reflects the pattern more widely. I know this because once I had rejected in my mind the authority of religion I recognised the other sources of shame in my life. Upon reflection it's easier to see now that the things that linger in my life which can still cause shame stem from peer pressure as a child. In some cases this was active, and in some cases it was merely perceived peer pressure which in reality might not have existed at all but I was convinced it did at the time and it affected my behaviour as a result.

Peer pressure revolves around the concept of conformity. When you are a child it is an inevitability that how you think and feel is informed by the adults in your life, be that parents or guardians, or sources of authority that are present in your life, through school, and social activities, and religious activities too. You still have free will though, and how you act remains a choice even if you haven't fully developed the mentality where you recognise that it is a choice. There's a question here about maturity and accountability that we can side step as it's not completely relevant. What is relevant however is that as a child there are expectations of behaviours placed upon you, and when all adults are out of the picture, how those children then decide to act doesn't always conform to that expectation. Simplest example you can give of that is swearing, or cursing, something which most children will be discouraged from doing by adults in their lives but when no adults are around they swear at each other all the time. If you are a parent and think they don't, then respectfully, you are naive.

There is a hive mind that develops independent of the adult influences and authority figures which although influenced by them initially, soon goes far beyond their control. By your teenage years this hive mind has developed to the point where there is a shared definition within the collective of what is considered "normal" and any deviation from it is punished. The further you deviate the more harsh that punishment becomes which normally takes the form of bullying. This hive mind is the prototype that forms the foundation of a "generation" and is contributed to over the course of your school years which for most people spans 12 or so years. Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha have the foundation of their generation defined during these formative years and it is from this hive mind that generational definitions of normalcy and shame are derived.

Once you reach 18 and start to live a more independent life where you make choices for yourself then you get to see where the divergences emerge between an individual's outlook and whether they conform to their generation. From my own time I have seen many kids who held one stance in their adolescence go on to flip entirely in the opposite direction as adults and openly criticise the "system" that they were confined within and the damage it caused to them mentally as a result.

Recognising other sources of shame beyond religion made me aware from a young age that your sense of self is like putty, and that there are many hands in society constantly attempting to grasp at you and mould you into their vision of what is normal. There was a survey a few years ago here in the UK which said 1 in 10 adults from a sample of 3,000 people said they did not have any real friends. That doesn't mean they were entirely anti social or had no social interaction it just means that they had no-one they could consider a real friend in their life. When I first read that I was taken aback but the more I thought about it the more I realised that it really wasn't surprising at all. When you think about all of the friendships and relationships that you have maintained over the years and think about those that have fallen apart, the root cause of most of these breakdowns stem from a difference in behavioural expectations. These relationships fail because you don't behave, or they don't behave, the way that is expected - they're diverging from a definition of normalcy.

I watched a video that talked about shame and asked gay men if they experience shame when it comes to their sexuality and where they thought that stems from. All of this explains my answer. Yes, I still do at times, and it stems from the idea that I'm not normal because I am gay. There isn't anyone in my life actively telling me that, at this point in my life I have rooted out all of those negative influences from my immediate surroundings and the people I engage with; but like I explained above, your concept of shame stems from your formative years and while you can put a lot of effort into unpacking it and minimising its influence, you can't change the past, and you can't cut out completely the impact today of that destructive environment and toxicity that you were exposed to back then. You can only mitigate, you cannot eliminate.