What Ever Happened to Shame?

    I used to have a 70-year-old (or older) neighbor who liked to mow his lawn wearing nothing but a pair of Speedos.  He knew others would see him, but that did not seem to make any difference.  I never was tempted to take a picture of this seasonal weekly event; I had a difficult enough time removing the mental picture from my frontal lobe.  I recall watching in unbelieving horror as a woman sauntered up to the school to pick up her first grade son wearing a large tee shirt with nothing but a four-letter expletive emblazoned across her chest.  She not only knew others would see it, she must have expected it.  Lately, I have noticed a disturbing trend toward unfettered vulgarity and crudeness in advertisements for television shows, many in prime time.

    Whatever happened to shame?  If you are old enough, you remember your parent or grandparent saying something like, “You should be ashamed of yourself!” or “Shame on you!”  The idea of shame seems to have disappeared from our culture, save for a few religious groups that often take drastic measures to punish offenders for bringing shame on their families. 

    It has been suggested that television reflects our culture.  I am sure it does its share to influence our culture, as well, but let’s accept the first assumption for now.  If this is true, then in our culture there is no shame in pre-marital sex, sex with people a person barely knows while racing through the wilds of South America, finding “true love” by being the last man or woman standing after a couple of months of “dates” and rose ceremonies, young and middle-age housewives backstabbing and conniving against one another, and people standing nearly naked before millions of people with their hundreds of pounds of excess fat hanging in great folds for all to see.  This is just a sample of the weekly programming I have seen advertised.  I could expand this example to include the movies and daily news stories available as well, but I would rather not take the space.

    It is not even the actions themselves that are the focus of my attention, but the fact that these actions are taken without the slightest hint of shame, and in fact, often with great pride.  We all have been guilty of actions that should not have taken place.  However, the normal standard used to be a genuine feeling of shame and remorse accompanying the disclosure of those actions.  Today, likely as not, the subjects exhibit pride and are heralded as heroes of a social movement characterized by unrestrained freedom and immorality. 

    With the media joining the masses in the effort to normalize aberrant behavior, ignorant bystanders are subtly lulled into believing the moral standards of our society have indeed been lowered to animal instinct level.  The truth, they think, is what they are hearing and seeing.  An inspired writer once wrote of “men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”  There is a standard of right and wrong, and this is known as the truth.  Truth can be denied or ignored.  People can attempt to change its definition, but by definition, it is still the truth and therefore, cannot be changed.  So, the modern exhibitionists of immorality may claim to be wise, but they are fools.  They think they are making some sort of progressive, new, daring statement, when they are actually moving backwards into a primitive lifestyle ruled not by their intellect, but by the base desires of their hearts.  They degrade their own worth and that of those they include in their activities.

    What has happened to shame?  It is being replaced by arrogance, greed and depravity, born from a continual denial of the truth.  We need to take some action to combat this trend.

    In practice, this means we need to understand that certain parts of our bodies are not intended for public viewing.  Not everyone ought to wear Spandex.  Some activities ought to be confined to a secret place and not videoed or photographed.  Some words and phrases should not be spoken in front of others, especially children.  Drunkenness is not as funny to the neighbors as it is to the drunk.  Poorly behaved children are not cute.  Poorly behaved dogs are even less cute.  Hanging replicas of a male organ from the back of enormous pick-up trucks is not going to make most of us think the drivers are manlier than they really are.  Finally, cell phone pictures of the senders' body parts are not as impressive to the recipients, or the unintended viewers of the forwarded pictures, as the senders think they are.

   I, for one, long for a return to the days when shame was something we could be proud of.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise from http://www.imageenvision.com/free_picture/0003-0706-2513-4936.html