Vocabulary
Jan. 18th, 2010 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueJust read an entry by economics nobellist Paul Krugman in which he defines chutzpah as "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan." Apparently, that definition comes from Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, and in the word's Hebrew root there is no admiration expressed, in contrast to the American connotations. It describes someone who has significantly overstepped what is appropriate, and who now should feel shame but is instead arrogant.
While tracking that down, I discovered that in Athens, hubris was not merely the character trait ("excessive pride") that we all had to memorize, but instead an actual crime for which you could be prosecuted. It was pride that put one outside of an accurate view of reality, a pride that let one do things like rape, mutilate corpses, defile sacred spaces, and assault someone in the street without noticing that everyone around you was appalled. When Greek writers describe it as a terrible crime - or the worst crime - they are not speaking metaphorically. It's analogous to our concept of the psychopath - someone who grossly overestimates his own importance and cannot pick up on social cues to the contrary.
I think shame has been misused in the past - used to enforce who is allowed to have sex with whom. (Inappropriate shaming of another person also falls under the heading of hubris.) However, I don't think the solution was to enter a shameless society, or to reject all shame as useless. I don't think I trust people who don't feel shame when they act shamefully, and although I hate it when I myself feel ashamed, I hate it because I know then that I've done something awful.
(Postscript: Aid groups in Britain and in India have found that social shame does more than education in convincing people to follow proper sanitation practices. Shame, in these cases, literally saves lives.)
While tracking that down, I discovered that in Athens, hubris was not merely the character trait ("excessive pride") that we all had to memorize, but instead an actual crime for which you could be prosecuted. It was pride that put one outside of an accurate view of reality, a pride that let one do things like rape, mutilate corpses, defile sacred spaces, and assault someone in the street without noticing that everyone around you was appalled. When Greek writers describe it as a terrible crime - or the worst crime - they are not speaking metaphorically. It's analogous to our concept of the psychopath - someone who grossly overestimates his own importance and cannot pick up on social cues to the contrary.
I think shame has been misused in the past - used to enforce who is allowed to have sex with whom. (Inappropriate shaming of another person also falls under the heading of hubris.) However, I don't think the solution was to enter a shameless society, or to reject all shame as useless. I don't think I trust people who don't feel shame when they act shamefully, and although I hate it when I myself feel ashamed, I hate it because I know then that I've done something awful.
(Postscript: Aid groups in Britain and in India have found that social shame does more than education in convincing people to follow proper sanitation practices. Shame, in these cases, literally saves lives.)
