I dislike certain behaviours coming out from human nature, and I have previously written about some of these, such as vengeance, false discipline, support for death penalty, and cancel culture. Another thing irking me is what I perceive as a pandemic of shaming, the culture of humiliation against wrongdoers. It was as if they can change the latter's behaviour by embarrassment, even the effect is otherwise.
I first noticed this annoyance of mine when I was a child, on occasions of me being scolded by my mother. One of my relatives would slowly shake head and create a clicking noise like that of a house lizard, implying a message like "serves you right". Being the youngest in a family that hates to ditch seniority, I say in my mind, "why are you still doing that? Isn't getting reprimanded already enough for me? That doesn't even help me change my attitude; that just worsens it.". A direct consequence of and a warning/penalty for the misdeed is already enough to tell the wrongdoer to change; there is no need to shame the person. But outside parties may tend to mock or their actions, something that could aggravate unwanted behaviour.
Humiliating people can be a stumbling block in behaviour change, thus the culture of shame and humiliation would only prolong undesirable attitude and not solve it at all. Those who claim to be educated, decent or to abide by laws, being preoccupied by their egos, subject wrongdoers and fools to persecution; in the context of misinformation especially in political and scientific fields, there is what is called the "backfire effect"-- when skeptics of a certain issue receive information debunking their claims, their hearts and minds tend to close, and they cling to their beliefs further. This phenomenon is however not always present in these circumstances, and in political misperceptions, it fails to consider how these persist, among all other questions about the effect. We will be applying this concept to two hot issues-- one in politics, another in science-- and how those who claim to be enlightened embrace this culture of humiliation which further deepens their rift with the not-yet-enlightened.
The rise of populist strongmen, paired with this culture, proved to divide societies around the world, and opposing parties, even their individual supporters, bash each other. In 2016, the year of elections in the Philippines, I joined this childish fight and condemned followers of the regime of Rodrigo Duterte, a thing I later renounced and am denouncing as it never helps the latter from come into their senses nor defecting. The following election year (2019), a classmate of mine defected from supporting the Regime and also deplored the behaviour of humiliation coming from some of what is now his fellow-- Duterte's oppositors. This is still present indeed; many call Dutertists "stupid" and "retarded" (pardon my language), and some critical meme pages on Facebook call certain random Dutertists out for their remarks. Vice president and opposition leader Leni Robredo is aiming to win the hearts of her bashers, but some of her followers provide an obstacle to her goal by keeping the culture of humiliating fooled Dutertists.
Pushpa Iyer of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies suggested that those who claim to have awareness on sociopolitical issues and rights practise what she calls "compassionate courage"-- exercising empathy with those of opposing views as we stick in and uphold our beliefs. She observed this during her research in Mindanao, Duterte's region, with a diverse demographics consisting of a Christian majority and the indigenous non-Muslim Lumads and Muslim Moros; peace in the conflict-stricken island [group] is being maintained as most, if not all, parties listen to the insights of one another and do conflict resolution out of those insights. Compassionate courage can be used in lieu of the destructive cancel culture to solve serious sociopolitical challenges like systemic racism and to enlighten the "unenlightened".
I have come across fellow Duterte oppositors of mine severing ties with Dutertists (I have done it to some, but more of because I failed to establish deeper relations with them even before the divisive elections), and it was something I was disturbed at. I told one of them that it will not help them defect from the Regime, and it might have costed me my relation with him on Facebook (Facebook? Whatever.). Moving to heated scientific issues like vaccination, the same scenario also happens.
This is the case of the relations between actor Jennifer Aniston and her vaccine-hesitant friends; her reason: if she gets infected by COVID-19, she can put their lives at risk, and they have far less protection than she has. Many pro-vax people cheer her for the move, and they also distance themselves from the vaccine-hesitant. It goes as far as invoking the name of evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin to eradicate the fooled anti-vaxxers due to their refusal of correct vaccine information. In Facebook posts of COVID skeptics contracting the disease, the "enlightened" make fun of the them; of the unvaccinated expressing regrets after struggling to live, the intellectual elitists (yes, they are) say regret is always in the end (even if it is not always); and of the plight of the frontliners urging people to get vaccinated, many pro-vax people give sympathy to them and zero to the suffering unvaccinated-- no remorse, no solidarity. For this I equate such people to the anti-vaxxers, and here is my reason:
Coaches Peter Bregman and Howard Jacobson, in their reaction to the blame of Alabama governor Kay Ivey against the unvaccinated, argue that keeping such behaviour keeps the misninformed away from convincing them to be vaccinated. Like Iyer, Bregman and Jacobson propose exercising empathy and curiosity in discussing with them, in order to bring them closer to safety and accepting vaccines. I saw their piece as something to truly follow, but it was not void of critics, and they come from the pro-vax side, the very audience the two were addressing. They argue they have done it and they fail (the authors did not guarantee it works, but say this is far better than judging the misinformed). Seeing the comments section of the Facebook post of the article, it now looks like the piece is applicable to the misinformed and the informed audience alike; as Bregman and Jacobson cite the "backfire effect" coming from the former, the same effect was also emitted by the many of latter in response to the piece. The culture of humiliation is then upheld, and this continuous deepening of the rift between the two parties goes on.
The supposed people battling the world's vicious cycle have become part of such, through keeping the culture of shame and humiliation of wrongdoers. Instead of looking the root causes of different issues as the problem, they look at individuals and groups as such; instead of upholding global solidarity, they look at the world as a place for survival of the fittest, they perceive wrongdoers as enemies and not as victims. This is a reason for the continued existence of crime, terrorism, demagogy and folly, and sadly, those who claim to be enlightened practise the same folly those who are not remain in. Persecuting wrongdoers is never a solution for solving concerns by the "enlightened"; as the two earlier pieces note, empathy and open arms help doing so. In our fight against injustices in this world, they need more people, we need more people to help us, not less or only ourselves.
Article posted on 09 August 2021, 17:22 (UTC +08:00).
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