Philosophy Guilt, Shame, and Fear

[Bear Ribs]

This thread is to discuss primary motivations in a society's social structure. A culture in general will always have all three of these primary motivations mixed in, but typically one is far more dominant than the other two. The United States in particular is in an interesting position in that the right half of the political divide uses one primary motivation, while the left uses the other two, leading to a lot of talking past each other and a breakdown of communications.

In general, there are three "motivation" structures that moral frameworks use to explain the primary motivations of the populace:

• Guilt/Righteousness

A guilt/righteousness structure, sometimes called guilt/innocence, is a purely internal framework where a person uses their conscience as a guide. People avoid performing actions that will make them feel sinful or guilty of wrongdoing, and seek to perform righteous good deeds that make them feel like they have done good by society.

Historically western cultures work of off guilt/righteousness. The Bible in particular has lessons on doing good in secret rather than receiving recognition, on the secret person of the heart being what really matters, and honor is ascribed to people who have performed good deeds without seeking a reward.

One can find guilt/righteousness in the lore and stories, it's common for a person in fables or fairy tales to receive a punishment for sins they thought were hidden but were really seen, either by a deity or another powerful being such as a fairy, and equally to be rewarded for good deeds they did without thought, such as Androcles Lion. Even in the case where doing good deeds leads to death, it generally turns out well in the afterlife. A common theme is for a person to do what is right out of the goodness of their heart, without thinking of a reward, only for their good attitude to pay off handsomely later.

Guilt/Righteousness cultures are individualist. They tend to emphasize personal responsibility and push people to personal bests and to push themselves. Questioning authority is considered a good thing.

• Honor/Shame

An honor/shame structure is an external moral framework where the opinions of one's neighbors and peers are a guide. People avoid actions that will create a scandal of embarrass them and are motivated to seek actions that will garner the approval of their neighbors and peers. Honor/Shame culture is the most common in the world as it's standard across most of Asia, occupying most of the most populous countries on the planet.

It can be difficult for guilt/righteousness culture to understand an honor/shame culture. F'rex in Japanese porn, there is a common plot of a married woman being blackmailed by a scumbag who managed to sneak a picture of her, and threatens to release it unless she performs for him. This makes little sense in a guilt/righteousness culture as the woman hasn't done anything wrong, and society would come down hard on the blackmailer. In an Honor/Shame culture, however, being vulnerable to blackmail is a serious failure in itself and obeying a blackmailer in secret, thus keeping honor intact, is more desirable than being shamed by the public when the blackmail is released. One can also see this culture clash in Avatar: The Last Airbender where Zuko's honor is taken by his father and he seeks to garner approval so it can be restored. At the end, Iroh tells him he's restored his own honor by doing the right thing and essentially pushes Zuko into accepting guilt/righteousness as his moral framework rather than honor/shame.

Honor/Shame cultures are collectivist. People are pushed into stronger community ties and to follow and obey the consensus. They tend to work well with democracies and have the lowest levels of violence and internal warfare. Questioning authority is generally considered shameful, though exposing the shameful actions of an authority is not.

• Fear/Power

Fear/Power is also an external framework, in which the primary motivation for actions is to avoid being punished by those more powerful, while people are motivated to gain power in order to be immune to punishment, and to punish others. This is a common framework in Africa, many parts of South America, the Middle East, a few parts of Asia such as North Korea, and Eastern Europe, particularly Russia. Fear/Power culture tends to emphasize that might makes right and their lore and stories tend to emphasize that one must not anger the powerful, often such stories are very dark and have grim endings.

Most fear/power cultures have difficulty with stability and have frequent revolutions, as the culture teaches that once one has power, they should use it to punish anyone weaker who disobeys, rule by the strongest and most brutal is the norm. Questioning authority tends to get one killed and is never a good thing, as there is no misdeeds by the authority that can be exposed about the authority that will offset the fact that they have the power to punish those who question them.

In modern US society, the right is primarily guilt/righteousness while the left is primarily honor/shame with a small but increasing emphasis on fear/power. This has led to a lot of political divides and an inability for the right and left to easily understand where the other is coming from in their actions.

Some anthropologists will identify other motivations, such as anxiety-calm but these can usually be folded into the existing three frameworks and a triangular chart is usually the simplest to both use and understand.

I feel that these cultural trappings are actually more important to understanding how a society works than its political structure. A fear/power culture will act the same way whether they are allowed to vote or not, and a shame/honor culture will have a different set of norms even if their political structure is identical to the fear/power nation. Virtually all fear/power societies will have constant low-level wars, high levels of violence, and political leaders using force against their rivals, regardless of whether they are democratic, communist, or dictatorial. Contrarily, shame/honor cultures tend towards collectivism and a stable but relatively intrusive and controlling government no matter what kind of political structure they have. In between, guilt/righteousness culture tends to push towards a relatively unstable government with different factions and especially individual leaders constantly competing with one another, but avoiding taking excessively forceful measures that would cause guilt.

At the same time, these cultures will interact and modify their own political structures to fit their moral framework. The United States' efforts to introduce democracy to various regions are prone to failure because they do not modify the social structure to match, the biggest successes such as Germany and Japan are areas where the moral framework was also torn down and replaced. Attempts to force western democracy into fear/power cultures such as Iraq and Afghanistan tend to fold like wet cardboard the moment the US pulls out its soldiers because western democracy is not compatible with the local moral framework. One cannot force democracy on a fear/power culture because ten seconds after being elected into a position of power, the person's own morals will instruct them to start using fear and power to control all they can.

 

[LordDemiurge]

though exposing the shameful actions of an authority is not.

Forgive me if I'm making a generalization, but is it?

I'm reminded in particular of an incident in South Korea where a school was exposed for severely abusing their students, with the students themselves receiving an enormous amount of backlash.

The biggest flaw of shame-cultures I can see, is that they seem to breed an emphasis on the appearance of morality rather than having an actual accounting of a person's actions.

A shame culture for example is more likely to be angry at a woman for being raped, than a western guilt culture which holds the rapist primarily culpable. Hence the fact that many woman in Islamic communities will consider suicide preferable to rape, even though its considered a straight-to-hell sin. Which in turn spikes up the number of rapes, because for men, the moral burden of such a thing doesn't weigh on them heavily.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Forgive me if I'm making a generalization, but is it?

I'm reminded in particular of an incident in South Korea where a school was exposed for severely abusing their students, with the students themselves receiving an enormous amount of backlash.

The biggest flaw of shame-cultures I can see, is that they seem to breed an emphasis on the appearance of morality rather than having an actual accounting of a person's actions.

A shame culture for example is more likely to be angry at a woman for being raped, than a western guilt culture which holds the rapist primarily culpable. Hence the fact that many woman in Islamic communities will consider suicide preferable to rape, even though its considered a straight-to-hell sin. Which in turn spikes up the number of rapes, because for men, the moral burden of such a thing doesn't weigh on them heavily.

You're not entirely wrong, and necessarily one has to make generalizations. However, I was using those lines primarily to show how the press would react, not the victim.

In general, in a shame/honor culture being victimized is shameful, so revealing a crime shames the victim and the criminal alike. I wasn't thinking specifically of rape in this case but considering how culture would react to a range of crimes. In general, revealing that the prime minister is actually a murderer in a shame/honor culture, f'rex, would shame the prime minister but the reporter would garner honor. Revealing that El Presidente is a murderer in a fear/power culture would have minimal repercussions for El Presidente and get the reporter shot in the back of the head. Revealing that the President of the United States is a murderer would not shame the reporter, would harm the president's career, and would have many voters feeling guilty that they had voted for a murderer.

 

[ATP]

This thread is to discuss primary motivations in a society's social structure. A culture in general will always have all three of these primary motivations mixed in, but typically one is far more dominant than the other two. The United States in particular is in an interesting position in that the right half of the political divide uses one primary motivation, while the left uses the other two, leading to a lot of talking past each other and a breakdown of communications.

In general, there are three "motivation" structures that moral frameworks use to explain the primary motivations of the populace:

• Guilt/Righteousness

A guilt/righteousness structure, sometimes called guilt/innocence, is a purely internal framework where a person uses their conscience as a guide. People avoid performing actions that will make them feel sinful or guilty of wrongdoing, and seek to perform righteous good deeds that make them feel like they have done good by society.

Historically western cultures work of off guilt/righteousness. The Bible in particular has lessons on doing good in secret rather than receiving recognition, on the secret person of the heart being what really matters, and honor is ascribed to people who have performed good deeds without seeking a reward.

One can find guilt/righteousness in the lore and stories, it's common for a person in fables or fairy tales to receive a punishment for sins they thought were hidden but were really seen, either by a deity or another powerful being such as a fairy, and equally to be rewarded for good deeds they did without thought, such as Androcles Lion. Even in the case where doing good deeds leads to death, it generally turns out well in the afterlife. A common theme is for a person to do what is right out of the goodness of their heart, without thinking of a reward, only for their good attitude to pay off handsomely later.

Guilt/Righteousness cultures are individualist. They tend to emphasize personal responsibility and push people to personal bests and to push themselves. Questioning authority is considered a good thing.

• Honor/Shame

An honor/shame structure is an external moral framework where the opinions of one's neighbors and peers are a guide. People avoid actions that will create a scandal of embarrass them and are motivated to seek actions that will garner the approval of their neighbors and peers. Honor/Shame culture is the most common in the world as it's standard across most of Asia, occupying most of the most populous countries on the planet.

It can be difficult for guilt/righteousness culture to understand an honor/shame culture. F'rex in Japanese porn, there is a common plot of a married woman being blackmailed by a scumbag who managed to sneak a picture of her, and threatens to release it unless she performs for him. This makes little sense in a guilt/righteousness culture as the woman hasn't done anything wrong, and society would come down hard on the blackmailer. In an Honor/Shame culture, however, being vulnerable to blackmail is a serious failure in itself and obeying a blackmailer in secret, thus keeping honor intact, is more desirable than being shamed by the public when the blackmail is released. One can also see this culture clash in Avatar: The Last Airbender where Zuko's honor is taken by his father and he seeks to garner approval so it can be restored. At the end, Iroh tells him he's restored his own honor by doing the right thing and essentially pushes Zuko into accepting guilt/righteousness as his moral framework rather than honor/shame.

Honor/Shame cultures are collectivist. People are pushed into stronger community ties and to follow and obey the consensus. They tend to work well with democracies and have the lowest levels of violence and internal warfare. Questioning authority is generally considered shameful, though exposing the shameful actions of an authority is not.

• Fear/Power

Fear/Power is also an external framework, in which the primary motivation for actions is to avoid being punished by those more powerful, while people are motivated to gain power in order to be immune to punishment, and to punish others. This is a common framework in Africa, many parts of South America, the Middle East, a few parts of Asia such as North Korea, and Eastern Europe, particularly Russia. Fear/Power culture tends to emphasize that might makes right and their lore and stories tend to emphasize that one must not anger the powerful, often such stories are very dark and have grim endings.

Most fear/power cultures have difficulty with stability and have frequent revolutions, as the culture teaches that once one has power, they should use it to punish anyone weaker who disobeys, rule by the strongest and most brutal is the norm. Questioning authority tends to get one killed and is never a good thing, as there is no misdeeds by the authority that can be exposed about the authority that will offset the fact that they have the power to punish those who question them.

In modern US society, the right is primarily guilt/righteousness while the left is primarily honor/shame with a small but increasing emphasis on fear/power. This has led to a lot of political divides and an inability for the right and left to easily understand where the other is coming from in their actions.

Some anthropologists will identify other motivations, such as anxiety-calm but these can usually be folded into the existing three frameworks and a triangular chart is usually the simplest to both use and understand.

I feel that these cultural trappings are actually more important to understanding how a society works than its political structure. A fear/power culture will act the same way whether they are allowed to vote or not, and a shame/honor culture will have a different set of norms even if their political structure is identical to the fear/power nation. Virtually all fear/power societies will have constant low-level wars, high levels of violence, and political leaders using force against their rivals, regardless of whether they are democratic, communist, or dictatorial. Contrarily, shame/honor cultures tend towards collectivism and a stable but relatively intrusive and controlling government no matter what kind of political structure they have. In between, guilt/righteousness culture tends to push towards a relatively unstable government with different factions and especially individual leaders constantly competing with one another, but avoiding taking excessively forceful measures that would cause guilt.

At the same time, these cultures will interact and modify their own political structures to fit their moral framework. The United States' efforts to introduce democracy to various regions are prone to failure because they do not modify the social structure to match, the biggest successes such as Germany and Japan are areas where the moral framework was also torn down and replaced. Attempts to force western democracy into fear/power cultures such as Iraq and Afghanistan tend to fold like wet cardboard the moment the US pulls out its soldiers because western democracy is not compatible with the local moral framework. One cannot force democracy on a fear/power culture because ten seconds after being elected into a position of power, the person's own morals will instruct them to start using fear and power to control all they can.

Yep.
I read few books made by people who lived in either Japan or China - people there could not undarstandt,why for example some dude from Dostojewski booh feel quilty becouse killing of old woman,when nobody knew about that.
Or helped each other in making tax declarations.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Yep.
I read few books made by people who lived in either Japan or China - people there could not undarstandt,why for example some dude from Dostojewski booh feel quilty becouse killing of old woman,when nobody knew about that.
Or helped each other in making tax declarations.

Yeah, failure to understand the nature of how these cultures motivate people causes a lot of problems. We talk sometimes about multiculturalism and how it affects culture clash. But some groups seem to just naturally get along well, while others only fight. It's because of how their shame/guilt/fear cultures interact. Asian cultures tend to be a "model minority" because their brand of shame/honor interacts well with US guilt/righteousness, while other minority immigrants do poorly.

A shame/honor culture importing immigrants who are accustomed to fear/power culture is going to be in trouble. The existing methods a shame culture uses to keep people in line have no effect on fear/power people, who will not fear the embarrassment of neighbors who do not like them. Meanwhile, Shame/honor cultures tend to be much more law-abiding and thus tend towards having lighter policing internally. Thus, the brakes a fear/power culture (ie. a heavy and brutal police force) will have to keep people in line aren't present so the immigrants can basically go wild with little to reign them in. It is for this reason nearly all long-term highly successful shame/honor cultures are also highly xenophobic and will not readily accept immigrants or outsiders. I've seen people on SB compare Japan's tolerance of immigration to an ant hill's.

It's worth noting that Romani culture considers shame, lajav, very important while the concept of sin, bezax, is not. Romani are notably a shame/honor culture that primarily exists inside of Europe's guilt/innocence culture, and as a result, they have centuries of endless friction.

 

[Simonbob]

I'm thinking that Fear/Power people are always going to be a problem, and are almost never going to fit well in other types of societies.

I was wonder what could get them to re-think, and start changing? After all, Fear/Power culture is always going to be shit. The main way to improve effectiveness on a national basis is trust, and there's pretty much none in Fear/Power. Do their kids, raised in other nations start taking on such ideas, and at what rate? There's been a lot of problems, longer term from such things.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I'm thinking that Fear/Power people are always going to be a problem, and are almost never going to fit well in other types of societies.

I was wonder what could get them to re-think, and start changing? After all, Fear/Power culture is always going to be shit. The main way to improve effectiveness on a national basis is trust, and there's pretty much none in Fear/Power. Do their kids, raised in other nations start taking on such ideas, and at what rate? There's been a lot of problems, longer term from such things.

I tend to agree. Introducing democracy to a fear/power culture just leads to typical banana republic behavior. History clearly shows the cure isn't letting people vote, it's removing the Might Makes Right mindset. The proper way to alter their culture is typically to introduce a guilt/righteousness religion and encourage them to develop a conscience and take on that behavior, while simultaneously having a police force rigorous enough to control the population that still thinks in terms of fear/power. Over time, this tends to lead to the guilt/righteousness behavior having more success and leading

By what I suspect to be no coincidence, that kind of behavior has been strictly railed against, put forward as the epitome of evil by schoolteachers talking to impressionable ten-year-olds, and the word "Genocide" has been expanded to encompass making a change to a culture that would let anyone to remove fear/power structure and make it something more stable and less shooty.

 

[Skallagrim]

I'm thinking that Fear/Power people are always going to be a problem, and are almost never going to fit well in other types of societies.

I was wonder what could get them to re-think, and start changing? After all, Fear/Power culture is always going to be shit. The main way to improve effectiveness on a national basis is trust, and there's pretty much none in Fear/Power. Do their kids, raised in other nations start taking on such ideas, and at what rate? There's been a lot of problems, longer term from such things.

Look where they're located. Fear/Power is the norm for pre-formative cultures. To a significant degree, the pre-Roman Celts and Germans had already moved on from that. A place like Sub-Saharan Africa, in most meaningful ways, is culturally speaking at least 2000 years behind most everyone else.

How do you change that? Time, and opportunity. Time is easy, opportunity is... well, best achieved by ending all state-sponsored "aid", and also ending all migration of Sub-Saharan Africans to the developed world.

Reason being:

1) Aid mostly allows the existing power structures to avert the worst of the famines, and thus the worst of the angry popular uprisings. Aid keeps dictators in place, and keeps peoples dependent. It also greatly diminishes the infant mortality, while the undepeveloped societies retain high birth-rates. Thus: enormous over-population, which is unsustainable.

2) Migration is mostly done by the "daring". Those certainly tend to be of a mercenary spirit (so they often cause trouble wherever they end up), but in a violent mess of a society, you need the daring to force change. If the craziest and the most intelligent both leave your country... what's left behind has no real opportunity to kick-start a bunch of much-needed reforms.



...The alternative is that you adopt a mentality of "White Man's Burden"-type colonialism, and basically destroy whatever culture they have now and force them to entirely adopt your culture. This has not worked well, historically-- in large part because the Europeans were not, historically, willing to dedicate the enormous amount of pressure and dedication that it would take to pull this off. (Nor were they, by and large, willing to be ruthless enough. This kind of method requires a willingness to engage in genocide at any sign of non-compliance.)

As such, I don't recommend this method, and prefer a "leave them to their own devices, and don't let them into our society" type of approach. Note that this doesn't preclude honest, free trade. In fact, I'd heartily encourage that.

(Edit: @Bear Ribs has already outlined something resembling the second strategy. I'll add that while progressives always malighn colonialism -- it's a religious dogma for them -- the fact remains that the West, most probably, won't ever be willing to fully commit to that kind of undertaking. Even beyond any moral objections: it's just way too much work. Any regime willing to go to such lengths is, most probably, also willing to go full genocide and 'just' clear Africa of all human life, before re-settling it with a new population. That's actually less costly and less time-consuming.)

 

[Bear Ribs]

Reason being:

1) Aid mostly allows the existing power structures to avert the worst of the famines, and thus the worst of the angry popular uprisings. Aid keeps dictators in place, and keeps peoples dependent. It also greatly diminishes the infant mortality, while the undepeveloped societies retain high birth-rates. Thus: enormous over-population, which is unsustainable.

2) Migration is mostly done by the "daring". Those certainly tend to be of a mercenary spirit (so they often cause trouble wherever they end up), but in a violent mess of a society, you need the daring to force change. If the craziest and the most intelligent both leave your country... what's left behind has no real opportunity to kick-start a bunch of much-needed reforms.

I agree with this but have one more bit to add:

3) A nation that has an incoming stream of aid does not need to build up an economy, and can devote all their funds to buying weapons to invade their neighbors knowing that when their unsupported agriculture sector collapses, people will send aid to feed them. However, a nation that does work to build up their economy has fewer weapons and no aid comes since they aren't having famines, as a result they get invaded by their better-armed neighbors who are being bolstered by aid.

The problem with entirely going "Just leave them alone" is that guilt/righteousness culture invariably includes charity as a virtue, and it is nigh-impossible to have a functional guilt/righteousness culture that will not immediately start sending aid when a starving three-year-old is on their TV screen.

 

[Skallagrim]

I agree with this but have one more bit to add:

3) A nation that has an incoming stream of aid does not need to build up an economy, and can devote all their funds to buying weapons to invade their neighbors knowing that when their unsupported agriculture sector collapses, people will send aid to feed them. However, a nation that does work to build up their economy has fewer weapons and no aid comes since they aren't having famines, as a result they get invaded by their better-armed neighbors who are being bolstered by aid.

The problem with entirely going "Just leave them alone" is that guilt/righteousness culture invariably includes charity as a virtue, and it is nigh-impossible to have a functional guilt/righteousness culture that will not immediately start sending aid when a starving three-year-old is on their TV screen.

All too true. Of course, you might take a page from Captain Picard's book (captain's log?) and frame the matter as a sort of "Prime Directive", making it a whole cultural premise that interfering is bad. That kind of principle can be framed in terms that fundamentally appeal to a Guilt/Righteousness culture.

Not that I think any "non-intervention principle" is going to be 100% obeyed in practice. So long as we prevent governments from interfering, and leave all the, ah... do-gooding... to private actors, that would presumably suffice.

 

[Flintsteel]

I agree with this but have one more bit to add:

3) A nation that has an incoming stream of aid does not need to build up an economy, and can devote all their funds to buying weapons to invade their neighbors knowing that when their unsupported agriculture sector collapses, people will send aid to feed them. However, a nation that does work to build up their economy has fewer weapons and no aid comes since they aren't having famines, as a result they get invaded by their better-armed neighbors who are being bolstered by aid.

The problem with entirely going "Just leave them alone" is that guilt/righteousness culture invariably includes charity as a virtue, and it is nigh-impossible to have a functional guilt/righteousness culture that will not immediately start sending aid when a starving three-year-old is on their TV screen.

It's worse than that - they cannot build up an economy because the locals cannot compete with free. Aid destroyed pretty much all of Africa's native industries except raw resource extraction. It's only much more recently people realized this and are trying to come up with better ways of going about it than just dumping free stuff on people.

And we still haven't done it with food, but that's because food aid is used to dump all the industrially-grown crops in the US that otherwise would completely collapse that market, because our production so outstrips our demand (same reason we keep putting corn-source ethanol in our gasoline, despite the fact that it's a net loss of energy to make it that way!).

 

[ParadiseLost]

And we still haven't done it with food, but that's because food aid is used to dump all the industrially-grown crops in the US that otherwise would completely collapse that market, because our production so outstrips our demand (same reason we keep putting corn-source ethanol in our gasoline, despite the fact that it's a net loss of energy to make it that way!).

People really don't realize that the US more or less globally put subsistence farmers out of business.

 

[King Krávoka]

Why has this map escaped its lethal injection facility to torment the living of this website?

• The Middle East is not represented in a way that is conducive to your post. Graphics on an essay are there to represent the author's point or possibly to be attacked by the text, you don't use "North Africa and the Middle East: Shame" to discuss the friction between Middle-Eastern Fear morals and other moral systems.
• Guilt morality has been explained in terms of Fear morality.
• "Do what your clan"
• The maker's least favorite cities were marked with featureless gray blobs instead of names, afraid of the consequences to saying "yes internet, Londoners and Californians have the same moral framework as North Korea".

 

[Bear Ribs]

Why has this map escaped its lethal injection facility to torment the living of this website?

• The Middle East is not represented in a way that is conducive to your post. Graphics on an essay are there to represent the author's point or possibly to be attacked by the text, you don't use "North Africa and the Middle East: Shame" to discuss the friction between Middle-Eastern Fear morals and other moral systems.
• Guilt morality has been explained in terms of Fear morality.
• "Do what your clan"
• The maker's least favorite cities were marked with featureless gray blobs instead of names, afraid of the consequences to saying "yes internet, Londoners and Californians have the same moral framework as North Korea".

Most such maps are pretty heavily slanted, with nobody wanting to get canceled for their map showing the wrong culture as "fear." In this case, the artist renamed fear culture "anxiety" for their favorite areas to avoid admitting California, London, et. al are fear cultures. Admitting the middle east is a fear culture is a big no-no in the current fear-based migration culture.

Consequently my only choices are to use a map that's not totally accurate, spend days painstaking researching every individual nation and making my own (probably with my own errors and biases included), or go without. I figured readers around here are generally smart enough and accustomed to propaganda to recognize where the map was fudging things and still get the general gist.

 

[Skallagrim]

Most such maps are pretty heavily slanted, with nobody wanting to get canceled for their map showing the wrong culture as "fear." In this case, the artist renamed fear culture "anxiety" for their favorite areas to avoid admitting California, London, et. al are fear cultures. Admitting the middle east is a fear culture is a big no-no in the current fear-based migration culture.

Consequently my only choices are to use a map that's not totally accurate, spend days painstaking researching every individual nation and making my own (probably with my own errors and biases included), or go without. I figured readers around here are generally smart enough and accustomed to propaganda to recognize where the map was fudging things and still get the general gist.

1) Islamic culture very much is an honour/shame culture, not a fear culture. That's accurate to your original post. Calling it a fear/power culture is incorrect, at least within the definition typically used (also within your original post).

2) "Anxiety" really is quite different from "fear". The fear/power paradigm is one of pre-cultural barbarism, whereas anxiety manifests specifically among overly-comfortable societies that run into their own limits. An anxiety culture is what happens to an affluent, middle-class-centred society when the Ponzi scheme starts to fail and the middle class starts to feel the heat. One may of course se this as a horse-shoe, where the "post-modern" meets the "pre-modern" again, but fear/power is the paradigm of the 'have-nots', and anxiety is the paradigm of the 'haves' who are terrified of becoming 'have-nots' again. (Note also that fear prevails in underdeveloped regions where humans are thin on the ground, and anxiety pervades the urbanised regions where humans are packed tightly together.)

3) Naturally, you are right that all maps are inaccurate (famous Chinese parable about that one).

 

[Aldarion]

• The maker's least favorite cities were marked with featureless gray blobs instead of names, afraid of the consequences to saying "yes internet, Londoners and Californians have the same moral framework as North Korea".

Have you read the map at all? Grey blobs represent anxiety.

 

[Bear Ribs]

1) Islamic culture very much is an honour/shame culture, not a fear culture. That's accurate to your original post. Calling it a fear/power culture is incorrect, at least within the definition typically used (also within your original post).

2) "Anxiety" really is quite different from "fear". The fear/power paradigm is one of pre-cultural barbarism, whereas anxiety manifests specifically among overly-comfortable societies that run into their own limits. An anxiety culture is what happens to an affluent, middle-class-centred society when the Ponzi scheme starts to fail and the middle class starts to feel the heat. One may of course se this as a horse-shoe, where the "post-modern" meets the "pre-modern" again, but fear/power is the paradigm of the 'have-nots', and anxiety is the paradigm of the 'haves' who are terrified of becoming 'have-nots' again. (Note also that fear prevails in underdeveloped regions where humans are thin on the ground, and anxiety pervades the urbanised regions where humans are packed tightly together.)

3) Naturally, you are right that all maps are inaccurate (famous Chinese parable about that one).

Well obviously I disagree on Islamic culture. I know calling it an honor/shame culture is popular, and it does contain some shame/honor because every culture has all three elements to some degree.

However, it's undisputed that Japan is strongly shame/honor oriented, consequently identifying the middle east as also shame/honor culture requires detailed explanations on why the resulting societies are so dramatically different. On the other hand, if one compares the results of middle eastern culture to the undisputed fear/power cultures in Africa, one sees clear parallels, both have frequent low-level warfare that flares easily, political assassinations, high murder rates, clannish "don't trust anybody but family" behaviors, etc.

By their fruits, you will know them.

I've seen people argue that it's just a totally different variety of honor/shame but still honor/shame, but that leads down a ridiculous path, like this guy arguing that the only culture is honor/shame, it's just that all cultures have different honor types which... seems rather pointless.

 

[Aldarion]

Well obviously I disagree on Islamic culture. I know calling it an honor/shame culture is popular, and it does contain some shame/honor because every culture has all three elements to some degree.

However, it's undisputed that Japan is strongly shame/honor oriented, consequently identifying the middle east as also shame/honor culture requires detailed explanations on why the resulting societies are so dramatically different. On the other hand, if one compares the results of middle eastern culture to the undisputed fear/power cultures in Africa, one sees clear parallels, both have frequent low-level warfare that flares easily, political assassinations, high murder rates, clannish "don't trust anybody but family" behaviors, etc.

By their fruits, you will know them.

I've seen people argue that it's just a totally different variety of honor/shame but still honor/shame, but that leads down a ridiculous path, like this guy arguing that the only culture is honor/shame, it's just that all cultures have different honor types which... seems rather pointless.

Is Indonesia really in Asian type? It is a Muslim country.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Is Indonesia really in Asian type? It is a Muslim country.

You can't expect accuracy from somebody trying to argue that there's only one kind of culture on the entire planet, broken down into five subcategories.

 

[Skallagrim]

Well obviously I disagree on Islamic culture. I know calling it an honor/shame culture is popular, and it does contain some shame/honor because every culture has all three elements to some degree.

However, it's undisputed that Japan is strongly shame/honor oriented, consequently identifying the middle east as also shame/honor culture requires detailed explanations on why the resulting societies are so dramatically different. On the other hand, if one compares the results of middle eastern culture to the undisputed fear/power cultures in Africa, one sees clear parallels, both have frequent low-level warfare that flares easily, political assassinations, high murder rates, clannish "don't trust anybody but family" behaviors, etc.

By their fruits, you will know them.

I think that you, in a post sort of leading up to this thread, once used a distinction between 'internal honour' (guilt) and 'external honour' (shame). That was about Klingons (and Worf's peculiar re-interpretation of Klingon mores), but it was a good point. It is illustrated (as I think I actually mentioned then) in Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign, where we arrive upon the statement (which defines a key theme of the book):

"Reputation is what others know about you. Honour is what you know about yourself. Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards."

Which is very much a "Western" / "Guilt" / "Internal Honour" kind of thesis. (Even that last add-on is very indicative of the Western mind-set!)

As you argue, in (external) honour cultures, shame is defining. What others know about you cannot be disregarded. Your honour is externally determined.

Now I tell you, from extensive experience with Muslims, that they are products of a shame culture. Their 'honour killings' are the mark of this. And in fact, we see these same honour killings in East Asian families in the Netherlands. It's all to do with saving face, with upholding an exernal honour.

There are certainly very different iterations of shame cultures, but they are both shame cultures.

I'll grant that Islamic culture (having risen a 'mere' fourteen centuries ago from a backdrop of largely pre-cultural barbarism dominated by fear impulses) is closer to the fear context than East Asian cultures are, because those are much older and consequently much further removed from the pre-formative state's base impulses.

I've seen people argue that it's just a totally different variety of honor/shame but still honor/shame, but that leads down a ridiculous path, like this guy arguing that the only culture is honor/shame, it's just that all cultures have different honor types which... seems rather pointless.

Well, obviously, that's not a point I am trying to make, so let's agree to dismiss that notion. I don't know who came up with it, but he's wrong.