Zero-Sum Shame
Our obsession with hypocrisy has perverse unintended consequences
Money, get back
I'm alright, Jack
Keep your hands off of my stack
Money, it's a hit
Ah, don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit — Money, Pink Floyd
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? — Matthew 7:3
Shame needs to change sides. — Gisèle Pelicot
Zero-Sum Shame
Where Shame Slides Off
Where Shame Sticks
What’s the Problem?
Zero-Sum Shame
The other day, a friend told me a story that perfectly encapsulates the zeitgeist. This friend is a prominent adviser to non-profit boards, giving her an unusually clear view of the mindset of the rich and influential. She approached someone she had known for a long time, who grew up middle-class but has become extremely wealthy and is a member of the C-Suite of one of the world’s largest asset management firms.
My friend was hoping to recruit this man to serve on the board of a large social services organization that serves some of New York’s most impoverished people, including unhoused veterans and people with disabilities.
His response?
I’m actually trying to de-board. I’m tired of hearing that everyone needs an ice cream cone.
Something weird is going on with shame these days. Several writers have argued that it is diminishing, in tandem with societal and political cohesion.
Is that true?
Where Shame Slides Off
Since it is impossible to avoid Trump when talking about this topic, let’s get him out of the way first. Obviously, Trump’s genius is the weaponization of shamelessness. He refuses to adhere to historical shared norms, and successfully projects efforts at shaming him onto others. There are an overwhelming number of anecdotes here. Just this week we might focus on the E. Jean Carroll or WSJ lawsuits, the pile of rubble that was the East Wing, the US$1.8 billion slush fund, the racist AI slop, and so on. Indeed, Trump’s political success partly rests on how he inspired a range of voters to project shame back onto notoriously smug and self-righteous liberal coastal elites. Clinton’s 2016 comment on “deplorables” continues to haunt her—has a remark ever aged more poorly?
This approach has provided a template for the success of political candidates who should never have been let anywhere near public office: RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth spring immediately to mind, though it is a long list. The track record of most Cabinet appointees right now would have been disqualifying in previous eras; now, they too are empowered to be as shameless as possible.
It isn’t just political candidates who are inspired by Trump’s approach. He has motivated the connected and wealthy to abandon even a pretense of caring about broader society or taking responsibility for their own behavior.
For example, last week Mark Zuckerberg’s $300 million superyacht docked in Seattle, the very same week he announced Meta would cut 1,400 jobs.
Bill Ackman has weighed in on efforts to tax the wealthy, claiming that they represent the expropriation of private property.
In California, a proposed 5% one-time tax on assets over $1 billion has sparked a lobbying campaign in which figures including Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Patrick Collison, and Peter Thiel have spent at least $35 million to prevent it from even reaching the ballot (there is a shamelessness about these overtly anti-democratic moves, too). Brin has bought a $42 million mansion on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, and Thiel has moved his family to Argentina.
John “Jay” Morris, a Louisiana state senator, has spent the last two years lobbying to pave the way for Meta to build a data center in his district. Per The Guardian:
The Republican attorney lobbied a utility regulator for a key approval. He cosponsored two bills that enabled the land deal between Meta and the state. And he voted “yea” on two additional bills that provided the trillion-dollar tech company with tax breaks worth an estimated $3.3bn.
Simultaneously, he and his business partners have been buying the land around it. Cue a chorus of critics, pointing out the conflict of interest. His response is remarkable in its shamelessness:
You can find some pundits and lawyers to say bad things about politicians. It’s pretty easy, we’re a popular target. But I haven’t done anything wrong.
This recent interview with Harvey Weinstein in the Hollywood Reporter is also remarkable. The journalist notes:
But his six years of incarceration had failed to inspire any genuine contrition. The world may have branded him a monster, but Harvey still considers himself a victim — crucified for a bygone era of Hollywood sins. When pressed, he concedes that his behavior may have been loutish, pathetic and even abusive. But he insists he’s no rapist — just an oversexed schmuck who made some stupid moves and accidentally launched a global social movement.
Three juries, endless trials, and solitary confinement in Rikers have not, apparently, provoked Weinstein to feel any shame.
This all seems to be the tip of a broader cultural shift. Celebrities now talk openly about plastic surgery, for example. I’ve written before about the undergraduates who founded a business called Cluely, whose motto is “cheat on everything.”
Of course, one person’s shame is another person’s cancel culture. And we could make any number of arguments about the corrosive impact of projecting shame onto particular people or groups for taboo behavior, and on shame as a pernicious mechanism of social control. So, perhaps we are at the peak of the backlash against the judgments that were hurled at people with the “wrong” social identities or opinions in the early 2020s. Or perhaps a sense of shame is really collapsing, and we are entering a Hobbesian environment where all anyone can do is fend for themselves.
I think there’s actually still plenty of shame to go around. It is just that it adheres to the wrong people, at the wrong moments, and mostly for the wrong things.
Where Shame Sticks
Whether it is overwhelm, political nihilism, or just a desperation to have someone who might respond appropriately to our accusations, we act as if we have collectively decided that the people and entities who most deserve to be shamed are not the worst actors, but those who make any claim to truth or integrity at all. In other words, our focus on authenticity and hypocrisy is so strong that we have lost track of who should be blamed for what.
Let’s look at some examples to illustrate this point.
