I finally got around to watching Michael Moore’s movie, “Capitalism: A Love Story“.
Moore builds his story around case studies that illustrate the abuses of power that occur when wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of groups who are absolved of responsibility to their community by the amoral dictates of increasing profits. His story is not so much a polemic about the theory of Capitalism as a call to conscience. How is it, he asks, that human beings can act in ways that do profound harm to others, and not be overwhelmed by paralyzing shame?
Although I am sympathetic to Moore’s call to conscience, I have lived long enough to understand that any personal sense of shame is readily rationalized away. People don’t just do what they do. They do what they do “because” (fill-in justifiable cause here: __________). You see, shame is not something that abides in the minds of individuals. Shame is something that is done to individuals by communities of people who hold certain values dear and who continually reaffirm those shared values in right actions. People who violate community values are not shameful, they are shamed. So when we think about shame we must always ask ourselves what are our shared values? What kinds of actions make us more worthy of being US? What kinds of actions should be shamed?
Paradox: A community that holds individual profit as the dearest value, shames those who profit less. You shame those who profit less than you and you are shamed by those who profit more than you.
Have we created an eternal pyramid of shaming from which there is no exit? Is this what we choose to embrace as our Novus Ordo Seclorum, our “New Order of the Ages”? If so, then shame is on us.
Pyramid of shame? **
**I suppose it could just as well be called the pyramid of gloat.
“In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile—and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.”
—Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt, 1979
