Telos Initiative
Telos is a term used by the philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause or purpose of something. Our telos is to seek truth and cultivate wisdom using dialogue and rational discussion. The podcast will cover a wide range of topics in various genres and we hope to grow with our audience toward our ultimate purpose in this mystifying existence.
Telos Initiative
Episode 14 - Shame
Have you ever pondered the stark contrast between feeling shame in solitude and guilt among peers? Join us on the Telos Initiative podcast for a compelling exploration of these mysterious emotions. We unravel how cultural norms shape our perception of shame while guilt often aligns with universal moral principles. Imagining scenarios like feeling shame on a deserted island, we discuss how our upbringing and cultural environment craft our emotional responses. By reflecting on the biblical tale of Adam and Eve, we contemplate how shame can lead to hiding or shifting blame and its powerful impact on personal identity and community dynamics.
Our journey continues as we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of cultural norms and their influence on feelings of shame and guilt. From ancient customs to modern social etiquette, we question the relevance of longstanding traditions in today's diverse world. By comparing historical gestures like the middle finger to infamous symbols, we illustrate how cultural perceptions can shift and what that means for individual expression. Through diverse cultural lenses, we highlight the importance of understanding how societal expectations and personal values can sometimes clash, challenging us to find harmony between our heritage and individuality.
In our final chapter, we focus on the virtues of integrity, honor, and the transformative power of shame when embraced as a tool for growth. Sharing personal stories, we underscore the significance of teaching children about honor and creating a family code that celebrates values like accountability and fun. We also explore how internalized shame can be a roadblock, turning self-improvement into a daunting task rather than a path to betterment. By recognizing the importance of expressing genuine emotions, like remorse, we emphasize the profound journey of self-acceptance. With heartfelt gratitude, we thank you for joining this enlightening exploration into the intricate world of shame and emotional expression.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Telos Initiative podcast. I'm Angelo Cole, I'm Chris Vigil.
Matt:And I'm Matt Maes.
Angelo:Today, our topic is going to be shame, so I guess the first thing, what we always do, is try to define what it is we're talking about. Shame is a little bit of a tricky one, because a lot of people confuse shame with guilt, so I think it would be good to try and differentiate the two. Shame, I would say, is something more akin to breaking a cultural boundary, while guilt is more breaking a moral boundary and feeling wrong about that. So I feel guilty when I do something I consider immoral, but I feel shame when I do something embarrassing you can be found guilty in a court of law, but you can't be found shameful, true?
Matt:oh, and that's that is interesting. When someone says we'll describe something as as shameless, like how could you? You know, how could you do that?
Angelo:That's true because the way we use it is somewhat associated with guilt, so it's not. Maybe breaking moral boundaries also is associated with cultural boundaries as well. Or maybe when you say shame on you when you're doing something wrong, there's a guilt thing there.
Matt:Well, and it's important to identify distinction between like when you do something bad versus like when you feel I am bad, which seems to me is the distinction between shame and guilt right, say you've done something that is morally wrong and you feel bad about it. Say you, you know, took something from someone else that they needed just for your, your own sustenance or your own gain, and that person is kind of left out in the wind. You're like, wow, I feel guilty about that?
Matt:you did a bad thing, then it's the identification with that that you, you. Those two things, shame and guilt are so close together that we have to be really conscious about not carrying that identification with us.
Angelo:Here's a question Do you feel shame on a remote island, or is shame necessarily part of a communal thing? Like shame is related to your feeling about how others are judging you.
Matt:I think that can depend on if you really integrate that feeling of shame or internalize I should say, not integrate. When you really identify with that feeling of shame, you see you're like, oh, there's nobody out here on this island and you know you're comparing yourself to someone who may be living a quote normal life. You say I don't have any money. I don't have any money, I don't have any friends, all that type of stuff.
Angelo:You can feel ashamed about that or perhaps you're not living up to your potential and you're ashamed that you're. You're not doing something like maybe I'm still thinking on the remote island scenario like maybe you're trying to catch some food for yourself and you're just so incompetent at throwing spearfishing or something that you're ashamed that you couldn't do it properly.
Chris:I don't know well, on a remote island, right, you probably have to kill an animal to eat something, right? Are you gonna feel guilty about that? You might feel guilty, but you might not feel shamed, true?
Angelo:when I think of shame, I think of nakedness, like I would feel ashamed or embarrassed to be it's. It's a vulnerability yeah.
Chris:So if I'm, if I'm breaking a moral or cultural code, let me think about that, hang on. So if I'm breaking a cultural or moral code, that's like in some sense like who I am, like. I should identify with that somehow and that's where my shame's coming from, because I'm associated with that bad thing. That's like a vulnerability for myself. Okay, does that make sense?
Angelo:sure, maybe you can feel ashamed in relation to yourself, right, it's a self-perception sort of thing. But I almost feel like you get a lot of that from your culture. Yeah, you're trying to live up to cultural standards, even when you're alone at some point. Absolutely, children don't really have shame, right. It's kind of taught, you learn to be ashamed of certain things. Kids run around naked with no shame whatsoever. They eat whatever, they'll eat disgusting things or they'll say things to people that are rude or or mean, or it can be very blunt, but they just don't have that understanding of cultural norms. So I would say the child is shameless, but not in like the negative connotation that you mentioned earlier.
Matt:Yeah Well, it's like you're running around and discovering where, where, all the boundaries to certain things are right right like say you know I do this, oh, you know mama got angry or papa got angry, or you know this type of thing happened. You know this thing broke, this important thing broke and you discover this distinction between yourself and the world, which it's interesting thinking about, that, that immediate connection that you feel as a child, as a newborn, like oh, there's this thing called life that seems to be around me and that I have to work with it and bump my head against certain things. And it's interesting.
Matt:When you talk about the nakedness, I actually think about the first story in the Bible, right, where you have the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You have the apple, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have the apple and you know we as the story as we know it, like eve takes the apple, bites of the apple and then she and adam become aware of their naked. Now this is interesting psychologically to me, like yes, they took the apple and, yes, they bit the apple, but their response when God looks down and says, oh, oh, where are you? And they're ashamed of their nakedness.
Chris:And then they point the finger.
Matt:Right. And so what do they do? What do they do out of the shame, like, oh, you know, you want to hide or you want to.
Angelo:It wasn't me. It was her oh it wasn't me, it was, it was her.
Matt:Oh, it wasn't me, it was a snake all these, all this domino effect of different problems that arise out of that shame, like, say they knew they were naked and god's like, oh, where are you? It's like, oh yeah, we're naked, we're here, but they were honest about it. Would that have been a different result than that story? I think it may have it's tough.
Angelo:It's tough to own up to your iniquities. Um, yeah, I think when you raise kids you notice that a lot in small children, like when they know they've done something wrong, their instinct is to push the blame immediately. It's like oh, it wasn't me, it was, or it's not really my fault. This is why I did this, you know, and I almost think growing out of that pattern and and learning to take ownership for your mistakes is a sign of maturity. Oh, it is, but it has to deal with a lot with shame, because shame's almost there to push you to, uh, to recognize your, recognize your place in society. Perhaps that's it's sort of function, right?
Matt:It's the, it's the awareness, but then not getting stuck there, which can be a difficult distinction, because you need to be able to have that hope that separates the shame from the guilt. By that I mean the shame being the identification with being bad.
Matt:Whereas guilt is I did this bad thing, which you can take responsibility and accountability for doing whatever that bad thing was, and saying how can I take a different action in the future to produce a different result, to take a different action in the future to produce a different result. So then you can take that bad thing that you did and make it so that that's not going to happen in the future, because you've been able to integrate the lesson from what you did, which is much harder to do from shame than it is from simply recognizing, with guilt, like you can take you know it's like it's like guilt is like a dose of shame that you're able to, that you can be able to process and then go like oh, oh, snap, that hurt.
Matt:I don't want to do that again. I don't want to.
Chris:You know, I don't want to be that way, right and being able to transform out of that so if guilt is like a dose of shame, I mean, do we think? I mean, I think it kind of begs the question are we going to take responsibility for our actions if we don't feel any shame at all? I mean, do you have to have a little bit of shame, a little bit of guilt If I'm on that island and I kill that animal? Is it a good thing that I feel a twinge of like oh, I'm sorry.
Angelo:Yeah, I think you're right. That's probably why it's. A little bit of shame is healthy for a person, maybe a sociopath or someone who doesn't really care about their relation to others and feels no shame when they do things. They're like so what, I did this thing? What's wrong with that? I would assume I'm not like a psychologist or anything, so I don't know if sociopaths don't feel shame, but I would think that if you're, if sociopaths don't feel shame but, um, I would think that if you're, I, I, I associate shame with, like a connection to uh, cultural norms. So I think if you've got something, some sort of uh dysfunction in the way that you connect with other people, that there it. That probably feeds into whether or not you feel shame. But I mean, I'm not sure.
Matt:Yeah, if that's true, well, it makes sense, right. Well, here's another side of the coin, too is I love the distinction that you made between the like, the cultural say faux pas with, versus guilt is like a moral thing, a moral, you know, failing of some kind, right, so that that's more universal, that's more something that is, or should be, like, baked into us a sense of right and wrong and honor, and, you know, good, you know promotion of well-being versus laws that are man-made right things that we've kind of invented for one reason or another, but that doesn't mean that they are universally.
Matt:I mean that there's such thing as having unfounded, illegitimate rules, right, like why do we do all these different things? Like, why do we actually have these different norms? Is this universally substantial? Is there any like sovereign thing about these, about all these rules that I'm supposed to be following, that if I'm not, then I'm out of step somehow.
Chris:Sure.
Matt:It's good to question those things too. Are these rules actually valid?
Angelo:I would say there's probably levels, right. There are things that are clearly localized to certain regions, certain cultures or certain areas. Localized to certain regions, certain cultures or certain areas. You know, it's rude in our culture to stick up the middle finger and flip someone off, but that might mean something completely different in another culture and someone, someone who doesn't understand that and uses the middle finger or gets tricked into it by a mischievous American, that person we would kind of Mischievous American.
Matt:I mean think about it.
Angelo:You might trick a If you knew. Someone didn't know what the middle finger meant you might like Egg egg.
Matt:lift the middle finger.
Angelo:Just say hi. This is how we say hi. Just say hi to that group of bikers over there. So someone who doesn't understand the cultural norm, they're not going to see anything wrong with something like that. And then even across time, you know that it might change. Maybe in the distant future the middle finger will mean something completely different. Maybe in the distant future the middle finger will mean something completely different and they'll look back in time and see stuff happening in our movies and be like what are they trying to say with this symbol?
Matt:It's an interesting thing to think about. It's a sign for peace.
Angelo:Yeah, peace among worlds right. Yeah, we among worlds right yeah, become a peace, but I forget where I was going with that. But I think, well, there's levels, right, you can definitely localize some norms, but even within your local community, breaking those norms might come with a sense of shame so it's.
Chris:It's illegal to kill anyone in cold blood across the world. I would imagine, right like that's codified in into law. Um, it is not illegal to hail hitler someone across the world, but it is illegal in Germany, okay.
Matt:That's illegal in Germany.
Chris:It is straight up illegal in Germany.
Angelo:And if you did that in America, it's not necessarily illegal, but people would definitely shame you for doing it Right. So, because of how atrocious well, that definitely is tied into something moral because of the atrocities that Hitler committed, you're associating yourself and praising a man who did something so morally wrong that even uh, even using that hand symbol is is associated with.
Matt:Yeah, he ruined that mustache for everyone charlie chaplin and that that used to be a very popular mustache in germany too.
Angelo:And then right, it's like I've kind of ruined it for everybody who wants to have that mustache, yeah it's like people try to say, well, charlie Chaplin yeah, it's like. I don't know, man, you're pushing the limit with that one yeah, hitler is more famous than Charlie Chaplin, unfortunately. No, yeah for sure.
Matt:Also, I think it's rare, I think, for a man to be able to pull off just a mustache. I mean, if you can rock a mustache then good for you. But generally, just try out a beard, try out a full set, see how you feel.
Angelo:Mussolini no, that's a stalling beard he's trying to take the pot and go like this.
Matt:He's trying to stir that pot. I have no shame. You're full of puns today, angelo. He's trying to take the pot and go like this, stirring it.
Angelo:He's trying to stir that pot. I have no shame. You're full of puns today, angelo, yeah, but I guess maybe I was trying to think of. I was trying to think of maybe something that would be universally shameful, but not necessarily universe like, not necessarily associated with guilt, and I don't know if I, if I can think of anything. So maybe, maybe shame is sort of localized, in the general sense it's, it's subjective to each and every culture or or region.
Matt:It could be Well, I think you nailed it with uh, with the nakedness.
Chris:Yeah, that's the first thing that comes to my mind.
Matt:The awareness, of the awareness of nakedness. There's the story about lies and truth and them as two women hurt going through this town and they're traipsing along and then they get to. They get to this spring and they both get naked and they get in right, but then it's about time to get out and lies. The woman takes both of their clothes and runs off, and so truth is left naked and she's running around trying to get her clothes back. But everybody's like, you know, like that because they didn't want to see the naked truth.
Angelo:Oh, that's clever.
Matt:Yeah.
Angelo:I can't believe I didn't see where you were going with that yeah. But you know there are tribes where people are way more naked than what we would consider culturally appropriate.
Chris:And and for them it's normal because they don't feel any kind of way about it yeah even, even uh nakedness has its its cultural limitations yeah, and the next example I thought of after that was just going right back to like animal killing right, but tribal people they hunt, but we don't we kind of send them into these weird factories and and butcher them that way. You know, maybe we should be ashamed of that, somehow, like we're not dealing with our own death in a way yeah well, we outsource our, our sourcing, our hunting, we outsource it.
Angelo:So we don't even have to look at the reality of it. We just go to the grocery store and is there anything shameful about that?
Chris:like I sometimes I feel like I'm not taking responsibility for. I used to think this way when in college like I'm not taking responsibility for. I used to think this way when in college, like I'm not taking responsibility for my life if I'm not somehow involved in the killing of this own animal I'm about to eat, I think it has to do with a degree of intention, like I wouldn't feel shameful going to a different country and not understanding their norms and making a mistake.
Angelo:I wouldn't call that shame.
Angelo:I might be like slightly embarrassed if they're all kind of laughing and I'm like, oh, I messed it up, but I would think that they have a degree of understanding that hey, I'm not from here, there's no shame in that, and so there's some intention thing associated with it.
Angelo:When it comes to outsourcing the hunting to slaughterhouses and things like that, to what degree do we really have control over what we eat? It's very challenging to source your own food. Even if you're very conscious about oh, I, I'm a vegan and I don't want to eat animal products like you're gonna really have to go out of your way to make that lifestyle work because that stuff is just so everywhere and virtually easy access. So if it depends on the degree to which you're you're willing to, um, take up that cause and some people do take it very seriously some people think that there are other, bigger problems and they're like I don't have the time and energy to really source my own food to that level, I am just going to have to deal with what society has laid out for me.
Chris:Yeah.
Angelo:And so, personally, I don't feel any guilt or shame in buying meats from the grocery store. I didn't build the system.
Chris:Right, and that's a societal value right I didn't build the system right and that's a societal value right, and so that's why you would feel that certain degree of shame from that societal value if I had a greater degree of control.
Angelo:If someone was like here, you need to uh, kill your animals from now on. Um, well, still, I don't really. I think if it's for feeding my family and, uh, nutrients and things like that, I don't really. I think if it's for feeding my family and nutrients and things like that, I don't consider that immoral personally, but I'm not going to go around shooting animals for fun or trying to hunt down endangered species or things like that. That's where it starts to venture into a bit of immorality for me.
Chris:Right. And then we start getting into the topic of guilt. From there, I think, sure Right. I would feel guilty if I kill the bald eagle because, well, it's not even necessarily that you would feel guilty, but you would be guilty of killing these animals and be guilty of acting like a psychopath sure?
Angelo:well, I mean guilt in the legal sense, yes, but I guess you can use the word guilt just as a feeling, too right? I can feel guilty even if I'm not legally guilty, right?
Chris:Yeah, yeah, there are two qualities to guilt right, you can be guilty and you can feel guilty, but shame you can only feel, shame, you can't. You could be shamed by others and maybe you could feel shameful, I guess, but I don't know if there's a like, a being of of shame so maybe shame generally is always subjective, at least in a cultural sense, unless you consider guilt a form of shame. Okay, yeah, I could buy that, maybe, maybe, maybe.
Matt:Like if we say shame is the larger thing, that guilt is then contained within.
Angelo:Right, then we're talking about morals and it depends on your if you think morals are objective or subjective. But if you think guilt and shame are two separate things and shame is always associated with cultural embarrassment, then I don't think anybody would disagree that that's always localized. I can't think of a universal example of shame well, we go back.
Matt:This goes back to like social implications too, like archaic, like social implications. Like when you were in a in a tribe and say you did something that so went against like the order of the tribe, right, and that actually caused problems within that and they deemed that you had to be kicked out, right, like you're ostracized, you're banished from the tribe and then you have to go and fend for yourself. So that has a lot of tangible implications. Like back then, if you got cut off from the tribe, you were cast out into danger. You didn't know if you're going to be eaten by a saber-toothed tiger or just you would have a much more difficult time finding the resources that you need and the social connections that you need.
Matt:Now you can be cut off from a tribe today in all sorts of different ways. We have interests based on our values or our interests and you know you can form up into clicks, right, and if you're cut off from that click, then it's like oh, you know, where else am I going to go? Is cut off from these people. But the difference from back then is we have so much more latitude of movement and abundance of resources around us than we did back then, like if you get cut off, now you can find, you can find another tribe much more easily than you could back then.
Matt:There are tribes all over the place, right, and it even benefits you to have a diversity of different tribes. I would say too, say you could have this pond of friends over here, this pond of friends over here and over here, and you can even overlap them. You can introduce people between those different circles of friends that you have, those you know different circles of friends that you have, and you can broaden yourself in terms of the ways that you're able to conceive the world around you too.
Matt:Yeah, you know so if you can take that little little dose of say uh, you know, I was with these people over here. I didn't really fit in, you know, instead of internalizing that shame, you can go hey, you know what, like there's, there's a lot more abundance around than if I'm just focusing on being rejected or cut off from this person or this group or any of that type of stuff there is something to be said for.
Angelo:Maybe shame can be misplaced, like maybe there's a sense in which you can feel ashamed about something, but you shouldn't be. And I think we see a lot of that underlying critique in our current culture where people are saying, hey, some of these things are societal norms, but they shouldn't be. We shouldn't be feeling ashamed for being this way or doing this thing. It's just. You'll hear people say things like it's just made up, it's just man made. Why do we have to abide by any of this cultural norms? And so that does bring into question like what is the, what is the utility of having cultural normativity right? Like why do we? Why, why do we have to dress a certain way for certain rituals? Like you know, why is it shameful to go to a wedding in casual clothing? Or is it shameful anymore? Like, I would say, modern weddings? There's probably a lot of weddings where people just dress how they always dress and they don't care and they're just like what's wrong with?
Angelo:me being myself. Isn't the wedding supposed to be a place where we're all celebrating and it should be a casual feeling, right? And then there's the part of the culture that's like no, the norms are important. You should be your best self and you should be uh, it's a sign of respect well, it's the idea of etiquette, right, you?
Chris:could have like an extreme form of etiquette where you have 15 spoons and 15 forks that all have different things. But how much is too much and how little is too little? If we show up to a wedding in shorts, does that mean that we're um degenerating somehow?
Angelo:maybe it's a sign of cultural degeneration if the society loses its norms and things start to break apart which brings us back to that civilization metaphor.
Chris:Right, because you could be, um kicked out of the tribe, you could be shamed out of the tribe, and now you're on your own.
Angelo:So crap, I had a thought and I lost it. Well, I think a lot of etiquette and stuff has to do with identity. When you say this is what we do in my culture, this is how I was raised to practice this, you identify with that. Someone might say, say, I'm chinese and in china this is how we greet each other. That's part of who I am, that's part of what my people do and it's I think it's important to a certain extent to have some of that, because if you are just like what's your culture? And you're like I don't know, I just do whatever I want and I don't really identify with anything, you're kind of cutting yourself off. You don't have a history, you don't have a At least, that's what I think about it. I mean, maybe there is some truth to the notion that a lot of that stuff is just for show and deep down, we're starting to realize hey, it's not so much about the norms and the practices. There's more important things than how you dress for a wedding, right?
Chris:Well, the outfit right is supposed to symbolize how seriously you take a thing. That's why you're encouraged to dress up for church, right?
Angelo:Or you know you used to be, but you notice that in churches now, if you go to church, there's a lot of people who they don't care how they dress. They'll wear death metal hoodies to church and their parents are like well I, it's not like I dressed super fancy.
Matt:I know grandma would be mad, but I'm not to tell my kid it's interesting to the societal and cultural shame and then your personal sense of shame, like say you have your code of honor and say you're in a society that there are different factors that are highly encouraging you to pull away from your north star and from your code, and when you do that, you feel you've betrayed yourself, your own code you.
Matt:You just brought up honor like I feel ashamed of myself because I did this thing, because I did this thing that pulled me away from my own personal sense of ethics.
Angelo:Yes, well, you mentioned honor. Honor is almost the opposite of shame. Right when you're, when you're, you feel a sense of honor. You're strongly identifying with your culture. Your culture is lifting you up. When you honor someone there, they're a beacon of of light for emulation. So maybe honor is the polar opposite of shame.
Chris:I think you might be absolutely right about that. And when you honor somebody, you give them a medal, you give them an award. When you shame somebody, everyone sees it, you don't get. You shame somebody, everyone sees it. You don't get anything for it, but everyone sees it right Like you ring a bell like shame, shame.
Angelo:Or you can shame them. You can give them the cone of shame and put them in the corner. That's right.
Matt:You know what this brings up? Great leadership ethic as well. I've heard this great leadership ethic as well. I've heard this Honor people publicly, but give them feedback privately, or shame them privately, because there's that social.
Chris:Degenerate.
Matt:I'm not going to say this in front of Mom. We're going to go into the closet together.
Angelo:I'm going to give you a piece of mama Well if you have kids you kind of do that. You know you don't want to scold them too hard in front of guests, but you kind of take them, let's go outside for a minute, and then you're like you need to start straightening out young men's eyes.
Matt:There's that social aspect of shame where it's it can be. It's so much harder for someone to be able to make that arc of realization of a action they've done that was bad, and then being able to go to recognition, accountability and transformation through that, when there's so folks on like, oh my god, I was ashamed and all these people saw it. You know, which is not the point Right. Socially relevant, for sure, but not the point that's going to help you to transform, so your aim should be honor.
Angelo:Which makes me think of the fourth commandment Honor your mother and father. What do they mean by honor? Does that mean that there is a moral sense to which you should honor the culture that you're a part of?
Chris:well, we'll give glory to their good values. Okay, right, right, yes, but that that's a moral judgment, that's a very personal thing. Right, like you know, we could talk about the good, like my version of good, your version of good, but as long as you have that idea in mind, honor their good values or glorify their good values.
Matt:Ah, integrity, Like, say you're. What's a good way to speak to this person who you're like? I know, I know this is how you want to be Right, and pointing to that, like, like, don't you want to? Don't you want to be someone who's seen as responsible, as you know? Fill in the blanks, whatever great qualities, right? So then it's you know it's positive reinforcement yeah positive reinforcement.
Matt:So then it's a connection between well, these are the type of actions that then just demonstrate you as that type of person that is, oh you know, because you want to have that alignment between thought and word and action, right?
Matt:and you know, I remember having this, this conversation with, uh, with my wife lena, one time it was. It was kind of this eye-opening thing of integrity. We had this, this conversation, where it's it's like integrity is not something that is just a given, but it's something that's an aspiration, right? So when you think of it like, oh, you know, I don't want to be seen as out of integrity, yeah, I'm integrity, all that type of stuff, it's like really like working towards integrity is tough right like it's.
Matt:It's a conscious effort of realization of how we're showing up, how we're thinking, how our words are coming across, and it's kind of funny too.
Angelo:Uh, I was just talking with my daughter about when someone offers you something. Sometimes they offer too much in an effort to seem like they're very giving. And sometimes you have to recognize that and say oh no, I'm not going to take everything from you or take advantage of you, but it's strange because they offered it. Oh no, I'm not going to take everything from you or take advantage of you, but it's strange because they offered it. And her thing is like why would someone offer something more than they can handle? And the only answer I could give is like well, some people are like that, some people aren't like that, some people will never offer more than what they are willing to give up. And some people they'll give everything they have.
Angelo:And you have to be like whoa, that's like, that's too much, you don't need to give me everything you have, you know. But they're just very giving people by nature, even to their own detriment. And there's a sense of integrity there that you have to have to recognize when someone is giving too much and to kind of turn it down Right. And it's a hard lesson to teach kids who are just like Well, I think you.
Chris:It's weird, it's a weird thing that you kind of pick up on, but I mean well, I think, when you realize that integrity is motivated by a desire to be honorable and to have honor. Maybe that lesson can be processed a little easier with the people you have to teach it to Right. Teach your daughter about what honor is and how you attain it.
Angelo:Easier said than done, right, um, but you, I, I just go with you know specific situations. You try to say, well, in this situation, this would be the honorable thing to do in this situation, this would be dishonorable. Then, when you try to get like a global handle on, it's a little trickier. It's like, well, what really is honor? Um, I mean, in some sense, some of that stuff is kind of made up and it is weird and I don't know why we do these things. But that's just how our culture operates and if you want people to view you as an honorable person, you're going to have to play by these strange rules, even if you don't think they make sense. It is really. It's a very human thing.
Matt:It's a very strange thing that we do universally honorable, and then say how important is, is it for you to relate and integrate with this certain circle in which these rules are standing right. So I'm I'm very proud of this. We my family started doing these family gatherings between the three of us, and what we've been doing has been working towards building like a family code, which is really cool, like we have our values and then, you know, the values are like these are the aspirations that that connect us all together, that we all, you know collectively, have decided on that. We prioritize these things.
Matt:And then the code is like this is how we uphold these values right you know, we have six different parts to our code and then we have five uh five values that we agreed upon and the honor code. Yeah well and well honoring is one of them too.
Angelo:It's one of, it's one of the values so very I dig that, yeah, I'm very proud of that so let me in on your code, man I don't know.
Matt:So let me see, remember we have, we have honoring, we have, we have fun, we have self accountability. We have other five, yeah, there are five different, different values there. Oh, integrity. Integrity is one of them. And then, what's so? What do you? What's the difference between honor and integrity in your system? Well, honoring is caring for things that are important to you.
Angelo:Okay.
Matt:Right, and honoring someone else, pointing to the good within someone else and pointing to the good within someone else, and pointing to the good within, uh, within yourself, and integrity is a connection between the thought, word and action. Okay, so yeah, you can. You can also honor that integrity and honoring yourself by staying in integrity, right? So here's another example, one of them we prioritize being healthy and so honoring the mind, the body and the spirit, so doing justice to the good of those things, wow.
Angelo:That's funny. That's what I like to do during Lent. I try to pick three practices One for the body, one for the mind and one for the spirit to work on myself. Keep my body healthy, keep my mind healthy, keep my spirit healthy.
Matt:That's awesome.
Angelo:Yeah, well, it's good that you put that into practice with your family.
Matt:Yeah, practice with your family, yeah, and is there two that that helena put forth to us as parts of the code, which really speak to two kind of profound poles and that I think are summed up in one statement but are better parsed out into two statements, right? And one is remembering the divinity, our divine connection within us, and that we're a, you know, a spark we are each sparks of the divine. And then the second part is really accepting and this speaks to the shame thing, right, and the antidote to it, I would say, is accepting the, you know, the messiness of being human and the imperfections that come along with that.
Matt:It's in the rejection of that, that's where the shame comes in, right yeah, you're accepting it when you're, you know, loving yourself as you are, and you don't, you know, there's always growth. There's always like, yeah, you can, yeah, you can definitely grow. And that's another place where I think these wires have gotten crossed with us. Is that, oh, how to say it?
Matt:like it's really hard, if you have a lot of internalization of shame, to then look forward to growth because, the message that you hear is there's something wrong with me, right, and that growth is somehow trying to fix something that's wrong with you, which is the interpretation, but that's not the truth. And again it's not the point right, but it's the shame, truth. And again it's not the point, right, but it's the shame that gets in the way of that growth.
Angelo:I think it's tricky because a lot of times you identify with something and when you have to cut that thing out, you feel like there's something wrong with me because I identify with this part of me. So like, for instance, maybe there's a person with anger issues and they say I am a person who's quick to anger anger. And then if someone's like well, you need to fix your approach to these, um issues without jumping into anger so quickly, sometimes those people are like I'm an angry person, I can't fix that. You're trying to say that that I need to be a completely different person, but this is me, like you know, and so there's like a, an identification barrier there a lot of times and I think that's uh, that's the tricky thing. Um, maybe the solution is to is to really recognize that, uh, in order to grow and change, you can't always identify with some of the lower aspects of yourself. You have to recognize that there are parts of yourself that need to die in order for you to grow.
Chris:Wow, yeah, it kind of reminds me of a lyric from one of my favorite songs, which is not to undermine the consequence of your actions, but you are not what you do. So if you are, if you have anger right, you don't need to be defined by that.
Angelo:Right, Right or even something mentally like if I identify with my career or my job and then I lose my job, I'm going to feel, my self-worth is going to take a hit.
Matt:I'm going to feel my self-worth is going to take a hit. I'm going to feel crushed. I want to speak to something you just said, too about say if you are an angry person and we know anger can be destructive it can also be a force within you.
Angelo:Defensive.
Matt:Defensive Say you could feel shame from people always calling you. Oh, you're an angry person. Oh you, you know flipping out or whatever Like. But there can be a gift on the other side of that. That's a passion, right? But you've so identified with this story that other people have told you that you, that gift, has been invisible to you I think, it turned to the other side of that that quote where that's actually a strength, I think we've talked about this before.
Angelo:We're like certain emotions, um, they have functions and and they can be misplaced right and so anger it's a beautiful thing when in its rightful place. It is a. You should be passionate about certain things. You should be passionate about your children and when something comes and threatens them, you should step up and be angry and defend them. You know, even uh christ in in the story where he he goes into his father's house and he's turning over tables, that was like righteous anger exactly.
Chris:There is such a thing as just anger.
Angelo:Sorry, I cut you off no, no, I was pretty much done, but yeah, I think that even applies to shame. There is a righteous sense of shame, yes, and there's a applies to shame.
Chris:There is a righteous sense of shame?
Angelo:Yes, and there's a misplaced shame. You can feel shame in things that you shouldn't be ashamed about. Maybe think about someone who they have a deformity. Maybe they've got some sort of something that everyone can see and they've got a facial deformity and maybe as a child they got made fun of for it and so now they go out and they feel this sense of shame in showing their face. Or you know, what you see?
Angelo:A lot more commonly is people hiding their smile, like some people just hate to smile with their teeth. They're just like so. Maybe that someone at some point in their life said they looked ugly when they smile, or told them not to smile like that, or laughed at them and said their smile looked funny and ever since then they just don't like to really smile and you'll see them in photos. Like you know, they're never really smiling unless you catch them off guard and it's a genuine candid moment. It's the only time they really smile. But, um, I think that's actually pretty common if you think about it. There's a lot of people who hide their smile, but they, I would say that's a misplaced sense of shame, because a smile is such a beautiful outwardly expression. You should never be ashamed of your expression of joy that's.
Matt:that's a very personal thing too. There are things that a person can feel ashamed of, that you can say, oh, if I just did this, then it would be a different thing. But your smile, your face, things like that, where it's like that's a tough one, where you can say you know, I feel ashamed about this and I also can't change this. Right, this is actually something that is just a part of who I am and just a part of reality, right okay.
Chris:So don't be ashamed of your smile, unless maybe you're burning down your neighbor's house. You probably shouldn't smile.
Angelo:Oh, there you go so well, it's not. It's not because your smile looks ugly, like you shouldn't be ashamed of. Because your smile looks ugly, you shouldn't be ashamed of how your smile looks. You should be ashamed that you would take joy in something so ugly.
Chris:And that's righteous shaming, right, right. How dare you burn your neighbor's house down? Stop smiling.
Angelo:Yeah, that reminds me. Recently there was a story of a woman who, uh, it's such an ugly story but she she stabbed a young child, uh, randomly, like she went out and stabbed uh, I think it was a three-year-old, right in front of her mother. Oh my god. And when they were put her on trial and were talking to her about it in court, she was smiling and it was like such an ugly um thing and just the comments on the video of her smiling, just everyone was just overwhelmed with this sense of like this. This woman doesn't deserve even the life sentence. Like this, this person should just be blotted out from society eliminated yeah for, for how?
Angelo:yeah it's.
Matt:It's such an ugly thing to think about, because it's an ugly display, yeah, that someone would take joy, so much joy in another's genuine suffering well, if you think about, if the sense of pleasure is the inversion of feeling, say a righteous sense of shame from an act like that, right, like you did something so horrendous and you know it, like in the back of your mind.
Matt:You know it, you know what was wrong and if you're really feel that, then that would be such an overwhelming sense of shame and guilt that you're like, wow, what do I do with all that negative emotion? Right, and not to defend, but she said I always try and understand why people do the things that they do, right hmm, so then. So then, the feeling of pleasure can be a mask oh where that negative emotion would be.
Angelo:Maybe there's a, there's a. There's a power display there. Like you can't control me, you can't make me feel guilty for doing this thing, right? Like, even if you sentence me to life in prison or the electric chair or anything, I'm still going to smile because I win if I'm smiling. Yeah, which is not true in the slightest. But it's got to be something strange going on there.
Matt:Yeah.
Angelo:There should be a sense of shame. That would be righteous shame or really righteous guilt. If you did something like that, you would want to see that person feeling remorse and you still might think, hey, that remorse doesn't change much.
Chris:But oh man, a smile is definitely misplaced in that situation well if, if the smile in that situation is a display of evil, remorse would be a display of good right right you should be remorseful for for doing something wrong exactly, yeah hmm, you know what I honestly think?
Angelo:this is probably a good place to wrap it up okay but thanks guys for chatting with me on shame and thank all of you for taking the time to listen with us to the end of this podcast. If you made it this far, we really appreciate it. Um, if you can help us out, like share, subscribe to our content and if, uh, if you will it, uh, come back next time and hang out with us again thanks peace.
