Shame is Colonized Remorse

Last night I posted these words that came to me before falling asleep: "Shame is colonized remorse."

I'm defining shame as the whisper campaign of this culture that something is wrong with you, that you are broken, a monster, fundamentally flawed and undeserving of the days that have been granted you. And I understand there are different kinds of shame - toxic and healthy. In this piece, I am speaking of toxic shame.

I'm defining remorse, as that life-affirming feeling that arises from us when we see we have harmed another. It's a kind of grief that cleanses. It's a deep affirmation of our kinship with one another. It's heartbreak. It's seeing that you were capable of doing something that you wish you weren't capable of. Certainly, others might use the term 'healthy shame' for this same purpose here - the coming to understand our limits and the depths of our ignorance (our nature to ignore so many things and inability to hold all the threads).

But this is how I am using these words here, in this moment. May others do different and wonderful things with the same words so that their meaning never becomes frozen or ossified.

The former (shame) is the unraveler of our humanity. The latter (remorse) is the crucible in which our humanity is formed.

Traditional people have always known that humans are heavy on the places they live. Culture arose to contend with this deeply inconvenient truth.

You can see this woven into teachings about not taking more than you need. "Hey. We're already burdened enough on this place. Don't make it worse. And use the whole animal. Don't be wasteful or greedy."

So much of deep, human culture is the coming to learn how deeply of consequence we are to this world and each other. That everything we do and do not do sends out ripples, beyond our control or understanding. That life is not a linear process of A causing B but more the dropping of the stone in the water. One errant word or look could cause a cascade of events and happenings that were not your intention. This isn't a recipe for fearfulness. But carefulness.

You can see this deeply woven into traditional cultures in the deep respect of not touching the belongings of others, a lifting up of the nobility of speech and the power of the word, and the deep architecture of restorative justice designed to help people learn the consequences of what they have done.

And so, shame is colonized remorse.

I might say it another way. That shame is what remorse looks like when it's been highjacked and seconded to other purposes more related to power than healing. It's the same instinct but it's been subverted. It's pain that's not allowed to be pain. It's a kind of grief that never happens. It takes the same thing but casts a different meaning on it.

Shame is what happens when remorse never does.

Shame is a sort of hardened grief.

Shame is heartbreak that was never articulated.

Shame is the collapse inward into, "What does what I did mean about me?" whereas remorse asks of us an opening outward into, "What has what I did meant to others?"

Shame is the ending of our feeling being trustworthy. Remorse is the benediction of it. Remorse is the extending of our trustworthiness.

Remorse is where we learn hard things about ourselves and life. Shame is what guarantees those learnings never happen.

When conversion to Christianity came to our ancestors (be they the tribes of Europe or elsewhere) in came notions of Heaven and Hell. Eternal salvation or eternal damnation.

If you did something 'good' you were a 'good person'. And good people went to Heaven.

If you did something 'bad' then you were a 'bad person'. And bad people went to Hell.

Multiple layers of scaffolding were, at the point of a sword, set into place over generations of colonization: the deeper reliance on essentialism, the idea of punitive justice, notions of 'the truth', teachings on 'original sin', the separation of the mind and body, spirit (good) and matter (bad) and more.

And we are living in the toxic bloom of those seeds planted so long ago. We are living in the crater of that detonation.

Shame is colonized remorse.

I think traditional cultures understood remorse, heartbreak and grieving to be deeply human achievements and skills. To be able to grieve well was a sign of your humanity.

But, when shame appears, we never get to heartbreak. It short circuits the whole thing.

This culture (a culture built on the blueprints of colonization and rooted in power not place) teaches us that we are supposed to feel shame. And so we do. We are taught that feeling this shame will make us more responsible but it is the undoing of our ability to respond to life.

Shame is what the colonizer breeds inside of you so that they can control you.

Remorse is what your people, should you be so lucky to have a people, encourage, make room for, insist upon, so that you might become more human.

Shame is about coercion.

Remorse is about learning. Remorse is a deep obedience (coming from the root 'to listen') to life. Remorse is a deepening of our humility.

Shame tells you, "You already knew better."

Remorse tells you, "Now you know."

The colonizer isn't interested in you becoming more human. They are interested in you becoming more like them.

Shame is the human experience of remorse commandeered to make you fit into the mould made for you by the colonizer.

Shame is beating you when you speak your own language in a residential school.

Shame is being convinced that no one could love you because you're gay.

Shame is being an introvert and believing you should be an extrovert.

Shame is all about who you are.

Remorse is all about coming to understand how the world moves and operates.

Shame demands simplistic thinking.

Remorse insists on complexity.

Shame serves empire.

Remorse serves life.

Shame is not a human thing. It's not built into our DNA. Remorse is.

Shame tells you that you need to be saved to be good.

Remorse is the healing that makes us whole.

Shame is the ending of our capacity to be human.

Remorse might just be the highest benediction of our humanity.

Shame is put on us as a fact.

Remorse is a capacity we build.

Shame might keep you from getting killed in a colonial power structure but remorse is what brings you back to life should you be able to escape.

Shame is a punk kid trying to run the show.

Remorse is the elder waiting patiently in the corner for that punk kid to run out of steam and collapse from all the trying to be perfect and pure so they might finally pick them up, wrap them in an old blanket and hold them for a while and tell them stories about how the world came to be.

Shame says, "Do what we tell you and you'll be saved of your broken heart."

Remorse says, "My heart is broken. May it never mend."

Shame is colonized remorse.