Shame - How do we praise it?

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ByDjelloul (Del) Marbrook

Shame has gotten a bad name in psycho-therapeutic circles where it's reviled as a debilitator. I think it imbues life with tang and zest. We wouldn't enjoy pheromones so much were they not spiced with shame (Adam and Eve, Albrecht Durer, inset). I confess I don't much care for its tabloid aspects, but I think it's often the ghost in the machine, and high art and literature would suffer greatly without it.

A shameless society, which I think our general hypocrisy is working hard to create, would be a crazy-maker in its barrenness. A society without shame would be like living with no olfactory sense, no taste buds, no sense of touch. Shame has been given the same black eye as sobriety. We should reconsider their virtues. It makes our hair stand on end, it heightens experiences, makes human encounter exhilarating and scary.

Psycho-therapy is a wonderful thing-I'd be much crazier than I am without it-but it shares a tendency with isms to be doctrinaire and authoritarian. If I weren't ashamed of some of my fancies I wouldn't bother to pursue them. When it comes to art, that would be a disaster.

Rehabilitating shame would be at least as salubrious as admitting, finally, that Prohibition dramatically improved public health.

Djelloul (Del) Marbrook was the editor of six daily newspapers and held editorial posts on several major metropolitan dailies. He is the winner of the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize of Kent State University whose press will publish his book, Far From Algiers, next fall. For more information www.djelloulmarbrook.com or www.myspace.com/delmarbrook.

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