Mar 15, 2016 NYTimes
“The
ultimate sin today, Crouch argues, is to criticize a group, especially
on moral grounds. Talk of good and bad has to defer to talk about
respect and recognition. Crouch writes, “Talk of right and wrong is
troubling when it is accompanied by seeming indifference to the
experience of shame that accompanies judgments of ‘immorality.’”He
notes that this shame culture is different from the traditional shame
cultures, the ones in Asia, for example. In traditional shame cultures
the opposite of shame was honor or “face” — being known as a dignified
and upstanding citizen. In the new shame culture, the opposite of shame
is celebrity — to be attention-grabbing and aggressively unique on some
media platform.”