Earlham
College
First Charles Lecture
by Richard Davis, Professor of Religion
27 September 2000
Honor, Shame, and the Roots of Community
"Shame and Guilt
are the driving forces of civilization."
Dan Rosenberg, Anthropologist
Introduction
I have used this quotation, by our own Dan Rosenberg, nearly every time I have given a talk about this subject. And that is a lot. Now, I must confess, this may not have been exactly what Dan said. I might have exaggerated it a bit in order to get a maximum effect. Whatever, this line has been used many times, and probably it is what he is known for nationally. Well how many times? You know how the social sciences count things... If the number of persons who have heard this were laid out end to end.......they'd be more comfortable.
The first time I laid eyes on the gorgeous crimson banners outside Goddard,
I was coming from the east, which is the direction of the alleged men's room.
I said 'alleged' because of remodeling, the mens and women's rooms had to
be changed. Now, if you want to see regression...among fine well educated
adults, among them leaders and teachers you will come to love...change
their bathrooms!. As I walked in from the east, I read, in sequence,
Community, Engagement, ....and Iniquity! Ah at last we have decided
to get real!
Could this be a title for the lectures, "Iniquity...and...Shame?" Actually, that won't work, because
in fact, probably most shame is not a matter of iniquity. Happily, by this time I had reached the third
banner, called Inquiry. Now that is something we can do.
Why I am interested in shame
In the mid 1980's I contracted a painful, immobilizing depression. It was terrifying. Never before had this Earlham-type compulsive worker had difficulty finding ample motivation for the life and work he loves. Now, simple tasks like making a cup of coffee or getting dressed felt overwhelming. I had to buy tube socks because I could not remember which sock went on which foot. The experience, too, was quite visceral. It was as if the planet suddenly had 2X gravity, and I was surviving with a giant rift between body and soul. Worse, I lost interest in those things and persons I cared about. And I felt abandoned by whoever or whatever I had depended on.
Fortunately, after several excruciating months of trial and error my doctor discovered an antidepressant that addressed the illness. I learned that depression is both biological and hereditary. More important, though, was my undertaking counseling with a therapist skillful at treating shame-based depression. Before my encounter with her, it never occurred to me that my dark ruminations were fueled by anything other than a strong guilt programming which can be characteristic of persons with a religiously conservative background. What I discovered were even deeper feelings of inadequacy, rejection and self-criticism. And I had experienced some big setbacks which were humbling, -no, humiliating. My work with the therapist-and beyond--have had a profound impact on my life: my teaching and scholarship, personal relationships, and core values.
Scholarly discussion of shame was in eclipse during much of the 20th century, and I wondered why. But y' know, since I got sick, a whole lot of persons in different fields have been writing about it. Being shame prone, I assumed it was all my fault. During the lectures we will examine some of the most important contributions from these people.
Why you should be interested in shame
I do not expect you to be immediately thrilled with my choice of topic. Shame sounds like
dangerous ground. So, I would like to lure you into considering something that is, in some sense, taboo.
Indeed it is shameful. Popular culture urges us to be rid of shame and guilt in the name of human
liberation, freedom, and self-expression. The Olympic Games TV coverage is airing a commercial in
which we are urged to shrug off our inhibitions with another Miller Ice. And it works! A formerly shy
guy almost assaults a beautiful amazon, and she uncovers a whole case of Ice...
During these lectures I would like to persuade you, first, that
the topic is critical to our understanding of what it is to be a human being,
of persons and of societies, and second , that we lose a great deal if
it is neglected or forced into eclipse. One of the most profound commentators
on this subject I know, researcher Carl Schneider, put it this way:
- Shame is intimately tied to the central human dramas of covering and uncovering, speech
and silence, the literal and the inexpressible, concealment and disclosure, community and
alienation...
- However, our society perceives shame to be not a drama to be enacted but a problem to be solved. In our quest for liberation, we pursue the values of the explicit, the literal, and the useful while endeavoring to eliminate reticence, the unspoken , the personal (the vulnerable).
- In so doing, we have lost the vision of the human, and impoverish ...the shape of our lives (Shame, Exposure, and Privacy, p. xiii)
- However, our society perceives shame to be not a drama to be enacted but a problem to be solved. In our quest for liberation, we pursue the values of the explicit, the literal, and the useful while endeavoring to eliminate reticence, the unspoken , the personal (the vulnerable).
Yet this is not all he saying. Nor is it even what he is saying here. He is not inviting us into a
prying promiscuity with one another where we simply let it all hang out. Rather, to be human is often to
require covering in community, silence in the crowd, reticence in the face of society's demands for
disclosure.
I would like you to think about this: In another place he speaks of shame as an ally, and claims
that a sense of shame "...opens a path to ourselves". Does he go too far?
The Phenomenon of Shame
Negative Views
Before describing more fully the texture and nuances of shame, I want to suggest what I think most persons in our society are likely to think about it. I will welcome your responses to this.
Two things stand out in my reading of our culture. First, shame is to be avoided and eliminated.
Second, and one of the reasons for the first, shame is obsolete. However important and pertinent as a
shaper of individuals and societies in other places, or in the past, it is out of place today in our society.
"Don't expose me"! A characteristic of shame is being surprised, not prepared to deal. Or, it is
about "fitting in", and I don't. It can be experienced as a loss of self-control, or a feeling of weakness
which might threaten our core sense of individuality and independence. So, feeling shame is itself
shameful. The literature calls this a "shame spiral". Shame is dizzying. Here is a question I would like
you to consider. Why do we suppose that achieving independence is so important or at least one of our
most desirable goals, and its loss...a fault...my fault?
Our culture's view includes another assumption: that shame is an individual psychic phenomenon. It is significant, perhaps, for the individual, but to no one else. Also it has to do with one's quirks and differences. It is infantile. It should not play a role in the life of an educated, mature person. Shame and its opposite, honor, have been important categories in the study of ancient cultures and what we once called "primitive" societies. Shame has more to do with "them" than with us. If I permit shame in myself, I become one of "them". So, in a real sense, shame is obsolete.
Shame's obsolescence emerges if we think historically, as well. If one belongs to a society where social ranks are relatively impermeable, like 18th century France, , "getting it right" is important. It is a point of honor. One the other hand, some describe our society as characterized by "rising expectations," with people moving upward, or failing to do so, through the loosely-defined social classes. The expectation is that the next generation will be better off than we are. In this setting, shame is an impediment, like a weight around an ankle. Honor appears "quaint" and if honor is quaint so is shame.
Approaching Shame
What is shame? How and why is it important? What can it tell us about being human? What might we lose if it is neglected or forced into eclipse?
Popularly, shame often is identified with episodes of embarrassment and blushing. While these emotions do share with shame an experience of exposure, to focus on them is to miss what has been called the "oceanic experience" which characterizes shame. Oceanic? The 20th century philosopher, Sartre, speaks of shame as "an immediate shudder which runs through me from head to foot without any discursive preparation." (1956, p. 222) Closely related to this is the unexpectedness of one of those moments of painful self-awareness. It is a being caught off guard. The psychologist, Helen Merrell Lynd, in her major account of shame (1958), chose to attend to that rather than guilt because shame "goes deeper" into the personality, and "probes the depths of the human condition."
Contrast with Guilt
Professor Lynd's choice is instructive. For nearly everyone who writes about shame describes it in
contrast with guilt. The major distinction, though expressed variously, is that whereas guilt is the
experience of wrong doing, shame pertains to wrong being. Imagine the following responses to your
forgetting to drive a friend to a crucial job interview. One kind of self-censure (guilt-oriented) might run:
"How could I have done such a thing; how I hurt my friend; what an injurious thing." How might I try to
make it up." A second (shame-oriented) proceeds: "How could I have done such a thing. What a fraud as a
friend; I am a poor excuse for a human being."(Now there is a third possibility: figuring how I can lie my
way out of this. shameless?) Notice, first, that the two responses begin at the same place, and with a
nuance that could be picked up only by voice inflection. Then, they veer off in quite different directions.
(Notice, also, that any brief example risks caricature, and that shame and guilt are complexly intertwined in
our experience.) The basic contrast, though, is between DOING a wrongness and BEING a wrongness,
between MAKING a mistake and BEING a mistake. Here, I remember my friend Shelly. When she was
born, her father would not consider names for her for two weeks. He had wanted a boy. She felt like a
mistakefor years. Her husband's jaded comment: I only wish the old geezer had been around to pay for
the therapy!
Thus, shame is a fundamental ASSAULT ON THE SELF AND SELF-WORTH, AN ALL-PERVASIVE SENSE OF BEING FLAWED, LACKING, FRAUDULENT, AND DEFECTIVE AS A PERSON. So, shame is an experience of self-perceived defects. That's one way it feels. Often this defect "cuts to the core" and cuts off persons' capacities for self-reflection-- which might allow them to determine how much of the assault is accurate.
Awareness of all this can make an important contribution to teaching, and to learning. Often you
come into our classes carrying some version of an inner message which says, "I'm stupid". If this is never
taken into account in teaching, it can lead to almost a kind of bondage to shame. Shame becomes the filter
through which course information, the teacher's person, and everything else in the course must pass.
Now, why does this happen? The idea that shame binds other emotions to itself finds almost universal
agreement among scholars. It applies a tourniquet to the spirit. We freeze up, or shut down.
Exposure
Thus, we have seen, initially, that shame differs f rom guilt and, then, that often it is an encounter with one's self-perceived defects as a person. This leads directly to a third feature of the experience. That encounter, also is an experience of exposure and nakedness. It is as if a floodlight were trained on those sensitive and vulnerable aspects of the self. One of the clearest examples of this is the occasion of being see physically naked by persons with whom one is not intimate. PSYCHIC exposure cuts even deeper. Persons report feeling fragile, out of control. Response to this may be fear: "I must watch out, be very careful."
There is a bitter account of shame as exposure in Somerset Maugham's OF HUMAN BONDAGE:
the protagonist, Phillip, a new boy at boarding school, is bullied by his classmates to see his clubfoot.
Now, Phillip is desperate for friends and a sense of being "in". Yet he refuses to accede to their request.
Finally, the boys attack Phillip in bed and the bully twists his arm until he sticks his leg out to show his
deformity--at which point these noble prep-schoolers laugh ... and leave. Maugham continues:
- Phillip ... got his teeth in the pillow so that his sobbing should be inaudible. He was not crying for the pain they had caused his, nor for the humiliation he had suffered when they looked at his foot, but with rage at himself because, unable to stand the torture, he had put out his foot on his own accord."
This is both a poignant and profound example of a shame dynamic: the boy deformed, exposed, rage turned back upon himself. As we saw earlier, the most important exposure is before the self's own unrelenting gaze. This points to another feature of the experience--its global nature. A small inadequacy may call the whole self into question, and then become self-reinforcing. An example of this is beginning a speech with a joke--which falls flat. For a moment one feel totally naked and ashamed, wishing the ground would open up and swallow one. Then, one feels ashamed at that, really a trivial matter.. But the shame spiral continues. And, note closely, Shame often is irrational. That is a great part of its power. What do I mean? Generally, we try to make sense of our lives in terms of some calculus. Thus, I work for a week and receive a week's wages. We are paid in proportion to our work. It makes sense. Shame can crash in upon that world. As I noted above, a joke failed, and I have a painful sense of self awareness out of proportion to the event. Or, a woman is molested and she, not the attacker, feels shame. These are instances of what I mean by "irrational". Shame threatens our sense of control. Because it seems to us irrational we are unable, so to speak, to get a handle on it. We don't know how to identify it, or how to take hold of it.
Communal Aspects of Shame
Next, as shame involves nakedness and an assault on oneself (often self-directed), it is also an experience of alienation. This reflects its powerful communal side. Now, alienation means there are barriers within the self and between the self and others. The self cannot tolerate the bright light of exposure from itself or its peers and so fragments, becomes incognito, retreats into passivity (or, sometimes rage) or is rejected by others. An interviewee put this: " It is a hideous thing to be seen and not be loved." She meant "loved by myself or others." Another said, "I feel as if I am on the other side of a chasm and cannot find my way back." Thus, shame results in what Gershen Kaufman calls, "the sundering of the interpersonal bridge." Shame cuts us off from others; it seeks disguise. Often it feels like a kind of paralysis. Another image I find useful in thinking about the self in this regard is hiding . Persons hide: 1) to protect themselves, and 2) because, they are saying about themselves, "you wouldn't love me if you knew."
Now, this feature of shame--as alienation and paralysis --is significant for two important reasons.
First, It is a partial answer to my earlier question: if shame is so important, why has it been in eclipse?
Answer: precisely because shame is about concealing and camouflaging what is most painful to the self.
We will return to this issue, shame, our culture, and power in lecture three.
Second, the experience of alienation, central to shame and its overcoming, makes clear the social
character of the self. While the 20th century has paid lip service to this concept, individualistic models of
the self persist, rumored to be even at Earlham. Guilt lends itself to this distortion. Guilt can be understood
as a relation between an isolated self and a set of rules, a body of laws. Overcoming it can be viewed as a
transaction. The law specifies the penalty for each particular fault. Judgment involves finding out what
law was "broken". The guilty individual pays the appropriate penalty ( One finds this in one version of
Christianity, where guilt is overcome by God's forgiveness.). Human society is not essentially involved,
as it must be in the case of shame. In my view, shame beckons us to life in community. We will return to
consider this social dimension of shame.
'Physical' Shame
There is another aspect of shame which cuts across the others. Shame is an inherently physical
experience. Perhaps the best example of this is its manifestation in the blush, which comes upon one
suddenly and is almost involuntary. Sartre compares shame to an internal hemorrhage.
In the 19th century the blush played an important role in defining what "human" means. The
philosopher Nietzsche said, "Man is the creature who blushes" (cited in Schneider, p.5). Also, Charles
Darwin's path breaking study, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, concludes, "Blushing is
the most peculiar and most human of all expressions."
In Europe the debate about blushing took a dreadful turn. If it were that blacks (and native
Americans) did not blush they were, in Hegel's words, "closer to beasts who feel no shame... "--that is,
not quite human. This became part of the argument for "civilizing them" which meant colonization and
slavery. So the debate about blushing determined who would be granted the right to be human!
It is not a great leap from this observation about the involuntary physicality of shame to claim that
it is pre-linguistic as well. Infant studies bear this out. One researcher claims to find a "proto-shame
response" as early as 3 months. Therefore it can be hard to get at shame through words. It is a
phenomenon of seeing and must be conveyed by showing more than saying.
This makes shame elusive--and increases both my fascination with and awe of it. Its very
elusiveness presents a challenge for educators and students-who work mostly with words. The reality of
shame may lead us to think again about teaching and learning.
Shame's Family
Finally, in characterizing shame it is extremely important to include experiences which have a
family resemblance to shame and likely include some strong doses of shame. For example, there are
powerlessness, impotence, and vulnerability. Also, there are the experiences of loneliness and exclusion
felt by the ELDERLY. Have you ever heard someone say of an older person, "They are 'failing.'" Also,
Alzheimer's is a grim cultural metaphor of "the end", when all the body's basic functions are out of control
and, worse, public.
Also there is the matter of weakness. Some of my students direct far more negative emotional
energy--disdain, ridicule, ostracism (shaming behaviors)--toward persons perceived to be weak or
wimpish than toward adulterers, plagiarizers, or liars. Why he told me I'll never know. Maybe it was
because of the indissoluble bonds frat brothers have (ha). Howard, with his flashy MG, finally lands the
date for which he had longed. Of course, it's with the storied cheerleader (What shall we name her..?).
They pull off the road at a quiet spot. She reaches toward his arms for an embrace but pulls back with a,
"Howard, you don't have any muscles."! Always quick with his greek tongue, Howard replies, "So, you
don't have any either." But the evening was pretty much over. ...This example raises for me, as well, all
the anxieties in our culture about body parts too long, too short, too large, too small.
As well, some of our most urgent social and ethical problems have impacted in them, like wisdom teeth, important shame components. The women's struggle, particularly as that involves dealing with sexual abuse and rape, often must surmount a kind of hiddenness which is quite close to shame. Then, the twin epidemics of addictions and AIDS involve significant experiences of shame and fear of exposure, often more than fear of punishment (the characteristic guilt response). As one AIDS sufferer said, "I feel like a leper." Thus, it is crucial to see that the shame experience is not limited to the word"shame". Also, it will be important later to consider the activity of shaming. What leads us to shame inducing behavior?
Two Faces of Shame
In concluding this initial sketch of the texture of the shame experience it
is crucial to note that shame has, actually, two faces. Languages in the Indo-European
language group of which we are a part usually have two words for shame. Let's
take French: pudeur = modesty; sense of decency; sans pudeur,
unblushing(ly), shameless(ly); rougir de pudeur, to blush for shame,
is something like discretion; it means having a sense of shame before
an act. It means showing restraint, a reticence to intrude ... it means giving
my growing daughters increased privacy - not necessary when they were infants.
And pudeur is profoundly ethical, as it shows clearly in its opposite--shamelessness.
It treats persons as ends in themselves and not as means only.
The other French word, honte, is that full-blown shame experience: after
an act, when one is out there, in the open, twisting in the wind, exposed. If
the first is discretion shame, we might call the second - disgrace
shame.
Visions of a World without Shame
At this point, I want to engage directly the charge given the Charles Lecturer. That is, to introduce some aspects of the ancient Greek, the Jewish, and the Christian traditions that reflect their contribution to the ethics and values of the Western world.
Lecture 2 "Views from Below: Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Mark." Shame and shaming in encounters with Jesus; love of enemies; prestige and poverty in the new realm.
Lecture 3 "Shame is the Name of the Game." More on the anatomy of shame. Recent research. Shame in the contemporary world. Shame's intersection with other cultural issues.
I would like to work on that in two ways. Presently, we will look at two pivotal values in the cultures around the Mediterranean, honor and shame. First, though, I would like us to examine two different visions of what a world without shame would be. Both lie at the roots of what we have come to call "Western culture" and they help shape and describe the social world we inhabit.
Hebrew roots: Genesis
Eden. The first vision occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the book of Genesis. In fact, there are two origin stories. In the first, God creates the world in six days, and without opposition. God calls it "very good" and rests on the seventh day.
Hear now from the text of the second, "The Lord God fashioned the earth creature, human from the humus....And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden...and commanded the human, saying, From every fruit of the garden you may eat. But from the tree of knowledge, good and evil, you shall not eat; for on the day you eat from it, you are doomed to die." Later the Lord God said, "It is not good for the human to be alone. I shall make him a sustainer beside him. ..." "And the two of them were naked, the man and the woman, and they were not ashamed."
Then, recall that the cunning serpent said to the woman, "You shall not be doomed to die. For God knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will become as gods, knowing good and evil."
Let us look more closely at the narrative. Notice that the woman never heard the
prohibition from God. For her, it can only have come from the man. Observe, as well, that she is
fashioned by God to be beside him. That means "bone of bone, flesh of flesh" something the animals
God made failed to be.
Why the seduction and eating? If the woman is to be a sustainer, how can she help? If
merely a clone of man, she brings nothing, we might say, of her own. What might her own be?
Knowledge, perhaps, that the man had not conceived? What if the knowledge she required in order to be
what the man needed was to have her "eyes open". Then she could help the man see good and evil. So,
would it be her duty to eat?
When she shares the fruit their eyes are opened, but onto a scene of shame and disgrace. They are afraid, exposed, and they hide from God. Yes, they gain knowledge. But of what sort? They must have had some sense of right/wrong to understand God's prohibition. Perhaps what they gain is the experience of wrongness, something which they could not have imagined. [And they gained shame, the feeling of wrong, and exile.]
What, here, is shame? It is an indelible experience of wrong. Frightening, it comes as a surprise, and contrary to expectation. It isolates. It threatens the bonds which connect the two creatures and which join both to the source of life. It is a kind of knowing, but not the sort they sought or wanted. It meant exile, and in some sense, death.
Greek roots: Plato's Protagoras
The second vision of a world without shame comes from the Greek philosopher Protagoras, as he is represented in Plato's dialogue of that name.
The gods asked Prometheus (forethought) and Epimetheus (hindsight) to provide environmental niches for living beings as they emerged from under the earth. In fact, the dull-witted Epimetheus got the job. And he did well with the non-speaking animals. For example, he provided the rabbit few means of self-defense but great fertility.
However, he was so lavishly thorough that there were no capacities left for the future
humans. They could not survive, for example, without some way to construct shelter and fend off
predators. Prometheus, to rescue the situation, stole crafts from the temple of Athena and fire from the
hearth of Hephaestus. This worked for awhile. But the humans' fear and ambition drove them to fight
against each other. The solution was redesign. The god Zeus sent Hermes with two new capacities for
humans, dikê (justice, or right) and aidôs (shame). This was unlike the previous situation in which one
person has a skill, like woodcarving, which another lacks. Each human was to receive some measure of
justice and shame. It worked. A sense of shame led humans to pay attention to what others thought and
felt, and justice made citycraft possible. And this was so critical that Zeus mandated, "If a person is not
able to share justice and a sense of shame...they must kill him as a pestilence to the city." (322d) Happily,
the project of the Gods succeeded.
The two stories provide fascinating contrasts. In the Protagoras, unlike Eden, shame
makes possible human community. The story moves from social chaos before shame to the well-ordered
city . This city is secured by the mixture of fear and regard which humans have for each other..Shame and
guilt form social bonds. Here, there is no paradise prior to the city, and the city is not a place of exile from
the garden.
In these two stories, which are among the roots of Western culture, we find two fundamentally different views of shame. In the biblical story, shame is a fault to be repaired if the good human life is to be possible. In Protagoras' story, shame is, with justice, one of the indispensable qualities which make the good life possible.
Can these foundational stories be talking about the same thing shame? The first answer is "no", and one can see that clearly in the language used. In Genesis, the Hebrew word for shame, bôsh, matches the Greek word, aischunê which is most often used in translating it. This is the disgrace-shame word. As we have seen, it involves a powerful sense of wrong; it comes as a surprise; it frightens; it isolates. On the other hand, the shame word in the Protagoras is aidôs, a sense of respect. (In Schneider's terms, "discretion-shame.") It brings us up short before a god, a sacred place, or another human.
The second answer, and it is crucial to see this, is that without aidôs to form the social matrix in the first place, there would by no social world in Eden or Athens. Thus, the field of meaning marked out by disgrace terms bôsh (Hebrew) and aischunê (Greek) assumes that something like aidôs already is in place. Without that, there would be no human community to start with.
The Mediterranean World
In order to make sense of the cultures and issues we are examining, it is imperative to think
about two pivotal values. To get at that, let me repeat some advice which a well-known Greek
anthropologist gave to our students on an off-campus program in Greece. She was explaining some of the
differences she discerned between Greek society and the cultures of most of Europe and of the United
States:
- "When you go out into the street after this lecture, look for a mother carrying a baby. What you see will surprise you, because the mother will be carrying her baby facing out, looking at you. In Europe, and in the 'States', babies are buried in the mother's hair, facing not the other person, but the mother's shoulder. But this is no way to raise a child. From the very first the child must face the gaze of that other person. We call it egoismós. Yes it sounds like your word egoism, but that is not what it means. It is more like dignity, or honor. It is the ability to look the other person in the eye without flinching."
Notice, the importance given to "face". What is this all about? Anthropologists say it pertains to pivotal values, honor and shame. Moreover, many claim that the broad outlines of this honor system extend backwards well over two millennia, That is, extending backwards to what we have seen in Genesis and in the Greek term for disgrace, aischunê.
Honor and Shame as Pivotal Values
Honor has two parts. First, it is a person's claim to positive value in his or her own eyes.
Second, it is the affirmation of that person's worth in the eyes of others---the social group, primarily one's
kinsfolk. Another way to put it: this is drawing a line in the sand in terms of one's power.
For example, a father claims status because of gender, parentage and being head of the
household., When he commands and his children obey, that confirms his power -- and onlookers agree.
Were they to disobey-his daughter elopes-- the father would be dishonored. His claim would be denied by
his kin group and the effects of that denial would ripple into the community. He would be shamed. Notice,
too, honor is not linked to physical force as much as the ability to control events.
Limited Goods: Honor as a Scarce Resource
There is a central aspect of this social pattern which m ay be difficult to get one's mind around. The predominant view of material, social, and personal goods is that they are in limited supply. Now, in an ancient agrarian society on the edge of the desert we can understand that sometimes there might not be enough grain to feed the people. But, in these societies, as in much of the Mediterranean basin, the same thing is true of intangibles, like honor. If one person, family, or social group wins, another loses. And there is no gain without loss. A vivid picture of that emerges in the case of conquering leaders. Often they take the titles of those they vanquish. One's gain is another's loss. And this plays out to the micro level.
Honor Ascribed or Achieved
Well, if honor is so important, how does one gain it? For a father, with respectful sons and
daughters well-married, for example, honor is ascribed. In some respects it is passively acquired by the
fact of being male. In other respects it is achieved, by contending for it. Most social interactions outside
the family were honor challenges: an invitation to dinner, a gift, or, as was the case with Jesus and his
opponents, debates about acceptable behavior, about the law. This adds up to what anthropologists call an
agonistic society, a "contest" culture, sharply competitive. Persons who are playing the game must fend
off frequent challenges to their honor. Some were banned from the game, too poor, too ill, too marginal.
Others might try to avoid it. But without the game, without contest in some form, honor could not be
achieved and maintained.
Social Selves: the Contrast with Individualism
In this pattern one sees another aspect of life. Personal identity, including one's sense of honor, is a complex mixture of one's own perception and that of others. Rather than being what we might call "individualistic", persons are two-sided, only understanding themselves, and to be understood, in terms of their relation to specific others. I prefer to call them "social selves." To be a person is to be in society. "Self-sufficient individual" is a category that simply would not compute. This marks a sharp contrast with our way of thinking. For most moderns the focal institutions are economic, and our chief goal is individual, instrumental mastery, and autonomy. For the ancients, the dominant institutions are family and kin. Persons practice rules that will keep the group intact and strong for that helps sustain life.
Mark: Preview for Lecture Two
My interest in the Gospel of Mark has been rekindled by my colleague, Steve Heiny, known here as a classicist (though known to my daughters for his extraordinary 'Donald Duck'). Often, Mark has not been highly regarded by students of ancient literature. For one thing, the gospel is written in a kind of street-language Greek, and even in that idiom it seems poorly crafted. Steve challenges that. As well, he put me onto a classic book by Eric Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Ancient Literature . Auerbach, a literary scholar, claimed that Mark is a document unusual in ancient literatureremarkable in its capacity to look into the heart of a common person. Prime example? Peter, Jesus' most prominent disciple. So, as you read the text, you might try to decide what Mark's and your diagnosis of Peter's character is. Most people read Peter as a boaster...but a coward who bailed out when in a crisis.
Already I have used a term 'gospel' which will be unfamiliar to many of you, at least as a genre of literature. So what is Mark? It is not a biography of Jesus nor a text of history, though it includes some of each. In Mark we have the invention of a new meaning for a common Greek word euangellion. We might translate euangellion as "news you are glad to hear". But the text of Mark is that new meaning. If you are to understand what the word means, you will find it reading Mark. During the week ahead it will be up to you to figure out what he thought his readers would be glad to hear.
Let me call your attention to a couple of other points in Mark. First, however simple the text
seems at first, there are cultural differences which leave me in awe. I imagine that some of the class
discussionsand your own incredulitymight be about miracles: Did they happen? How? Are the stories
glossed to boost Jesus' reputation? Etc. Now to the part I find mind-stretching. The word "miracle" is
thoroughly modern, and it does not appear in Mark. His word is "mighty works". The Greek is dunamis
, from which we derive 'dynamite'. For his readers, friend and foe alike, at issue is not our question did
they happen? They accepted that. The burning question for them is, "Whose dynamite is thisthat of the
divine or the demonic"? Isn't that wild?
Closely related. After a number of episodes, particularly the healings and exorcisms,
Jesus says, "Tell no one." Why? Does Jesus not want people to know of his and/or God"s
power?
Finally, some of Jesus' teachings sound like Zen Buddhist koans.
*"When both hands are clapped a sound is produced;
listen to the sound of one hand clapping."
"What is the Buddha?"
"Three pounds of flax."
*
Can we make any sense of 'whoever would save their life must lose it? Or, "whoever wishes to
be great among you must be your slave".
This brings us to what may be the toughest part of all: Mark belongs to something called 'Bible,'
and that is really loaded in our culture, isn't it? Probably it is our most heavily contested text. And where
does one get one's bearings...when its public exponents range all the way from the T.V. evangelists to the
late Mother Theresa, who gave her life caring for the poor of Calcutta?
This baggage does affect our work with Mark. For some, whose experience with these texts has
been negative or trivial, the assignment might require what Samuel Coleridge called, "...a willing
suspension of disbelief." For others, for whom texts like this one have been meaningful, the task of the
assignment might be to read with new eyes, in search of something unexpected.
One final matter. Jesus. I take my interpretive cue from another text in the New Testament, the Letter to the Hebrews." There the author says of Jesus "...he is one who in every respect has been tempted as we are..."(2:15). That is, however extraordinary, he is fully human. As with the following. A friend of mine who teaches Bible in a community college in Sheboygan... Now Sheboygan is not Richmond ...I mean, a community college is not Earlham,... He says, "Mah students come in that door thinkin Jesus is a fella that walks 2 feet off the ground with a halo around his head. The liberals reject that, and the conservatives accept it. But it is the same model." Also, I imagine that many in our culture would like a Jesus who is analogous to the original supermanas long as it is their needs not Lois Lane's which he meets (See my paper, 'Interventions,' for a development of this point.).
To conclude this lecture and anticipate the next, I would like to tell you one story from Mark, that
of Jesus' encounter with a Syrophonecian woman(7:24-30). As most of you have not yet read Mark, I
shall indicate two things you will need to know to grasp the drama in the story:
1) The woman is a Syrophonecian. Her people, the Syrians, were the Jews' keenest enemies and
frequent conquerors. A hundred-fifty years earlier occupied by her people, the king Antiochus IV,
sacrificed a pig on the high altar. Jews called this, "The abomination of desolation."
2) The use of dogs in the story is a racial slur. It is like the 1960's rhetoric, calling the
police "pigs".
3) Demons in the ancient world were agents of corporate powers of evil. These powers might
afflict and oppress everyone, friend and foe alike. Judaism held that all persons were subject to the
influence of some power or mythos.
Mark 7:24-30.
And from Galilee Jesus arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
And he entered a house and wanted no one to know,
Yet he could not be hid.
But immediately a woman,
whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit,
heard of him,
and came and fell down at his feet.
Now the woman was a Greek,
a Syrophonecian by birth.
And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
And he said to her,
"Let the children first by fed.
For it is not right to take the children's bread and hurl it to the dogs."
But she answered him,
"Yes, Lord;
Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."
And he said to her,
"For this saying you may go your way;
The demon has left your daughter."
And she went home,
and found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.
Copyright ©2000 Richard Davis
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