People sometimes ask why I read magazines from back to front. I always thought it was just a weird habit, but actually there’s method to my madness.
I don’t read all magazines in this bizarre fashion. The New Yorker is different because I check the table of contents page first to see if my favorite writers are in the weekly issue. If so, I go straight to that page. Otherwise, I start with “Talk of the Town,” then proceed to “Shouts and Murmurs” and thumb through the cartoons, not all of which I get.
With Scientific American, it’s the opposite. My favorite columnist, Steve Mirsky, is at the back so I work my way forward. Some of the featured articles are way over my head so I make sure if I start one that there will be ample time to digest it.
This past week I read David Brooks’ column (a reprint from the New York Times in our local newspaper). The headline, “Shame Culture and the New Inclusion/Exclusion Paradigm,” seemed a bit off-putting, but I ploughed ahead then liked enough of it to read it several more times. He did use some words and concepts that were hard to grasp but with persistence and a bit of luck, I think I got it.
Brooks’ point was well taken. It explores the differences between moral judgments and subjective personal values. Also how the overuse of social media plays into this and makes young people afraid to take positions that might be seen as politically incorrect. They fear being excluded by the “in crowd” or shamed for their views.
It used to be that American campuses were places of deep discussion, at least in small group seminars. Students weren’t afraid to take unpopular positions or at least to explore those possibilities. It seems now that students fear the response that could appear almost instantly on Facebook or Instagram.
Brooks cites an essay by Andy Crouch published in Christianity Today last year discussing the difference between the shame culture and the guilt culture. This was the part that at first I found turgid, but then struggled through. Shame is what your peers make you feel when they disagree with you. Guilt is what you feel when you’ve done something that goes against your own moral beliefs. Or at least I think that’s what he was saying.
According to my favorite dictionary, New World of the American Language, shame is a noun meaning “a painful feeling of having lost the respect of others” while guilt is “the act or state of having done a wrong or committed an offence.”
Contrast these with Roget’s Thesaurus, which lists shame as a synonym for guilt or humiliation or, as a verb, meaning to embarrass, dishonor or disgrace. Go figure.
The last paragraph of Brooks’ essay explains: The guilt culture could be harsh but at least you could hate the sin and still love the sinner. The modern shame culture allegedly values inclusion and tolerance but it can be strangely unmerciful to those who disagree and to those who don’t fit in.
Meanwhile, Steve Mirsky’s “Anti Gravity” column in the April issue of Scientific American is about how some languages use a certain word to describe a specific feeling or incident but for which English has no similar word.
Growing up on both east and west coasts of this country, I developed a fancy for Yiddish words which have no synonym in English. Mirsky uses the example kvell, “to glow with pride and happiness at the successes of others (usually family members).” He wonders if any mom or dad truly kvell without access to the word.
In reading books, however, I am annoyed by having to look up meanings for more than one word where the author could easily have used a more common word meaning the same thing. If I need a dictionary more than twice in the first few pages, that book may remain on the shelf unread.
An example is the word “prosody,” which onary lists prosody as the art or science of versification. In the interests of clarity and ease, I would skip prosody and just use poetry, which everyone understands, instead. The book in question had a character use that word when no one of his background would have a clue what it meant.
In Brooks’ column, the individual words weren’t unusual but the context made the reading slow and in some cases obscured their meaning. I’m pretty sure I agree with his message but perhaps I’m getting too old and cranky to wade through such difficult concepts. I hope not.