Humiliation... we've all experienced it at some point in our lives,
or we've done it to others, but why?
The point of humiliating someone is to dehumanise them,
to redefine them.
In other words, to rob them of their self-perceived identity
and thus, attack their power.
We see these exchanges in Parliament,
and this feeds the cycle of humiliation
being part of our culture.
We've normalised humiliation.
If we feel humiliated by our situation,
we seek a group of others to blame and, unfortunately, humiliate.
We're pack animals,
and so to be socially attractive is important to us.
have a role in our evolution.
If we have committed what could be considered a faux pas,
we show embarrassment,
and then we're less likely to be attacked
by other members of the tribe.
This is why we blush when we get employee of the month
or are otherwise singled out.
We're saying with that embarrassment, "Don't attack me."
Shame is something we feel for something we've done,
and its purpose is similar.
Humiliation is done to us by others,
it is embarrassment plus shame plus, plus, plus.
And what the plus, plus, plus is could be defined as loss of face.
We have an idea of who we are and what we're like,
and when this is challenged
we can experience a feeling of being obliterated,
a sense of loss of self.
We can even feel humiliated if a photograph of ourselves is published,
and we have a different image of ourselves than that photo.
The photo is a threat to how we want to identify ourselves.
The usual scenario is the humiliator fears being humiliated,
or already feels humiliated and powerless,
and the way they seek to regain their power is to take away power,
to harm the identity of the person they see as their persecutor.
Men, I believe, have a particularly tough time of it,
because all over the world they have been socialised to be...
which usually means suppressing or denying themselves vulnerable states,
as part of how they identify themselves.
For example, a lot of men feel that in order to identify as strong,
they can't be seen to show...
This is a really difficult self-image to live up to.
When a vulnerability is exposed by someone,
it may be that the only way that they can regain their supposed power
is to resort to violence.
It may be this enculturation of the macho tough guy
being the only desirable image for a man, that's one of the reasons
that men are many times more violent and aggressive than women.
But, the violence rarely ends anything.
It usually leads to more humiliation and more violence.
We may have a hunger for revenge,
and humiliation is often a part of revenge.
But the only way to redemption is to build up our enemies,
not knock them down.
This means, for example, giving prisoners education,
training and therapy.
Not more punishment and, therefore, more humiliation,
leading to more anger, more violence.
Maybe we all need to be humiliated about our habits of humiliation.
We need to readjust until we realise we have been all too stupid,
lazy, unthinking
and, basically, daft, to carry on with this winning and losing game.
Will we dare to be vulnerable and say we don't know the solutions yet,
but humiliation, and otherwise annihilating the enemy isn't working.
We just might become less susceptible to humiliation
if we were not so worried about how others see and experience us.
Let's let go of self-image.
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