Humiliation
November 29th 2007 09:42
How do you define "humiliation"?
Well, here's three common characteristics, though there are other ways to characterize, other patterns to discern, and though I doubt I'm saying anything that "The Waterboy" doesn't.
Firstly, to humiliate someone is often to put them down in front of others. To demonstrate their lack of power or worthiness. To socially demote them. To force them into a position in which they can be subjected to various forms of abuse. So, once you "make" the weird-looking kid into an object of ridicule (and you are transforming him), then it's acceptable for everyone to crack jokes "at his expense" (and the jokes do cost him).
In these sorts of usages, "humiliate" is basically parasitic on social arrangements and rules. It's a concept that's better suited to caste and honour societies than to a monastery of Buddhist monks. And note also the cultural-relativity of humiliation: in one society, it's horrible to have lost your virginity; in another, it's horrible not to.
A ladder, if you like, and the repositioning of a person on that ladder (although this picture, and the idea of "status", oversimplify -- social position isn't linear).
Notes:
-- It's arguable that the loser of a fight between stags, gorillas, dogs, etc is "humiliated" -- somehow "lowered" before their opponent, and also before the tribe. So even if it's fair to say that we humans primarily experience humiliation as requiring social hierarchy, still it may be that the concept encompasses, and might even have its roots in, these other more direct dimunitions of power and expectations.
-- There are humiliations where one person insults another. But obviously you can humiliate yourself (as when Priam rubs dung into his beard in mourning for Hector). And there are also humiliations where one person's lowering transmits to another -- the child can bring humiliation on the parent, the student on the teacher, the knight on the overlord, the citizen on the city, the judge on the legal system, Ben Cousins on the AFL, etc -- just as praise and honour can also transmit.
Secondly, when I ridicule the weird-looking kid, sure I change social repercussions and other people's possibilities of action -- how they see him and may treat him, and what he may claim from them. But, quite likely, I'm also changing his behaviour -- independently of what the rest of society thinks.
And I change his behaviour in a general way -- I don't simply make him hate me, for instance, but he also becomes "cowed", perhaps, or insecure, or submissive, or...
Consider the personality changes causable by rape. Or, in "Waterboy", consider the way that coach Henry Winkler is said to have lost his manhood after backing down from the evil coach's threat.
If you reflect on the matter somewhat abstractly, it's not evident that these should be the case. I mean, just because I do you injury, or effect a social demotion, doesn't necessitate that anything else should change. Just because the coach backed down on that one occasion needn't have flow-on effects elsewhere.
I don't want to much speculate on why behaviour can change, and on all the various forms that such a change might take. The matter is too complex for me. But if one wanted to discuss these things, there might be various ways in which to talk, including in terms of:
-- (1) various psychological theories and concepts (like "self-esteem" and "identity");
-- (2) the causality of observable behaviour (for instance, "aversion effects" and "conditioning" -- once bitten twice shy);
-- (3) changes in belief which then, for some reason, change behaviour (perhaps including beliefs about limits of abilities, social power and standing, importance in the world, the goodness of others);
-- (4) concepts and beliefs already possessed that activate behaviour change, or are the preconditions for it (which might include any number of things; for instance, you might possess beliefs about entitlement and who deserves what; or beliefs about taint and impurity; or normative beliefs about what people of certain degrees of importance, status, position should and shouldn't do; or descriptive beliefs about what's entailed by certain degrees of status; and these notions might in turn require, say, a concept of "importance" and beliefs about how to evaluate importance);
-- (5) or you might talk in terms of conscious experience to explain behaviour change -- you might appeal, for instance, to "shifts in perspective" and "seeing as" (like seeing an optical illusion either as turning left or right; I've rambled on elsewhere about suddenly seeing yourself as a cancer patient).
Thirdly, it's arguable that an important characteristic of humiliation is what it feels like. So, one might mention emotions like anger, frustration, and impotence, or a sheer confusion of experience, or an overwhelming plethora of experience.
(I don't know, though, if there's a distinctive emotion that is or can be called "humiliation". Hard questions here for another time, including -- what is an emotion; what is a distinctive emotion; and how does one determine it.)
These experiences arguably count as a form of suffering or mental injury (like offence). At any rate, they're unchosen and unwanted.
Other thoughts
-- Humiliation doesn't always come from the outside. Not only can you humiliate yourself (by breach of etiquette, say, or by demonstration of mental or physical incompetence) -- but humiliation can occur when there's no other person present. You can be secretly humiliated at your bed-wetting, or at the fact that you've never finished the computer game "Doom" without cheating, or that you've never read Hamlet. The standards, the gaze, of society lie still upon you.
These aren't simply a matter of fear of exposure, fear of future humiliation before others, but they can involve the experiences and changes in behaviour I've spoken of -- and, perversely, they can involve "social" repercussions.
For you yourself are a member of society. Just as, with the ridiculing of the weird kid, onlookers are liberated to take advantage of him in future, so in cases of solo-humiliation your future self is liberated to self-abuse.
-- It needn't be clear-cut what counts as "humiliation".
If you're socially demoted, but untouched inside, and keep your head high, are you "humiliated"? -- Maybe yes, maybe no.
-- How does "humiliation" relate to "shame" or "embarrassment"?
Well, I think the three are very close, but perhaps "humiliate" often has more of a social flavour.
-- One learns to be insulted, one learns to find this or that funny, and, presumably, one learns to be humiliated, embarrassed, ashamed.
And if this is the case, then perhaps the learning comes in stages, just as children's jokes are steps towards what they'll later find funny.
-- There's many other arguable characteristics of humiliation I haven't mentioned. For instance: (1) the idea that humiliation is associated with a sudden nakedness, vulnerability -- all eyes turn to you. And, in the cases of nudity, sex, and excrement, there might be a genetic explanation for one's reaction, and non-human animals might react similarly to humans; (2) the related idea that humiliation is to do with separation from a group; (3) the way humiliation is often connected with authority, or loss of control, or being forced into an impossible situation; and (4) the relation between humiliation, personhood, and depersonalisation.
-- If you were never part of a society, could you be humiliated? For instance, could you have set up a standards for yourself to meet, and be humiliated when you failed?
Well, this is an ambiguous question of how far the word can extend. And there are also issues here, very unclear in my mind, of what a "self" is, whether one needs a self to be humiliated, whether a self could have arisen outside society, and what role, if any, the idea of "situated self" plays.
-- Can your pet dog be humiliated when you catch her doing something you've told her not to?
She can be "cowed", certainly. But there's an interpretational question whether her reaction is indicative of humiliation or fear or placation or something else. And there are again issues of "self" and ambiguities of linguistic width.
-- In an interesting article on public humiliation, Wikipedia notes that it "was often used by local communities to punish minor and petty criminals before the age of large, modern prisons (imprisonment was long unusual as a punishment, rather a method of coercion)."
-- Someone pointed me to this: Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies.
The image of the femme tondue came from this site and its caption reads "Chartres, 1944. Photo Robert Capra/Magnum."
The image of the Polish Jews came from this website and is credited to "Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives."
Well, here's three common characteristics, though there are other ways to characterize, other patterns to discern, and though I doubt I'm saying anything that "The Waterboy" doesn't.
***
Firstly, to humiliate someone is often to put them down in front of others. To demonstrate their lack of power or worthiness. To socially demote them. To force them into a position in which they can be subjected to various forms of abuse. So, once you "make" the weird-looking kid into an object of ridicule (and you are transforming him), then it's acceptable for everyone to crack jokes "at his expense" (and the jokes do cost him).
In these sorts of usages, "humiliate" is basically parasitic on social arrangements and rules. It's a concept that's better suited to caste and honour societies than to a monastery of Buddhist monks. And note also the cultural-relativity of humiliation: in one society, it's horrible to have lost your virginity; in another, it's horrible not to.
A ladder, if you like, and the repositioning of a person on that ladder (although this picture, and the idea of "status", oversimplify -- social position isn't linear).
'Une femme tondue': head shaved and paraded through the streets as punishment for alleged 'collaboration'
Notes:
-- It's arguable that the loser of a fight between stags, gorillas, dogs, etc is "humiliated" -- somehow "lowered" before their opponent, and also before the tribe. So even if it's fair to say that we humans primarily experience humiliation as requiring social hierarchy, still it may be that the concept encompasses, and might even have its roots in, these other more direct dimunitions of power and expectations.
-- There are humiliations where one person insults another. But obviously you can humiliate yourself (as when Priam rubs dung into his beard in mourning for Hector). And there are also humiliations where one person's lowering transmits to another -- the child can bring humiliation on the parent, the student on the teacher, the knight on the overlord, the citizen on the city, the judge on the legal system, Ben Cousins on the AFL, etc -- just as praise and honour can also transmit.
***
And I change his behaviour in a general way -- I don't simply make him hate me, for instance, but he also becomes "cowed", perhaps, or insecure, or submissive, or...
Consider the personality changes causable by rape. Or, in "Waterboy", consider the way that coach Henry Winkler is said to have lost his manhood after backing down from the evil coach's threat.
If you reflect on the matter somewhat abstractly, it's not evident that these should be the case. I mean, just because I do you injury, or effect a social demotion, doesn't necessitate that anything else should change. Just because the coach backed down on that one occasion needn't have flow-on effects elsewhere.
I don't want to much speculate on why behaviour can change, and on all the various forms that such a change might take. The matter is too complex for me. But if one wanted to discuss these things, there might be various ways in which to talk, including in terms of:
-- (1) various psychological theories and concepts (like "self-esteem" and "identity");
-- (2) the causality of observable behaviour (for instance, "aversion effects" and "conditioning" -- once bitten twice shy);
-- (3) changes in belief which then, for some reason, change behaviour (perhaps including beliefs about limits of abilities, social power and standing, importance in the world, the goodness of others);
-- (4) concepts and beliefs already possessed that activate behaviour change, or are the preconditions for it (which might include any number of things; for instance, you might possess beliefs about entitlement and who deserves what; or beliefs about taint and impurity; or normative beliefs about what people of certain degrees of importance, status, position should and shouldn't do; or descriptive beliefs about what's entailed by certain degrees of status; and these notions might in turn require, say, a concept of "importance" and beliefs about how to evaluate importance);
-- (5) or you might talk in terms of conscious experience to explain behaviour change -- you might appeal, for instance, to "shifts in perspective" and "seeing as" (like seeing an optical illusion either as turning left or right; I've rambled on elsewhere about suddenly seeing yourself as a cancer patient).
Tarring and feathering
***
Thirdly, it's arguable that an important characteristic of humiliation is what it feels like. So, one might mention emotions like anger, frustration, and impotence, or a sheer confusion of experience, or an overwhelming plethora of experience.
(I don't know, though, if there's a distinctive emotion that is or can be called "humiliation". Hard questions here for another time, including -- what is an emotion; what is a distinctive emotion; and how does one determine it.)
These experiences arguably count as a form of suffering or mental injury (like offence). At any rate, they're unchosen and unwanted.
***
Other thoughts
-- Humiliation doesn't always come from the outside. Not only can you humiliate yourself (by breach of etiquette, say, or by demonstration of mental or physical incompetence) -- but humiliation can occur when there's no other person present. You can be secretly humiliated at your bed-wetting, or at the fact that you've never finished the computer game "Doom" without cheating, or that you've never read Hamlet. The standards, the gaze, of society lie still upon you.
These aren't simply a matter of fear of exposure, fear of future humiliation before others, but they can involve the experiences and changes in behaviour I've spoken of -- and, perversely, they can involve "social" repercussions.
For you yourself are a member of society. Just as, with the ridiculing of the weird kid, onlookers are liberated to take advantage of him in future, so in cases of solo-humiliation your future self is liberated to self-abuse.
-- It needn't be clear-cut what counts as "humiliation".
If you're socially demoted, but untouched inside, and keep your head high, are you "humiliated"? -- Maybe yes, maybe no.
-- How does "humiliation" relate to "shame" or "embarrassment"?
Well, I think the three are very close, but perhaps "humiliate" often has more of a social flavour.
-- One learns to be insulted, one learns to find this or that funny, and, presumably, one learns to be humiliated, embarrassed, ashamed.
And if this is the case, then perhaps the learning comes in stages, just as children's jokes are steps towards what they'll later find funny.
-- There's many other arguable characteristics of humiliation I haven't mentioned. For instance: (1) the idea that humiliation is associated with a sudden nakedness, vulnerability -- all eyes turn to you. And, in the cases of nudity, sex, and excrement, there might be a genetic explanation for one's reaction, and non-human animals might react similarly to humans; (2) the related idea that humiliation is to do with separation from a group; (3) the way humiliation is often connected with authority, or loss of control, or being forced into an impossible situation; and (4) the relation between humiliation, personhood, and depersonalisation.
'One Jew is forced to cut the beard of another under German supervision as the local population of Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland, watches.'
-- If you were never part of a society, could you be humiliated? For instance, could you have set up a standards for yourself to meet, and be humiliated when you failed?
Well, this is an ambiguous question of how far the word can extend. And there are also issues here, very unclear in my mind, of what a "self" is, whether one needs a self to be humiliated, whether a self could have arisen outside society, and what role, if any, the idea of "situated self" plays.
-- Can your pet dog be humiliated when you catch her doing something you've told her not to?
She can be "cowed", certainly. But there's an interpretational question whether her reaction is indicative of humiliation or fear or placation or something else. And there are again issues of "self" and ambiguities of linguistic width.
-- In an interesting article on public humiliation, Wikipedia notes that it "was often used by local communities to punish minor and petty criminals before the age of large, modern prisons (imprisonment was long unusual as a punishment, rather a method of coercion)."
-- Someone pointed me to this: Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies.
***
The image of the femme tondue came from this site and its caption reads "Chartres, 1944. Photo Robert Capra/Magnum."
The image of the Polish Jews came from this website and is credited to "Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives."
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Comment by Damo
Humiliation requires two view points.
The audience who sees they victim as being humiliated and the victim who is humiliated.
Gandhi took the view that self respect was they key to over coming any personal humiliation.
"...in the end you will my dead body but not my self respect..."
The question of self pride and understanding of responsibility for the actions needs to be taken into accounts.
Who is really humilating whom when they attack an innocent person? I sthe victim humiliated or is the attacker humiliating himself by taking such base actions?
There is also an anti-humiliating view to being oppressed. "I see your violence against me as a badge of pride."
Comment by Nonymous
Philosophy Blog
I claimed in my post: "It needn't be clear-cut what counts as 'humiliation'. If you're socially demoted, but untouched inside, and keep your head high, are you 'humiliated'? -- Maybe yes, maybe no."
This matter isn't resolved in my mind. You've written that humiliated requires two things -- a change in the audience, and a change in the victim. But I guess I'm not convinced, for the time being anyway, that you do need both these conditions satisfied in order for something to count as "humiliation".
It's a linguistic question, and I suppose, as far as English goes anyway, it could be sorted by reference to the history of usage of the word.
But if one wants to talk about humiliation as a "concept" that transcends cultures -- eg, "The concept of humiliation exists in Japan (even though they don't use the English word)" -- then what does and doesn't count as "humiliation" is even more complex... Probably ultimately a vague matter of family resemblance...
With regards to humiliation and responsibility... I think you're saying that the only times when people should feel humiliated are when they're responsbile for some wrongdoing.
Well, this is very tricky for me to talk about. For instance, say what "humiliation" partly refers to is a distinctive emotion. Well, compare other emotions -- how does one set rules as to when people should and shouldn't feel anger, fear, sadness, happiness...?
On what basis does one give the command "should" or "should not" in the first place?
And Vulcans would presumably argue that it's never appropriate to feel any emotion!
Won't say too much about this here; but these issues are tied up with what's called "virtue ethics".
It should be added that many cultures seem to believe that you can be "lowered" in some sense even though you're not personally responsible (and if you accept that such beliefs are for whatever reason justified, then this may well have implications for the reasonableness of emotional sequelae). For instance, there is the Catholic belief in "original sin" -- the sin of Adam passes to his descendants, and makes them guilty in the sight of God . Or there is the Shinto/Islamic belief that you become defiled once you come into contact with menstrual blood. And there are various cultures that believe that the child can "bring shame" on the family -- there can be transmission, through no fault of the family.