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This is a familiar claim, perhaps first made
by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1958 in a speech to the UN. I don’t have the context,
but the quote is: “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission." Let’s start with what she was trying to say, something like, don’t let prejudice get to you; you need to fight it. That kind of pep talk probably was needed in the dark ages of the fifties, but this idea is now applied to personal relationships and passes as everyday wisdom. What may originally have been an exhortation now is presented as a psychological truth. So how true is it? First it is always a good idea to apply the test of Apfelbaum’s Law of Inverse Homiletics, according to which if the opposite of any oracular statement seems equally true, we’ve got a problem. In this case it would be “any one can make you feel inferior without your permission.” Seems true enough on its face, as any one who has been to high school can attest. But if we try to get to the root of Mrs. Roosevelt’s proposition, the idea is that someone can call you a creep and if it gets to you there must be some kind of internal compliance. What is that exactly? We are talking about the act of being shamed, and actually being shamed is the most common culture-wide way that customs are reinforced. On the tribal level ridicule, laughter, is the whip. What is the internal compliance that gives it its sting? Answer: self-contempt. We then can reformulate the proposition to read, “No one can shame you unless it evokes self-contempt.” Now that is hardly in the spirit in which it is applied. So let’s go to an example. This story was told by some columnist or pundit—I don’t recall who. He said that he was standing on a subway platform and noticed that a somewhat shabby and wild-eyed fellow was accosting people one by one. As he got closer he heard him say to each one, either “You’ll do,” or “No, you won’t do.” Naturally, no one responded since it was too far from any familiar social form to offer any repertoire of responses. People just mostly tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. But as he got closer, the narrator realized, to his surprise and mild consternation, that he was becoming anxious, worried about whether he would be one of the chosen. When the man confronted him he felt a moment of suspense, much as he tried to dismiss it. And when he was told “You’ll do,” he felt stupidly relieved. Where was the permission-compliance-self-contempt here? What was his unwanted vulnerability? Why was he compelled to give his permission? My answer is original sin. That at least is the most familiar reference for the universality of self-hate (self-contempt). Here is where Apfelbaum’s Law kicks in. No one can shame you without your permission, but you are compelled to give your permission. Obviously, this is not working out the way Mrs. Roosevelt intended, but for her it probably was a pep talk. What about now, half a century later? What originally may have been a rallying cry seems to have become a slogan. By that I mean that that it seems to refer to the shame-self contempt connection but it dead ends it. It’s not an invitation to think creatively. It’s the shame-blame dynamism. The intended message is that you needn’t let someone shame you. You are not compelled to give your permission (this is received truth; don’t ask how it got established). Consequently, if you do feel shamed, you yourself are to blame. It's a personal failure. You shouldn’t have allowed it. If you do—then you should be ashamed of yourself. And if being confronted with this truth bothers you are not entitled to blame Mrs. Roosevelt or any of her latter-day co-conspirators. In other words, if someone tells you that no one can make you have a feeling, they are likely to succeed in making you have a feeling—of failure and inadequacy. |
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