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Canada, Exclusive to COTW, Reflections

About shame

!Epic Tomorrows

Submitted to COTW anonymously from QC, Canada; translated from the French using ChatGPT

Shame is the emotion associated with the feeling of being inadequate, defective, or unworthy of belonging to the group. A painful, even debilitating emotion, it is fundamentally social in nature. From as early as age 3–5, it brands with a hot iron the behaviors deemed socially reprehensible. It is the ultimate physiological punishment for having “acted wrongly.” The sentence: exclusion from the group and the anticipated loss of one’s humanity. For the nervous system of a social animal, exile is death. Shame, therefore, is the feeling of imminent death. No wonder we constantly pass it around like a hot potato — both a source of power when imposed on others (symbolic murder) and a source of deep suffering when endured ourselves (living is killing me).

The physical consequence of shame is the inhibition of the motor system, the protection of internal organs (shoulders curving inward), and a painful tightening in the chest or stomach. The internal message is: if I keep acting, I will die. In its primary function, shame is essential to social regulation. It is likely the first regulator of our instinctive violence. We will all experience shame many times throughout our lives. As long as it is felt occasionally, in response to deviant, violent, or destructive behaviors, it is an emotion that has its place in the normal conditioning of human beings.

Shame becomes problematic when it is experienced systematically, with no symbolic possibility of correction, repair, or lasting return to inclusion. When one endures shame continuously, one ends up living in a state of constant chronic stress. Cortisol, at high doses and for long periods of time, becomes neurotoxic. Executive functions diminish, as does our capacity to self-regulate and return to a “rest and digest” state. In some cases, it kills. At best, it generates trauma.

As with any stressor, the nervous system will typically seek a fight-or-flight response to cope. When physical escape from the shame-generating environment is impossible — or when shame has become internalized and follows us wherever we go — two other options arise: chemical regulation (drugs) and/or dissociation (inhibition of the circuits associated with pain and emotion). On the “fight” side, it is generally through contempt or violence that one seeks to silence shame. Contempt is the psychological belittling of the person generating shame — in other words, the externalization of shame: It’s not me who should be ashamed — it’s you. Violence is the desire to subjugate, psychologically or physically, the perceived source of one’s shame: If you disappear, I will no longer feel ashamed. All of these strategies temporarily dispel the feeling of shame, but if the source of shame is not addressed and resolved, the pendulum almost inevitably swings back.

This duality of shame and contempt/violence may be at the root of the worst facets of human experience. It is a self-fueling pendulum, naturally and indefinitely oscillating between one state and the other, as long as the underlying issue — internal or external — remains unresolved. When two shame-carrying individuals live in close proximity, their pendulums tend to synchronize.

Sometimes the pendulum stays in relative equilibrium, sometimes for many years, with each party managing to counteract the other’s contempt in a roughly symmetrical way. These are painful, loveless partnerships, but relatively functional ones — not without their good moments, between each swing of the pendulum, when both parties find themselves at a standstill.

One day, however, in such dynamics, a vulnerability appears: one party cracks, asks for forgiveness, and promises to change. The pendulum, established over years, will not stop for that. This time, contempt will meet vulnerability, driving a little deeper with each swing. Contempt — the antithesis of shame, or rather, externalized shame — is strangely addictive. It confers a sense of power on the one who expresses it. Left unchecked, it tends to grow, naturally escalating into violence.

Eventually, the party in the weaker position within this dynamic will seek to flee, appease, or retaliate. Flight, without external support, will not always be possible, or at least not immediately. Flight also means the unknown. Letting go of familiar bearings, even unhealthy ones, is always a painful experience. Appeasement works in the short term, calming the aggressor’s impulses, but at the same time, by avoiding conflict, legitimizes them. Retaliation, costly in energy, becomes increasingly difficult as the victim’s resources are depleted. The experience of violence, and the shame that follows from it, is inherently incapacitating and traumatic.

It is generally through a combination of these strategies that the victimized party manages to extract themselves from the dynamic. If sufficient distance is achieved and an adequate support network exists, and with appropriate psychological help, each party’s pendulum will gradually return to equilibrium.

In the absence of such a support network or sufficient distance, the dynamic will not stop. The violent party, convinced of their superiority and frustrated at not being able to exploit the dynamic for longer, will want more. Violence, and the sense of power it produces, is addictive. If they can no longer reach the victimized party in their immediate environment, they will do so through that person’s social circle —spreading rumors, rallying as many people as possible to their cause, positioning themselves as the victim. The violence becomes communal.

In a healthy community, mechanisms would exist to regulate such processes. The victimized party could draw from their social circle the additional strength needed to provide adequate counterweight to the violent party. The violent party would be brought back into balance by their own circle, or threatened with sanctions. Eventually, if the damage was relatively superficial, after both parties had stabilized, a process of mutual understanding — and perhaps even repair — could be envisioned.

Unfortunately, we do not live in healthy communities, but in a social environment that perpetuates violence and shame across the full breadth of human experience — domestic, geographic, and in working relationships. We have become isolated, inhibited, selfish, and/or full of shame in relation with ourselves. It is no surprise that the far right, which makes its business out of channeling violence and contempt toward marginalized social groups, is flourishing in the current context. Behind the social mechanisms — capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy — that fuel this system, one constant remains: the human propensity to maintain or consolidate one’s status, and to flee from suffering. Dehumanizing the other is simply a means among many to achieve that end. To my knowledge, there is only one remedy to this psychological cancer: connection, community, and love. In the current social and economic environment, opportunities for these are fragile — but not nonexistent. They must be protected and carefully tended.

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, South Korea

Do Not Be Ill, If Spring Must Come After All (아프지 마라, 기어이 올 봄이라면)

!Epic Tomorrows

By Pak Jong-hee

A gentle breeze brushes past, carrying a scent that feels like an old memory. This pungent, slightly fishy aroma that fills my nostrils is the breath of mugwort, rising in clusters as it leans against the spring sunlight. In a corner of the park, on a sun-drenched mound, I see a woman crouched low, picking mugwort. Each time a tender shoot—hardly larger than a baby’s fingertip —is placed in her basket, a warmth like the earth’s own body temperature quietly spreads to my feet.

The woman speaks to me in an excited voice, saying the sky is flawlessly clear today. Looking up, I see that the hue of the sky is indeed different from before. Where the achromatic winter has retreated, has the delicate texture of the pale green grass ever been this vivid? Yet, the brighter the world becomes, the more Spring has always been a precarious guest to me. It is as if I can hear the moans of living things breaking through the stubborn ice of winter.

Spring never arrives for free. The backs of the new shoots tearing through the frozen earth are hunched, and the gestures of the trees squeezing out every drop of their essence to bloom are nothing short of desperate. Whenever I see petals trembling under the lash of a late-frost gale, my heart grows anxious, thinking that such brilliance might actually be a final, frantic struggle bartered for death.

This sense of peril stems from the duality of Spring. On the surface, a hymn of vitality seems to resound, but beneath it, withered grasses and ancient trees—baring their gaunt skeletons—lie scattered like the wreckage of winter. Upon that threshold where warmth and cold intersect, fragile lives cross the boundary between life and death several times a day. To me, Spring has always been a season of pity. Like the late-winter cold that strikes just when you think you’ve arrived, it resembles the seasons of trial that visited me without warning at every turning point in my life.

Spring was just beginning to show its face even at the place where my mother left this world. Perhaps because the void of loss was so deep, I suffered from a severe, aching malaise every Spring. Living with a dry cough throughout the winter, I could only manage to stand up again when the cherry blossoms burst into pink buds, as if tearing their own bodies open. To me, Spring was not a season of vitality but a cold current that I had to swim against with my whole body, year after year.

Looking back, my childhood was also a succession of chilly Springs where I couldn’t even take a single clean breath. Time spent in a village beside a cement factory. Every morning when we opened the door, a thick layer of dust, white as snow, had settled in the yard. The lids of the clay jars, polished to a shine by my mother’s hands, would soon hold their breath under a shroud of gray powder, which would harden like stone after a few days.

Dusting off the particles that settled on each other’s hair was our family’s simplest and warmest kindness in those days. Yet, the fine powder that seeped through that kindness was quietly taking root deep within my mother’s lungs. As a child, I did not know. I did not realize that those hours spent living beneath the factory chimneys were gnawing away at my mother’s breath.

The dry cough that began in her forties became chronic, eventually pinning her to a hospital bed under the name ‘pulmonary edema.’ By the time the environmental lawsuits began, Mother had already passed away. All that remained for me was a Spring illness that resembled her cough and a single scar in my heart that flared up every change of season.

I quietly watch the fingertips of the woman picking mugwort. I try to imagine how long those tender shoots must have endured before pushing up through the hard earth. The vitality of mugwort, erupting through frozen ground, is by no means docile. It is a force of struggle, ultimately heaving the very crust of the earth upward. Like the mugwort that perfects its fragrance even while swaying in the biting wind, perhaps our lives only gain a subtle radiance after passing through the tunnels of ordeal.

The woman suddenly holds out a bag of mugwort toward me as I stand still. With a soft smile, she tells me that if I boil a bowl of soup with some soybean paste, it will be better than any medicine. That smile is as gentle yet sturdy as the pale green shoots that rose after steadfastly enduring all manner of cold.

Returning home with the bag, I fill the kitchen sink with water. As I wash the mugwort several times, bits of dirt and dried leaves float up, and the clear water soon turns a faint green. Dissolving soybean paste in a pot and adding a handful of mugwort, a pungent aroma slowly rises amidst the savory scent. The moment a spoonful of soup enters my mouth, a bitter yet sweet taste lingers on the tip of my tongue.

A sense I had long forgotten awakens. Amidst the rising steam, the memory of sitting on the edge of the wooden porch as a child, blowing on the mugwort soup my mother had boiled for me, comes vividly back to life. Back then, not knowing what this fragrance had endured to rise, I probably just rejoiced that spring had come.

Silently, I set down my spoon and wrap both hands around the bowl where the warmth remains. Then, I step outside again. The wind brushing against my skin is still spicy and cold. But now I know. One must endure this precarious wind for flowers to bloom, and only after passing through this cold does the mugwort truly complete its fragrance.

I lower my mask for a moment and breathe in the air deeply. Leaning my heart into the pungent breath of Spring that seeps deep into my lungs, I whisper softly:

“Do not be ill. If spring must come after all, shouldn’t you cross this season safely?”

If I am still in pain, then this radiant Spring is ultimately nothing more than a season of pain. Today, the green shoots swaying in the breeze appear exceptionally clear. Each of those pale green textures is swaying quietly, yet firmly, as if remembering the freezing seasons they have passed through. Standing before that vitality, I reverently inhale all the pain and endurance dwelling within this fragrance of Spring and this breath of green.

Ecology of the absurd, Exclusive to COTW

You can really do it!

!Epic Tomorrows
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”, Shakespeare, Hamlet circa 1600
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven”, John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667

Zeal is what you need! Get UP! Get unentranced! True, it is hell, but ride the diamond seams right through it, to where your grateful grand nieces will be waiting. Have an apple a day until there are none left, and then a handful of bitter berries a day, and find a new sweetness in that sharp taste.

Enough enough! I know I know, it worsens by the day, you do not need to tell me. Choose your own private bliss and hold steadfastly to it, do what work you can, enjoy the sunrise but more than ever the sunset and all that it is setting on.

I had a new student today. Just ten years old. He was not very communicative. He told me about his best friend. I asked him, why are you best friends? He replied, because I love him and he loves me. He reminded me that sometimes, love can be beautifully simple.

Zeal is what we need. Imagine the good we could do, even if it were just a few of us. There is zeal in ecology, the way it thrives and burns. But we have become lazy. Soon the Earth will force our hands, and we can thank God or Life at least for that.

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, England, Exclusive to COTW

How to ruin a man’s orgasm

!Epic Tomorrows

By Eric Black

The physical techniques are well-known. There is a whole weird subculture online devoted to them. But I refer to the psychological and societal techniques. First, the man should be born into a liberal Western family, which retains just enough unconscious traditional expectation of high male performance as to confuse the young male mind, growing, as it would be, in a free-thinking family which claimed to be indifferent to gender roles. Second, the man should grow to be bisexual, but not to be too comfortable in his bisexuality. Third, his parents should divorce at a young age, with the father leaving the family and maintaining only brief fortnightly contact. Fourth, the man, as a teenager, should over-use alcohol, cannabis, and porn, should go to the wrong university, should leave early and not get a degree, should enter into homo-erotic friendships where neither side admitted the homo-eroticism and where the other guy would dominate the friendship, making it difficult for the man to socialize in a wide and balanced way; and should break up with his first girlfriend, painfully, after a couple of years. Fifth, the man should develop serious mental health problems in his early 20s, feeling like a failure, should make friends with people who later killed themselves, and should have all his prospects for making a living destroyed by peer pressure, the expectations of the university-uneducated and a persistent nagging low self-esteem. Sixth, the man should go through his 2os with no sexual contact with anyone, forcing his sexuality to become auto-erotic, exhausting his orgasms to the point of no return, almost breaking them. Seventh, the man should finally find a long-term partner, but whom he is ultimately not suited to and does not have regular sex with, ending in a protracted and tortuous break-up.

And yet, all this may not be quite enough to totally ruin a mans orgasm, because the man may marry a kind and understanding person, of whatever gender, who may help him to explore his sexuality, who may help him to recover his hardness, as well as his softness, who may support his critique of this abusive society, who may stay with him till the end.