Talk:Guilt–shame–fear spectrum of cultures

Terminology
Among the three, the fear of power is more common in relatively primitive societies, and the use of shame is associated with less developed countries. However, are the terms "primitive society" and "developed society" politically and intellectually correct? Sohale (talk) 17:43, 19 June 2017 (UTC) Use the term Traditional Society. It in an accurate term that describes the values of these peoples and doesn't belittle them.

Partisan associations with guilt/shame
This statement seems odd: "In United States, Republicans practice the world-view of Shame Culture and Democrats can be associated with Guilt Culture."

First, it's questionable whether the cited source actually makes this claim. It's true that the author offers a theory of the case along these lines, but he's also careful to punctuate it with a lot of caveats and qualifiers. So I'm not sure if he would agree with this black & white characterization out of context. Second, there are numerous reliable sources that make opposing claims (re Democrats being the party fixated on shame), for instance here and here. So the claimed correlation does not appear to be a consensus view.

Applying the guilt/shame paradigm to political parties seems risky territory to me, since almost all of the real scholarly work along these lines focuses on comparison of entire cultures to one another, for example western culture to middle-eastern culture. This is not a paradigm that has been thoroughly examined by scholars in the context of subcultures, like conservative Americans vs liberal Americans. I suppose that's not necessarily a showstopper for Wikipedia inclusion, but it does suggest we should be wary, I would think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.87.23.19 (talk) 19:33, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

I think most people would agree that liberals -- the left -- are much more into shame and shaming in order to further their agenda. Let's face it: metoo, BLM, the countless hashtag shaming campaings -- these movements propel themselves forward by shaming.

→ → → To the last two lines above, I would at once agree and wholeheartedly argue against such a premise. Even if such a statement were to be widely accepted in the Wiki community, I cant help but feel it is entirely too politically charged to be allowed to have any bearing on actual, respectable, scholarly work. As far as honest, neutral, information goes.... including even a shred of ones political beliefs, especially those concerning the prevailing "climate" at the time, should be a total taboo depending on the context. The practice of attaching an out of place political spin of any kind to something that can be considered learning materials is simply not helpful. I imagine (and hope) this is clearly obvious for nearly all of the productive contributors that make up Wikipedia's foundation. As this article, in my opinion, has no pressing need to involve such factors, I would go as far to say that it is entirely inappropriate despite the fact it somewhat matches my own beliefs (as it concerns the US's "political left"). Obviously, I say this because generally the information sourced through Wikipedia is intended to be factually accurate and not in constant dispute. This unfortunately becomes impossible once you casually bring political biases into the equation.

More importantly, I could not agree more with the view as stated further above. To summarize, the idea of political parties of any country being defined under the classifications, as laid out in this article, is borderline arbitrary. '''These concepts\terms are basically a means of generalizing an entire culture\society into an easy to understand philosophy. It attempts to help us understand the social pressures used to obtain compliance from the average citizen.''' With that in mind, a political party is much too specific and specialized to be classified along these lines. To put it in simpler terms, you can not just pick out any group of people and apply this theory. It basically requires you to look at an entire culture over an extended period of time to establish a trend along with many precedents. Especially considering the current example of the US's two leading parties it comes off as incredibly mistaken for a person knowing a small amount of history. The philosophies and "culture" that create and bind these types of organizations has been known to change over the decades, drastically at times. In broad terms, this is far less pronounced when the observations are limited to groups at the scale of countries or continental regions. There is also the argument that political parties have a systematic method of creation where a "culture" is much more loosely defined in its structure. If you take this into consideration, making an attempt to classify them together as if they were the same thing seems strange.

Furthermore, the example of the USA (Guilt) vs Japan (Shame) being the common example, is proof that over time the cultures themselves have been "corrupted" by one in the sense of mutually influencing one another. To state it plainly, if you believe you can point to an influential group in the US and apply the "Shame Culture" label, doesn't this harm the overall theory of the classification itself? What, with the US being the clear example of a "Guilt Culture" and all.(but I digress) Added ← → to differentiate from the arguments lacking a signature above. ← ← ← Crimson 99.203.142.129 (talk) 07:08, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Would Marxist societies be “fear” cultures?
One question that is not in the text is whether Marxist (Communist) societies could be described as “cultures of fear”? Since Marxism rejects natural moral law and focuses exclusively upon war between classes, at least in practice the main means of social control in Communist countries has been fear of retribution from those holding control of the Party. The absence of any sense of guilt or shame in Marxist ideology may well explain why Communist rulers have had to rely so much on fear to control their population, and why they were able to accumulate totalitarian powers not found in previous types of nondemocratic government. luokehao, 04:10, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * AFAIK, this is one of the breaks between Russian/Soviet Marxism and Chinese Marxism. The USSR used a fear culture to promote civil order, viz. the widespread use of the KGB, Stasi, et al. By contrast in Maoist China the use of public shaming circles was common. (I'm trying to find out about the present). -- Eliyahu S Talk 05:47, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * to be honest, it isn't unique to Soviet society. The state in Russia has a centuries-long track record of using near-barbaric violence in order to put fear and loyalty into its subjects. Certainly, during the Soviet period, this methodology was extended to the Warsaw Pact, but those societies are returning to their previous cultural norms. That this is more distinctly Russian (or perhaps, more broadly, East Slavic) in character is why one can see its perpetuation despite the end of Communism. For sources, I don't have any on hand, but I do recall that Peter the Great tortured many Streltsy to death for rebelling. It's also a prevalent feature of the more notorious fascist states. Kadmii (talk) 16:00, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

← First a disclaimer. I'm not adding any citations for this information, so please take it with a grain of salt while being aware that this is the truth as far as I'm aware. I suggest further reading on the topic if this is new to you, as its entirely possible we may all live under such conditions in the not so distant future. →

I can not help but want to laugh at the previous comment (of course, not in a bad way!). Without being too hard on another countries culture, I believe it is fair to say that China still classifies as a "shame culture". Possibly now more then ever, taking the most recent policies in consideration. While attempting not to write a treatise on the matter, therefore exposing my ignorance, I will try to explain. From what I understand, China is at least in part, deploying and operating a social system that intends to rate your character\morals. Admittedly, casting it into a more negative light, I feel its also fair if someone were to say it rates your usefulness for the governments purposes. As far as I understand it, such a concept is horrifying to most "Western civilizations" citizen's, with their general expectation of privacy to a certain degree. The general idea is your score is measured by many, many factors, such as criminal history, observed behavior as captured on CCTV cameras throughout the country, your spending habits, etc. The truly scary part is this score is basically a "Social Credit Score" as modeled after a "Standard financial credit score". It has a massive impact on your future prospects if you find yourself on the lower end of the spectrum. It will effect your ability to get a job, loans, friends, marriage..... basically your entire life. Also, those people with sub par scores have their identities exposed publicly on a local and national level. Imagine a most wanted list you could end up on for having an especially bad month\year even without committing actual crimes. I also cant imagine that the stigma of such a label would fade very quickly even if you managed to completely reverse the situation in a timely fashion. As far as a random stranger goes, can one be expected to bother examining the circumstances of a person that landed on the "Human Scum List"? The moment such a system is in place, and accepted by even a moderate fraction of the population, its power becomes immense. (For better or worse.) 99.203.142.129 (talk) 08:01, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Reference for fear societies
Where is the reference for fear-based societies? 73.73.127.102 (talk) 14:02, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

“First book”?
"The first book to cogently explain the workings of the Japanese society was The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict."

Conveys a literal meaning not intended I think. Some context and leavening would help. 2601:14D:4801:4FC0:98D1:2C99:88AD:BC23 (talk) 10:22, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

What is "honor–shame culture"?
It's mentioned once in the intro but never expanded upon at all. Anybody have the ability to fill that in? Algernon132 (talk) 02:30, 2 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Same as "shame culture". I've edited to make it hopefully clearer. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:20, 3 April 2024 (UTC)