Michael Moynihan: Ain’t that a shame — etiquette has been thrown under the bus

Some of those rules are worth considering.

(A random example: “Is it ever acceptable to talk to a stranger on an elevator? If there are six or fewer people on the elevator, no. However, if the group is larger than six, you have achieved an Elevator Humor Quorum and someone must make a remark about the elevator’s lack of size or speed in order to relieve the tension created by standing in a tiny space with six or more strangers.”)

Others may not really apply to life on Leeside. From memory The Cut featured a detailed analysis of how to address Robert De Niro if one met him on the streets of Manhattan, for instance: “Bobby” was not considered appropriate, though that will hardly give us pause in the English Market any time soon. The Cork equivalent would be how precisely to salute Cillian Murphy, though it’s difficult to imagine any Cork native searching for a bespoke introduction. Outside close friends and family “Cillian, how are things boy etc.” sounds about right.

But social interactions need to be governed by some kind of framework, logical or not. That’s a basic necessity of modern life. In Ireland as a whole, there have rarely been as many of us together on the island at the same time — bumping into each other, queuing behind each other, massing here and dispersing there, swarming, swimming, supping, surging. 

Everywhere you go there are plenty of people, and where you have plenty of people you need some kind of structure or else mere anarchy is let loose upon the world.

To illustrate: in a Cork shopping precinct recently I ducked into a coffee spot for a refreshing cuppa, but within a minute I had ducked back out, notably unrefreshed.

In the cafe there were three people at various points enjoying the 21st-century boon that is a smartphone with functional speakers and decent WiFi; everyone else was enduring the 21st-century cruelty that is the smartphone user who disdains the use of earphones.

God bless the various engineers and audio specialists who came up with the particular migraine-inducing tinniness synonymous with a smartphone at medium distance. Maybe the sound was better for the three beauties in the cafe, who were enjoying what sounded like a) a Transformers film b) a lengthy discussion of someone else’s private life, and c) a hoarse man gargling carburetors, respectively.

What struck me was not so much that none of the other patrons — me included — spoke up to condemn what was going on. Nor did the staff had any interest in doing anything similar.

The sheer solipsism of the three over-sharers, their entitlement, the assumption that the entire location was theirs and theirs alone — that was my takeaway.

But when I mentioned this to one of the inhabitants of my house, she shrugged.

“You could have asked them to turn off the sound or to put on earphones, but you’d have to make that request directly, and you have to do that because there’s no point in saying to them that they’re being inconsiderate. For them to stop they’d need to be shamed into doing the right thing, and shame just don’t exist any more.”

 Doesn’t it? Did shame go the way of the three-in-one and Mary Rose’s in the Queen’s Old Castle without me noticing?

Shame is a strange notion in twenty-first-century Ireland. It would be difficult to measure its decline. You could try a graph showing the extent to which phrases such as ‘I was ashamed of my life’ have given way to ‘I had nothing to be ashamed of’, but the real reason can be found in your pocket or handbag.

The scouring candour of our moment — the way people like to share details about their lives with perfect strangers — would have been stunning thirty years ago. Not now. Matters which would once have been barely whispered aloud in privacy at home are now broadcast in live and living colour on social media, thanks to the smartphone.

Amazement at this development is not a covert plea for a return to repression. There was a time we had too much shame. We were exporting the stuff, we had so much of it. A shame surplus. Shame lakes. Shame mountains: the Shamealayas, if you will, thanks to the influence of the Church.

Those associations linger, particularly when it comes to matters intimate. There was a reason film director Steve McQueen picked the title he did for his movie about sex addiction. He called it Shame because he didn’t want a smouldering Frenchman or beach-blond Californian in the lead: he went for a lad from Killarney on the basis that no one would be more convincing than an Irishman when it came to shame about one of life’s natural functions.

That title’s wrong, though. A better word would be guilt rather than shame because shame has a wider application in society.

And wider benefits, apparently. In a piece for Vox Joseph Burgo wrote: “According to recent studies in evolutionary science, human beings developed the ability to feel shame because it helped promote social cohesion.

“Our inherited repertoire of emotions, including shame, evolved over the long millennia when we lived in small tribes, when our survival depended heavily on close cooperation and adherence to tribal expectations for behaviour.

“Members who violated the rules would be shunned and shamed; fear of that painful experience encouraged members to obey the rules and work together for the good of the tribe.

“As the lead researcher in one study explained, ‘the function of pain is to prevent us from damaging our own tissue. The function of shame is to prevent us from damaging our social relationships, or to motivate us to repair them.’” 

This is plausible, certainly. My pals in the coffee shop aren’t endangering the tribe with their rudeness, though it’s certainly damaging social relationships if you can’t hear yourself think when you’re out in public.

As an organising principle in society shame could be helpful, particularly if it doesn’t coagulate into guilt, but I’m inclined to agree that its time has passed in our society: that shame is no longer a functioning element in our arrangements.

The smartphone sharers are a good example of this absence because shame needs to be self-generated. We’re all post-shame now — post-shame, post-guilt, post-recrimination — so even if you think you can shame someone, you can’t. Your erstwhile target only feels shame if they’re willing to accept that they’re in the wrong and are causing discomfort to others.

And what tribe in Cork, or anywhere else for that matter, is willing to accept that?