Erosion of Shame

People behaving badly. In my little neck of the woods the other day there's this. Grown people fighting at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant.

I used to think that some people just have no damn sense at all. Now I realize it's not sense or, common sense they're lacking. It's shame.

Shame is necessary for an orderly society. Shame serves a purpose. It is a mechanism of control. It's effective because the behavioral restraint is self-imposed and group reinforced. Religion has made a cottage industry out of it. The powers that be have relied on it in some form or another to help power economic engines, inspire nationalism, and maintain order for centuries. As the erosion of shame progresses and the numbers of Americans behaving badly continues to rise; the question that follows can only be...What happens in a country when shame is no longer effective as a means of control?

The gentle erosion of shame here in America has transformed once unthinkable behavior to...eh, it's no big deal. Think about it. All the things that currently plague our society can be attributed to a simple lack of shame. All types of crime, corruption, perpetual laziness, generational welfare, stepping outside of the marriage, and outright embrace of many things diametrically opposed to traditional American values wouldn't be possible without a distinct lack of shame. I suppose the crystallized version of this is that bad behavior is perfectly acceptable when you have no shame. Which to my way of thinking is patently shameful.