On Shame and the Oracle at Delphi

A comment I responded to in a substack got me thinking about shame. And then, as I do, the thoughts spread further afield. I hope this post will be of valuable practical use to both men and women but probably it might be more useful to women, especially towards the end of the post.

This was the comment that set it off:

The post it was on was arguing that sex does not create intimacy in essence. It is a bit more nuanced than that and couched in Christian ethics, but that is the jist of it, which, is, of course, absolute nonsense.

That said, I DO need to clarify that it is nonsense assuming you actually know how to do sex properly.

And what I mean by that is not easy to transmit to people who don’t have the experience of it, plus it is further confused (deeply) by various factors, like culture, upbringing, and any sexual abuse or trauma suffered.

Which is why it makes the topic so complicated and difficult for people to talk or learn about without them talking past each other and getting some core aspects wrong.

So… I expect many of you will misunderstand some aspect of what I am about to try to explain. That is probably unavoidable, but hey, if I didn’t enjoy tilting at windmills we wouldn’t have this blog.

So… here are some axioms that are generally true:

• Puritanical perceptions of sex are essentially unnatural and unhealthy and cause more problems than they solve. The result is invariably dysgenic and overcompensation. The link between this and Protestantism is clear and obvious, and stems from the various Calvinistic nonsense of that perversion of Christianity. Inevitably it leads to societies that malfunction. Be it on drink, drugs, sex, or anything else. Because the “forbidden!” Or “forbidden until 18!” Inevitably causes a psychological break. The fetishisation of sex in many forms comes primarily from this repression. And it’s also why Protestant Anglo countries have a far larger problem of alcoholism and drug use than ex Catholic ones (but of course as protestantism spreads in all it forms (ie Novus Ordo fake “Catholicism”) even the ex Catholic countries are catching up.)

• Matriarchal societies (none exist, but let’s say more gynocentric ones like the UK) will have far more sexual degeneracy than patriarchal ones. Neither extreme is good. English women for example have been considered some of the loosest and easiest to bed in all of Europe. And have been thought of that way since forever. There are literally documents from centuries ago detailing how they are slatterns to a degree that continental Europe could not fathom. And again, while globalism is spreading that too, it is still relatively the case if you compare the average English woman with the average Italian woman. Yes, yes, of course there are exceptions, always, but try to remember: generalisations are still facts.

Now, in that context, shame is of two types:

1. Social

2. Personal

Social shame is if/when your personal behaviour/life/action/belief clashes with what is socially acceptable in your environment.

I don’t really consider this as being actual shame. For example, I went through a period of time in my past, where I literally had a different woman in my bed every few days. No doubt, many people would see that as shameful even in modern society. I certainly have been called a fuckboi, a pussy hunter, a manwhore, and quite a bit beside, sometimes with envy, (more often than not) sometimes with curiosity (mostly from women) and sometimes with disgust (which often was in my opinion just more envy/jealousy). But even if it was unacceptable to society at large, say even if it was an absolute no-no entirely, it was never anything that gave me any personal shame.

Society can certainly punish you for doing things it considers shameful, there can certainly be real consequences, but that doesn’t say anything about whether a person actually feels any shame internally.

That is, personal shame.

And my contention is that personal shame can only occur if and when people either don’t know themselves, or in fact actively lie to themselves about who they really are. Women especially are very prone to this, and it is mostly related to the aspect of social shame, which takes on two versions:

1. What the ACTUAL social cost is of any specific behaviour. And surely there CAN be one, but almost invariably, the cost (especailly in the West) is FAR less than the imagined cost. Which brings us to the second version:

2. The IMAGINED COST. Women tend to live in a fantasy land of their own imagination that models reality far less accurately than they imagine. As most men can attest. To some extent we probably all do this, but in women especially, because their survival pressure has ALWAYS been other women and social perception, —rather than the objective universe and the weather, as it has been for men— the ghosts they imagine haunt their reality are often absent in today’s world.

So where does this leave us?

As a man, the concept of both social and personal shame is trivially simple. Which is not to say most men know this, but that’s because most humans are idiots (don’t blame me, it’s science, read Professor Cipolla’s 5 laws. It’s absolutely true, scientific, and hilarious).

Social shame for a man is simply the cost he is willing to put up with for doing, acting, being, himself, whatever that is. And each man must judge that for himself. Personally, my limits there are fairly extreme and beyond most people’s. Essentially being limited to TRY to avoid murderous mobs, jail, or complete ostracism from literally everyone. However, since I am not a pedophile, whom in my opinion deserve death and rightly so, my own quirks of personality, life as I have led it etcetera, has been essentially comfortable enough, even though that has, in fact, meant I literally did face down a mob with violent intent a couple of times and at least twice had people try to kill me (still not sure on one of them why), but, as the saying goes, you don’t need good manners if you have fast reflexes. And even then it’s not really that I am rude as such. Just willing to tell the unvarnished truth as it is. Which tends to get people killed quite a lot more than you think.

But my point here is that personally, social shame for me is irrelevant. I don’t care enough at all what people think of me to alter my behaviour for it other than for the purposes of avoiding jail, being obnoxious to innocent people, and so on. Besides, when you don’t care, people tend to quickly sort themselves out by staying away or not as suits them, which suits me just fine.

So to recap, as a man, social shame is merely your capacity for handling social conflict.

As for personal shame, that is a mere function of you knowing yourself.

Enter the oracle at Delphi, who stated as the pivotal and fundamental thing:

Man Know Thyself

And rightly so. I explain this concept in more depth in my book on Systema.

But the point is, if you truly know yourself, you are unlikely to behave in ways that cause you shame.

If, for example, (and taking an extreme one as it always tends to make things more obvious) you know very well you are disgusted by the very idea of having a homosexual experience, you are unlikely to indulge in one. Conversely, if let’s say you are unwilling to pay the social cost of having a homosexual experience but are secretly homosexual, if/when discovered you would certainly undergo social shame (feel exposed, ruined, have various social negative reactions from friends, family, work colleagues, whatever) but on a personal level, intrinsically, you would not be ashamed in and of itself.

Now there are elements of personal shame that can affect even a man that knows himself well, but they are in essence limited to two types, and both are generally related to age. For a man to know himself well, generally it means he has tested himself by choice, or been tested by fate. Usually both. And while he is finding out about himself, he may try things out that he later realises were not for him. So that’s one way, the other is as he evolves and behaviour he did in the past no longer is part of who he is now.

Continuing on with the previous example, maybe convinced by society that “love is love” he does try to have a homosexual experience and he discovers to his horror that it’s really not for him. Again, I am making an extreme example for clarity, but I can somewhat relate.

Now whoa your horses there, I have never had a homosexual experience, but during a time when I was going through a different woman every couple of days, I got a little despondent on how their brains worked. I was still developing my Caveman Theory then and basically the main reason I went through as many women as I did was because at the first sign of their illogical and solipsistic behaviour that was hypocritical, I would instantly next them. Not bitterly. In fact mostly with some resignation approaching sadness. I essentially felt like “oh man, no way I can put up with that bullshit for the rest of my days. In fact I can’t even tolerate it for a week.” I began to wonder if the female brain was just completely incompatible with reality, or at least me. At the time I was online dating and the phone was never short of potential candidates. One of them looked a bit foreign, and apparently quite pretty, but when I read the profile it stated first and foremost in capitals that this person was a full op transexual. That is, a man, that had had a full operation to have an artificial vagina as well as fake breasts etc constructed.

Now, I never had any homosexual leanings, but I also always believed that ultimately all human beings are really souls and even the bad people probably have one (I have since modified this belief somewhat) I wondered at the kind of person that felt so different they would go to that extent, and then wondered if their mind was still “male” or was it “female”.

Curiosity being one of my flaws, I started to chat with this person by text. And I was respectful but extremely direct, asking permission first but then asking all the curious questions I had. They were direct in their reply too, explained they wanted a real lasting relationship, not just sex, and that a lot of men fetishised them but would not commit, and so on. Honestly the conversation was reasonable and made sense and was very open in a way I appreciated. At which point the person said I could call if I wanted to talk more on the phone. It’s faster and seemed like a sensible suggestion. Now, I wasn’t at this time imagining a relationship with this person, or even sex, I was just curious about their inner world, how difficult life for them must be, and so on. In truth I felt some empathy for them. So I called. And the very first second I heard their voice, which despite the attempt at masking was clearly male, every cell in my body reacted pretty much as when you see a cartoon of Wile E. Coyote trying to backpedal from falling off a cliff.

I politely said thanks for answering my questions and said goodbye. The experience did not make me feel shame as such, but it was instructive. The distance created by text, over hearing a live voice, allowed a level of communication I would otherwise never have engaged in. Unlike many men, in person, even at a distance, I have always clocked a tranny as a man. I learnt later in life I have what they say is a natural talent for spotting micro-cues, something that helps with hypnosis of course, but that I had naturally and higher than people who train for it.

The point of telling that story is that, thanks to that experience, I have zero doubt that I would be constitutionally incapable of having any kind of homosexual relationship. Just the fact I was having a conversation of an intimate nature with what ultimately was a man was enough to make my skin crawl as soon as that realisation became solidified by hearing the voice. I guess a guy who is not as self-knowledgeable, or self-composed, who maybe gets drunk and ends up in bed with a tranny, on waking the next day could feel high levels of personal shame.

That would fall under the category of experimenting to find out more about yourself, but in all honesty, that story is about as close as I ever came to experiencing “experimental shame” I genuinely can’t think of another instance, and again, even then, I didn’t experience shame per se, I just became aware of how someone that was less self-aware could end up in a situation where they did do something they would later be ashamed of.

The other thing is if you evolve beyond where you once were. I for example was quite the asshole to my younger brother growing up. At the time it didn’t feel that way, but looking back, yes, I am ashamed of some of the behaviour I did at him. But that is retroactive shame, not in the moment.

I have been drunk exactly ONCE in my life, and on purpose. Precisely to experience it, and I recall all of it despite violent vomiting etc. So I can’t relate to people who get or got drunk regularly and then felt ashamed of whatever they did at the time. Also because, if you do it when drunk… it’s in there somewhere. It’s not as if drunk you is another person. It’s just the same person with the self-lies removed. And totally drunk me did not, in fact, act any differently from sober me.

The epidemic of rape accusations by girls who got drunk and then had sex with some guy they normally would not, is a case in point regarding the whole “who you really are”. The truth is that with the self-deception of who you think you are removed, you ARE the kind of girl that fucks THAT guy.

Now… if a girl is unconscious drunk and a guy she didn’t even know or really interact with in that way rapes her that IS rape. But if a girl is drunk and actively, in a waking state, has sex with a guy, (and/or falls asleep half-way through it) sorry, that is NOT rape. That is you letting your true nature out and because you don’t know yourself you feel ashamed the next day when you wake up. Or maybe not even that, but the social stigma of having fucked THAT guy has a (perceived) cost that is too high or at least higher for you than saying he raped you.

And here you see the difference.

Shame for men is easy:

1. Social - how much conflict are you comfortable with.

2. Personal - know yourself and it’s almost completely avoidable.

For women it’s far more complicated, because:

1. While most humans don’t really know themselves very well, for women the issue is much, much, much, worse. Like 1000 times worse at least. They are, to a certain extent, biologically incapable of knowing themselves as deeply as a man can. A woman will tend to follow a man in ideology, beliefs and so on, over time. It is their very nature to be solipsistic, hypocritical in their behaviours compared to their stated beliefs, wants and needs, and so on. They are, literally, to some degree, more of a blank slate and who and what can paint on it is a far larger pool than who and what can paint on a man’s slate.

2. Their sense of shame is not really anchored in who they really are deep down, but rather in the circumstances of their current situation, belief system, social response, personal trauma, current trauma, or specific event of any given day.

You know that saying that feminists hate that “all women are whores”?

Well, you know who told me that in a way that undeniably confirmed what I had already surmised for myself? A woman.

I had an interesting life and met and spoke with lots of interesting people, including murderers, cops, soldiers, and prostitutes. And, generally speaking, the prostitutes were really quite interesting. As there was no “business” between us, the conversations were simple and unencumbered by any financial incentives and so on, so were more generally honest and real than most conversations. During one such encounter, I was sitting at a coffee shop having a coffee in a train station with a woman that was a professional escort. She was not ashamed about it and was quite open about it. As we sat there, a group of women that were clearly friends going on a trip, sat a few tables away from us. They were happy, laughing and exited about their trip. We both saw them, and the escort lady smiled turned back to me and said: “It’s true you know. We are all whores. All of us.”

I smiled. I knew what she meant and she was not saying it in an envious way, rather a calm reassured way. I asked her how she meant it.

She said “every woman, in the right situation, can become a whore. And not just for money or because they are desperate… but because they like it. Because they like the sex.”

Now, of course, there are women who absolutely would be disgusted at the idea of sex with lots of men. But the point is that it is a personality veneer. It can be really strongly attached, but it’s still not the core being. Of course, it’s a good thing we have these veneers. I myself would have a spectacular body count if not for that veneer of civility. And I mean dead bodies, not women I had sex with, I already have that one.

But to get back to the original point, shame is a function of either society (what I call social or fake shame, because you don’t want to pay the cost, not because you’re actually ashamed) or personal ethics or etiquette.

Knowing your REAL point of shame as a man is relatively easy (it’s mystifying to me how hard most men think this is though, so your milage may vary).

As a woman, it’s a lot harder.

Part of the general whore-itisation of Westerndom, is purely the result of removing social consequences for supposedly “bad behaviour” and certainly, if one compares a properly Catholic society with our current dystopia, it’s hard to justify the removal of social shame.

But… as a thought experiment… take it to the extreme, but let’s (for sanity’s sake) limit it to the sexual aspects between consenting adults.

In this thought experiment, no one FLAUNTS their sexual proclivities, but anything goes.

The homosexuals hold hands in the street but don’t parade in pride marches. The swingers go home with each other’s wives, the polyamorous all hang together and it’s not a secret that Jane has three “husbands” or Bob two “wives”. But no one makes that the central point of every conversation. Everyone just goes about their business.

What society develops from that?

It’s a completely dysgenic and ultimately destructive one. Even without any intention to do any harm, such a society has no moral anchors. At best it would devolve into what SF writer Walter Jon Williams called Condecologies. Mini cities where a set of “homeowners association” listed the rules, religions, sexual practices and so on that were permitted or banned in that giant condominium complex.

It’s a fractured society by default.

And the result of that is the removal of social shame.

Now, if you have been paying attention, you will note that I seem to be advocating for something I myself have little regard or need for: social shame.

Keep that in mind while we look at another point: human nature.

Humans being humans, there will ALWAYS be the divergent. The homosexual, the slutty girl or fuckboi man and so on. In fact, while in the old Protestant societies such things were penalised in a maximal fashion, the result is even worse underground perversions. In Catholic societies the same sins of promiscuity or excess are somewhat “excused” by turning somewhat of a “blind eye to it”. The concept is hypocritical from a Protestant (Calvinistic, and therefore binary) perspective, but not as much so from a Catholic one. The perspective for Protestants is:

You fucked around! Gasp! You dirty whore! You’re going to Hell because that is what the rule is.

for Catholics:

You fucked around. Eh, that’s bad. You should try not to be a big whore. I’d chastise you a lot more but I am filthy sinner myself. I don’t fuck around but I drink, I have a short temper and I beat my dog. Let’s both try not to be such filthy humans.

The point here being that usual paradox of reality:

Humans need rules.

Humans need pressure release valves.

Sure, you can make the pressure release valves healthier and more wholesome, but the fact is there will always be freaks.

I read a book long ago called Ami, about this boy who goes on a trip in a UFO and learns about the alien society. It’s a bit of boomer free love aspect in some ways but also has some truth in it concerning a hunter possibly being more spiritually evolved than a vegan even though the aliens are all vegetarians for moral reasons. Anyway, one aspect of the alien planet is that people are in committed relationships to raise kids and make families and so on but are free to go off and have sex with other people as time and circumstance allows. And no one is jealous or gets upset about it.

The premise in the book is relatively smart because the utopia there is based on the fact that the aliens have all reached a sufficiently high level of spiritual evolution that the very concept of jealousy or envy is ridiculous to them. Sex with others is just seen as way to enjoy a different pleasant experience. As one might enjoy playing tennis with different people for different reasons.

In theory, if it were possible in human terms, it does sound quite nice. If literally EVERYONE was fully self-aware and as such therefore also fully self-confident, the differences that we measure so much here would lose meaning.

In such a utopic society, the primary couple would chose each other on the basis of spiritual compatibility, which would have the highest and most important aspect of the relationship. The sex with others who could or would have attributes you lack (bigger dick, better in bed, better looking tits, nicer way to kiss, whatever) would become not a threat but a source of enjoyment where one could be happy that their primary partner can experience such a difference and enjoy it.

I suspect many people reading this right now are uncomfortable, which is to some extent a sign of how self-assured you are, or rather, are not. So let me make a more digestible analogy.

Say your wife or husband likes marmite, or chocolate chip ice cream, and you really don’t, and prefer jam on your toast and vanilla ice cream. Would you forbid them from eating what they prefer? Crazy right? Now, yes, I can hear all the objections and so on, but again, keep in mind this was a utopic idea in a book.

The problem, as I see it, is not so much “the thing” itself, but rather how YOU perceive it, and how the rest of the world around you perceives it, and how YOU IMAGINE they perceive it.

Now, in order to be comfortable, it would help if you:

1. Realised consciously who you REALLY are deep down.

2. Become more realistic about the fact that the rest of the world really doesn’t think about you anywhere near as much as you imagine they do. And even if they do think about you, that reality is almost entirely inconsequential for you most of the time.

3. Counterintuitively, although YOU may not care, and even if you realise most EVERYONE ELSE will not care, you SHOULD STILL make the effort to behave in a way that is publicly, socially, acceptable to the degree that generally applies to the idea of not causing other people harm, and essentially not being a disruptive, self-centred, dickhead. Because that is how societies work best.

If you happen to be a hardcore S&M swinger, your baker doesn’t need to know. If you like shoving golf balls up your arse every Friday night, the other members of the golf club don’t want to know. If you’re into having “sex” with the exhaust pipe of your car, no one wants to see that. Use the privacy of your closed and shut garage.

Does this mean you are a terrible hypocrite and so on? Well, only YOU can decide that for yourself. If you truly believe that doing X is wrong, then stop doing it. Of course some things ARE objectively wrong. If you want to rape kids, torture animals, steal from old ladies etc etc, you are evil and the rest of humanity should certainly punish you.

In essence, this is why, I say that from my Catholic perspective, Romans 14:14 is one of the most important passages in the Bible.

NOT as a cop-out or loophole to do whatever you want, but rather, as a true barometer, based on your deep knowledge of yourself, of what is and is not acceptable to you and your conscience.

To return to the original comment that prompted this post, there was a follow up to it, where I tried to encapsulate this topic in a few words.

It is a fact that Anglos tend to avoid knowing themselves very deeply at all, which is why their drunken behaviours are often so divergent (and therefore later shameful to themselves) from their sober ones.

The average drunk Southern European is nowhere near as divergent from his sober state as the Anglosaxons are.

And I believe that is the result of centuries of Protestantism. If you read the works of England when it was still Catholic, the depth of the language, the depth of the human experience it details, are astonishingly far more interesting, full, and spiritually evolved than pretty much anything written in the last hundred years.

Take The Cloud of Unknowing as an example.

My point here ultimately is that the general zeitgeist of modernity is continually racing toward the limited, mechanistic, materialistic, and binary modes that are the hallmark of Protestantism. And even if you disagree with me on your (erroneous and inferior) theological grounds, you can hardly deny that Anglosaxon family structure is all but exploded when compared to Southern European ones. Yes we are catching up, but that’s the point, you had to destroy the Catholic Church 70 years ago and we’re STILL better off.

The point is that the “casual sex” I had before I became baptised, was never “casual” in the same way that it is “casual” for the Protestant zeitgeist people.

I have had sexual encounters that lasted one night only where the woman in question cried tears of healing and release and thanked me profusely for having given them what they needed in that moment. This was not unusual. And at least one or two were supposed “feminists” that after that night had a radical shift in their belief systems. I also had relationships that were based purely on sexual comfort with each other and we were both perfectly aware our lives were on different paths and we would, and did, part ways in a soft, friendly, comfortable way when it came time to go on our own path.

There was no sense of shame in any of these encounters, not from me and not from them.

And there were times too when despite a strong physical and even intellectual attraction, neither me nor the woman took it forward, because we also sensed some deeper spiritual incompatibility.

My point ultimately is that as far as I am concerned, it is impossible to have sex without being intimate. At least if you’re any good at it, anyway.

And in a marriage, therefore, sex IS pivotal. That aspect of relationship has never changed for me from when I was a heathen to today.

Sex may not be the MOST important thing in a relationship, but if you don’t have good sex in it, then you don’t have a relationship.

And sex IS intimate and it does create intimacy. Of course it does. How could it not? You’d have to be terrible at it for it not to. Then again, from what the women I have known have told me, a lot of men apparently really are not that good at it. And I don’t think it has to do with how many women you have been with. I think it has to do with intent. You could be with only one woman all your life and be perfectly capable in bed. And this is not theory. Before I decided I was not built for a long term relationship, I was with only one woman for 13 years. The women after that were already impressed by my attentiveness in bed. It wasn’t the quantity of women that made me good in bed, but rather the quality of attention I gave to whoever I was with. I think this is a fairly natural way to be for people who have not become jaded or corrupted by modern life.

Part of the reason people are so confused is because they simply refuse to face reality as it is. Life is not that complicated if you just pay attention. Sex is the most intimate act you can do with another person. To pretend that some other intimacy supersedes it is borderline retarded.

The confusion for women is not that sex is not intimate, it’s that they literally don’t know who they are and when they end up having sex with some guy based on false assumptions about themselves, is when they feel bad after.

If you KNOW who you are, the fact a man might be a lying asshole just to get to fuck you, even if he fools you, the fault is his, not yours. if you feel shame at having been fooled, well, again, that is not your fault. Everyone gets fooled about something sometime. He’s the liar, not you. And if you can, certainly learn from it, but the error would be in judging who he was, not in giving yourself to who you thought he was.

Do women need longer to figure out who the man is? Probably. And if so then take your time, but don’t confuse what you do and who you are. If YOU decide to give yourself too soon, to the wrong guy, before marriage, etcetera, you need to evaluate if YOU are okay with doing that. Because regardless of what the other side of the equation does or is, YOU need to take responsibility for what YOU do.

I know, taking responsibility for your own choices, right or wrong as those choices may have been, is akin to cruel an unusual punishment to subject women to, but ladies, trust me, YOU doing it is a LOT easier and more useful. The alternative is that eventually life will do it for you, and absolutely kick you in the face down the line until you realise it. Often far too late to do anything about it.

At any rate, I hope it is of some use to you all, to consider shame and its place in your life.