Shame, Shamelessness and the price to be paid.

The Greek myth of the pandora's box begin thus, According to Hesiod, when Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus, the king of the gods, took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. Pandora opened a jar left in her care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world. Though she hastened to close the container, only one thing was left behind, hope.

If one could infer from this myth, surely the lock holding the box of Pandora together was surely shame,  for it was Prometheus loss of shame that allowed him to break the box, thus all forms of evil flowed and bedeviled mankind henceforth.

Guy Burgess refers to "guilt mobilization" as the act of forcing people to recognize the contradictions between what they say and what they do. Martin Luther King and other nonviolent civil rights leaders mobilized the white's guilt, when they made clear the discrepancy between white American's deep-rooted beliefs in freedom and equality and the way African Americans were treated in this country. Once the collective guilt became strong enough, racial segregation became illegal in the U.S., and remedies, such as affirmative action, were implemented to try to make amends. It was Europe's feeling of culpability in the holocaust that prompted her to make amends, thus facilitating the creation of the state of Israel.

In 2007, Kimberly Kardashian's sex tape with Ray Norwood Jnr was strategically leaked, the ensuing fame, adoration and wealth plunged humanity to new depths of shamelessness implying to impressionable minds that being shameless pays and it is rewarding. The phenomenon of social media serves as a medium for dissemination of shameful acts, amplifying it to heights it would have hitherto not attained. TikTok has taken Northern Nigeria by storm, acts which before were localised within us have suddenly found a global platform. 

A minute scroll in popular arewa TikTok’s main trends tells a person everything they need to know about the prevailing content of the platform, which could be summed up in three words: lewd, vulgar and repulsive. Arewa is a society that prides itself on its strong moral and ethical roots firmly conservative, this sometimes leads to a subtle feeling of superiority over others, however, even that implied edge is being lost. 

The Prophet SAW said: 'He who has no shame should do as he wishes'.

We can infer from the Hadith above, shame is like a moral and ethical compass of an individual or society, losing it, one loses his capacity to feel guilt, and without guilt, their is no introspection, and without introspection, no remorse. A man or a society that lacks the capacity to feel remorse are glorified 'Bipedal beasts', they become just like cattle, Infact worse.

Guilt is a fuel for action, the story of the great Indian Emperor Ashoka, who in process of creating his empire spread so much pain, death and misery, the eventual mortification led him to eschew any act that can be cruel, thus becoming a great paragon in history of how to lead with wisdom and compassion.

Shame is self-respect and capacity for guilt manifested through introspection and self-restraint. It has always, and will always be a virtue. Mocking people for their shame, women particularly, is an abominable inversion of vice and virtue. There's no shame in shame or shyness, and there is great ugliness in shamelessness.

Any shameful behavior in us should ideally lead to guilt which ought to make us remorseful, fuelling conscious efforts to correct wrongs made by us to achieve redemption, this applies both to the individual and the society, failing in this, its akin to unleashing all the pathologies from pandora's box, thus, we are left with only the glitter of hope that we may right our wrongs.