Subjective Morality Enforcement

Let’s set aside connotations of intensity and profundity and, for purposes of this blog entry, distinguish embarrassment and shame simply as follows: embarrassment is psychological discomfort resulting from the perception that some or all members of a group feel that some or all members of the group have misbehaved whereas shame – whose existence, unlike embarrassment’s, does not depend on a group setting – is psychological discomfort resulting from the perception that someone has misbehaved.  This post contemplates shame, particularly the shame that one feels regarding one’s own conduct.

I doubt that folks will ever stop debating the nature and meaning of good and evil, right and wrong.  Principles derived from God and/or nature?  Subjective whims that gather normative force when experienced en masse among like-minded individuals?  Concepts that can only be expressed in unsatisfying and ultimately meaningless tautologies?  Who knows?  I don’t even have a hunch, and I suspect that ethicists only pretend to know what they’re talking about in order to keep their jobs.  But I am fairly certain that we all have the capacity for shame, that we all have a conscience.  I don’t mean the babies and the sociopaths, of course, but most of us.  And I’m fairly confident that researchers have or soon will have ways of identifying patterns of brain activities that occur when a subject self-reports experiences of shame.  Also, I’ll bet that toxicologists could develop some sort of neurological agent that could temporarily paralyze people without causing any lasting bodily damage.  Perhaps we could put these elements together to enable folks to create a better society by enforcing their own moral judgments upon themselves.

I’m thinking that we ought to create a tiny chip that performs two functions: first, it detects the presence or absence of a subject’s shame and, second, it releases paralysis-inducing chemicals whenever the presence of shame is detected.  We’d inject the chip into the subject and, voila, we’d have a citizen who must navigate according to her own moral compass!

Imagine the benefits.  Picture the miscreant who, after transgressing, feels guilty about her crime and is paralyzed and, therefore, easily apprehended.  Better yet, picture the ambivalent, would-be evildoer stopped in her tracks by her own pangs of conscience before ever even coming close to committing her foul deed.

For instance, take this past week’s Boston Marathon bombers: speculation has it that the younger brother seemed a halfway decent fellow who may have been driven to murder out of loyalty to his wicked and dominant older brother, and if this was the case then he (the teenager, that is) likely would have been overcome with shame at some point(s) during his atrocious rampage.  I can think of many scenarios in which the younger brother’s paralysis might have prevented some or all of his and/or his brother’s various violent actions.  (And, while we’re at it, let’s not rule out a capacity for shame on the elder brother’s part.)  This technology would enhance the polity’s capacity for law enforcement as it simultaneously reduced the need for such capacity, freeing up public resources that could be applied to other pressing social problems.

Of course, this technology could never completely obviate civilization’s need for systems of criminal justice.  As I’ve mentioned above, there are those without consciences, people who would be impervious to the powers of this new shame chip (which I’m assuming we’d inject into the populace at birth or maybe as part of the application for a Social Security number).  Moreover, the process of natural selection might, over time, favor that segment of the population that lacks a conscience (as freedom from the shame chip’s effects would surely increase one’s options when it came to executing survival and procreation strategies).  Plus, there would be other unintended consequences.  For example, there’d undoubtedly be traffic accidents caused by getaway drivers freezing up in remorse while speeding away from crime scenes.  But, still, even with all of these shortcomings the shame chip would afford us a chance to make some real progress (in the short and medium terms, at least) toward ethical living, which we all, at least when in public, profess to be our aim.

It’s true that some individuals experience misplaced shame, and so some useful and advantageous activities that would have occurred without the shame chip would not occur with the shame chip.  But certainly we can assume a net gain; surely the shame chip would prevent more bad actions than good actions.  After all, humankind has never been a race given to undue scrupulousness.

A couple of my more libertarian friends have told me that my plan for implanting shame chips in everybody is creepy, that it’s “Orwellian” and “Clockwork Orange-esque” and that “legislating morality” is not only impossible but also inadvisable.  But these objections are without merit.  Once the shame chips have been implanted, the authorities would pretty much stay out of everyone’s hair.  Unlike in A Clockwork Orange, the government would not be imposing its notions of right and wrong on anyone.  Nobody would be foisting any ethical norms on anybody; each of us would judge for ourselves the rightness or wrongness of any given course of conduct.  As for whether it’s legitimate to complain about not being able to do things that we know damn well we shouldn’t do…well, surely there are principles of estoppel that apply.