Honor and Shame: You Can’t Have One Without the Other

Honor and Shame: You Can’t Have One Without the Other
In ancient Sparta, mothers emphasized fighting honorably by exhorting their sons to come back with their shield or on it. n_defender/Shutterstock
Jeff Minick
Updated:

Shame, it seems, has become a homonym, a word spelled and pronounced the same, but with two different meanings.

Many today regard shame as a negative emotion, a tag of accusation imposed by others or by ourselves for our faults and failures, with damaging psychological consequences.

Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.
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