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

A society can't experience shame without a universal acceptance of right behavior

In ancient Sparta, mothers emphasized fighting honorably by exhorting their sons to come back with their shield or on it. n_defender/Shutterstock

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.