Among social emotions specified as guilt, pride, jealousy, gratitude, admiration, outrage, contempt, and embarrassment are complex feelings, triggering the desire to “fall underground”, or shame.
It comes erstwhile people feel that they have violated any crucial rules relating to the standards, values or relationships in a given mention group. People feel shame, not due to any interior self-esteem, but due to any "social mirror", reflection in the minds of another people. If external evaluations are negative, then they should force them to reflect on themselves and to liberate corrective tendencies so as to reduce shame.
However, Polish political life shows that this does not should be the case. Rather, we are dealing with shamelessness and shamelessness. The impression is that not only decency has disappeared, as a basis for honest behaviour, but the universal criteria for assessing ways to meet individual and group needs and interests have been destroyed. For the last 8 years, the Polish rulers have regarded themselves as peculiarly privileged, out of control and released from work for their actions.
They lost their sense of embarrassment, ambaras, or embarrassment. They became so arrogant and insolent that they no longer cared for honor, or even completely lost it. They are alien to “preservation of the face”. This concept does not truly be in Polish political culture. It is typical of Asian, Oriental cultures. The collection of units by the group is the most valuable value there. The failure of a good name (‘faces’) in the eyes of a group is worse than death.
Shame usually performs constructive functions, as it induces critical reflections and corrective reactions. It has a control function before excesses, which could disturb any balance of social ties. But it can besides have a destructive face, which takes toxic forms. They are the consequence of dissonance between reality and the interior sense of the values of different people. In intellectual and sociological literature (cf. synthetic monograph by Elżbieta Czykwin, Shame, Kraków 2013) pathological personality types, which endure from toxic shame, fall into affectivity, utmost emotional states, including aggression and the desire to destruct their opponents.
Polarization of the political establishment and the division of society into 2 fighting camps have unleashed an atmosphere of strife, suspicion, hatred and rematch. The sense of boundaries in combating each another has been lost. In public discourse, restraint and self-control were lost, with “bad urges”, conducive to disintegration and dehumanisation. The reflection of this state is the corruption of parliamentary debate, the demolition of authority, the degradation of forms and rules of court, in another words, the universal schema. Lies, invectors and conversations have become a constant part of the repertoire of electorate representatives.
In Poland, despite the pompous rhetoric, it has never paid more attention to honor, dignity or reputation in politics. It is adequate to scope the period of the collapse of the First Republic, or bodily formations of the 20th century. Today's discredit of the United Right camp with the president of the State at the head does not bring collective reflection on its social consequences. Politicians of PiS and Solidary Poland are plunged into a tense fear of discovering the fact about their governments and the stubborn “cursing” of reality. They don't care about the harm to the state's image, or the cost of universal obstruction.
On the political phase of Poland, things are worse, obscene and shameless. Various regulators of social life are violated without any reflection that this leads not only to disgust and embarrassment on a mass scale but besides to demolition of social order. Democracy is simply a strategy that is based on the natural alternation of power. It is about the rotation of political parties in the casting of state bodies. Opposition forces in specified a strategy have a chance to take the ruling seat as a consequence of universal and fair elections. The escalation of the political conflict by the right, incapable to reconcile with its failure in the fresh parliamentary elections, means to search to undermine the legitimacy of the ruling. The fresh elections are not so much a prescription of the opposition to change, but alternatively to prevent the effective settlement of the governments of the Law and Sovereign Poland.
As a consequence of the propaganda war, which marked the period of the last 8 years, there was a immense polarization of society. There has been a sharp contrast of views, attitudes and social behaviour. As a consequence of media manipulation and widespread indoctrination, a large part of the countrymen have been convinced that the ‘Kaczyński world’, with its story of martyrdom, dedication to their homeland and mobilization to defend against interior and external enemies, has no alternative. The minds of many people in Poland have mastered “disgusting and hateful feelings”. 1 might hope that they will be reduced by a sense of shame. Well, nothing like that. Anger and stubborn adherence to the conquests of government took the lead. Kaczyński managed to manipulate his electorate so that competitiveness in politics began to be treated as a ruthless rivalry. The concern for the common good has disappeared from sight. The state with its institutions and assets has become the object of a conflict and propriety by a sieve based in the electoral mandate to exercise power. This is confirmed by reports from all departments following audits.
People who realize political reality and make their own decisions separate first of all in-steerness. It means that a individual is convinced that he himself is the origin of all phenomena concerning him. People in the interior control rooms value access to information, trust on intelligent explanation of phenomena and processes, learn from their mistakes and experiences, have a strong sense of responsibility. First of all, they recognise the reality and are able to deal mentally with the loss, not looking for the guilty or not reaching for "conspiracy theory". Meanwhile, in relation to many Polish politicians, the right side of the political scene is suspected that they are alternatively outhouses. The Akolites, i.e. supporters and uncritical adherents of ideas proclaimed by the leader of the Law and Justice have shown in fresh weeks how hard it is to humbly revalue the election defeat and to “quietly” give way to the winning ruling coalition. They are led to believe that there is simply a "parallel reality", which gives the impression of "political schizophrenia". Inciting rebel moods and behaviours will sooner or later end in the defeat of the perpetrators, as most of the population is opposed to anarching the state.
Besides, it is hard to accept the cognitive dissonance that is born between the delusional state and reality described by the opposition leader. If Poland is the “gremial habitat of traitors” and the head of the government “German agency”, then this actually undermines the basis of national existence. The disregard and insulting of an electorate who did not vote for the United Right is an expression of morbid megalomania, pride and arrogance that walk before self-destruction. The pursuit of emotional swing in society is harmful and undesirable. It is born next to the feeling of anger and hatred the threat of retaliation and revenge. In another words, it conflicts society in the name of selfish and cateric interests, to the detriment of the full community. 1 of the most crucial effects of the shamelessness of outgoing power is the increasing discomfort of many citizens who see more and more deception and manipulation in erstwhile interactions with the United Right camp. Spectacles of hatred with the participation of the PiS leaders are not only annoying, but besides show the worst qualities that fewer people want to identify with. As the consequences of corrupting the state over the past fewer years have been revealed in many supporters of the erstwhile power, unpleasant emotions will grow, affecting the simplification of self-esteem. The process of avoiding or displacing politicians and parties that could lead to guilt will begin.
It is so expected that the fatigue of the situation and the increasing emotion of embarrassment over time will lead to the escape of parts of the faithful right-wing electorate. People are inclined to avoid sad emotional states. So the imperative of adapting to the situation (because of conformist mechanisms and average pragmatism) will begin to work. The parliamentary opposition will see what it may be besides late for it to go besides far distant from the expected standards. And then the election defeat will turn into the death of the full political formation. Shame should be a informing for all ruling camp. There is simply a natural trap of self-confidence, which is the consequence of the feeling that the rulers are approved and accepted by others. But erstwhile there is simply a deficiency of specified acceptance, vanity is very easy. A politician frequently loses same - control and falls into same - worship, excluding the mechanisms of shame and embarrassment.
While not intending to review the behaviour of the current government due to its short word of office, I would, however, like to draw attention to the conspicuous naive and enthusiastic kind of politics, especially in view of the war in Ukraine. The fresh power did not make any realistic reassessments in justifying unconditional support for the authorities in Kiev. It looks like a government. Donald Tusk Not only did he proceed the hopeless policy of the United Right, but he got even more active in Poland's engagement in the conflict for many years.
First of all, no priorities have been set regarding the defence of national interest. There were no lessons from rocket incidents, and no conclusions were drawn from anti-Polish lobbying activities in the European Union, or from complaints against Poland to the planet Trade Organisation. Continuing the “Jasina Line” (a spokesperson for the Ministry of abroad Affairs, who declared in March 2022 that “we are servants of the Ukrainian people”) not only shows deficiency of self-respect, but makes public opinion embarrassed and embarrassed. Against the background of uncritical Ukraine, there are suspicions that Poland, regardless of the change of government, is implementing the same plan of "refuting" Russia from Europe, the authors of which are Anglo-Saxons.
In the meantime, Poland should be afraid with de-escalating the war, not intensifying it. All the more so, the extension of the conflict over time and space contradicts Ukraine's approach to European and Atlantic integration structures. He besides threatens to retaliate from Russia to the states most zealous in providing military aid to Ukraine. For these reasons, the risks of harm and costs for our country should be expected from the ruling. Meanwhile, we are dealing with a recurrence of messianic visions and calculations without specifics.
In a planet in decline of democratic political culture, politicians are freed from the many restrictions imposed on them by social standards. Moral relativism and the instrumentalization of social ties are conducive to this. Politicians depart from cooperation and cooperation patterns. Social and psychopathic personalities, frequently narcissistic, dominate the first ranks of the political class. Shame as an crucial social punishment is in specified people in decline.
They have an exaggerated sense of self-esteem and uniqueness, they are consumed with fantasies of extraordinary skills, they require excessive admiration.
They have a sense of having peculiar powers, they have no inhibitions of utilizing another people for their own purposes. specified people have no sense of shame. And even if they do, shame is masked and hidden under the force of the norm that “it is ashamed to be ashamed.” The question of shame has led in fresh years to undesirable social effects, to an increase in aggression in public life and to conceal evil under the appearance of good. In order to repair social ties, it is so essential to reconstruct public awareness of the function of shame and its pedagogical work, from schools to the highest authorities of power.
Prof. Stanisław Bielen
Poland, No. 5-6 (28.01-4.02.2024)
