Bird’s Eye: The shadow emotions, the ones we don’t show, don’t talk about, often don’t admit to ourselves, are the ones which may have the most to teach us. Starting with a marvellous TED talk, we shed some light on three shadows. Take a look… and they’ll grow less scary.
* Brené Brown: Listening to shame Video on TED.com (Thanks Erin!)
Shame is an unspoken epidemic, the secret behind many forms of broken behavior. Brené Brown, whose earlier talk on vulnerability became a viral hit, explores what can happen when people confront their shame head-on. Her own humor, humanity and vulnerability shine through every word.
Brené Brown studies vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame.
* Humiliation by Wayne Koestenbaum review, The Guardian
Humiliation is always a reminder of our embodied being – it involves flesh and fluids and unwanted (or shamefully desired) intrusions. Koestenbaum recalls many instances of his own body’s abject eruption, from childhood accidents such as sneezing on his hand at school to deadpan anecdotes from his erotic life: “Sitting beside a playwright, I began ejaculating, and at just that instant an urban planner walked into the room.” This last (delightfully context-free) anecdote points to the book’s first key insight: humiliation requires, or at least imagines, a trio. While one may burn with shame alone, or suffer embarrassment in the presence of one other, humiliation’s “infernal waltz” is danced by victim, protagonist and witness: “The scene’s horror – its energy, its electricity – invokes the presence of three.”
With fame, of course, the triad structure remains but the witnesses multiply, and some of Humiliation is devoted to persons whose celebrity is or was largely a matter of having their bodies exposed, or speculated on in more than one sense.
* Disgust’s Evolutionary Role Is Irresistible to Researchers New York Times
Disgust is the Cinderella of emotions. While fear, sadness and anger, its nasty, flashy sisters, have drawn the rapt attention of psychologists, poor disgust has been hidden away in a corner, left to muck around in the ashes.
No longer. Disgust is having its moment in the light as researchers find that it does more than cause that sick feeling in the stomach. It protects human beings from disease and parasites, and affects almost every aspect of human relations, from romance to politics.
Disgust was not completely ignored in the past. Charles Darwin tackled the subject in “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.” He described the face of disgust, documented by Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne in his classic study of facial expressions in 1862, as if one were expelling some horrible-tasting substance from the mouth.
“I never saw disgust more plainly expressed,” Darwin wrote, “than on the face of one of my infants at five months, when, for the first time, some cold water, and again a month afterwards, when a piece of ripe cherry was put into his mouth.”
His book did not contain an image of the infant, but fortunately YouTube has numerous videos of babies tasting lemons.
