August 7, 2019

"Tourists have been spooked by the realization that one passenger’s share of the exhaust from a single flight can cancel out a year’s worth of Earth-friendly efforts...."

"The newly coined concept of flygskam, or 'flight shame,' has turned some Swedes bashful about their globe-trotting. A guerrilla campaign used Instagram to tally the planet-busting travels of top Swedish celebrities. Next door in Norway, meanwhile, the prime minister felt the need to assure citizens that they need not apologize for flying to see family in the high north."

From "Europe’s flight-shame movement has travelers taking trains to save the planet" (WaPo).

I like that there's a word, flygskam. I already knew there was a word in German, Flugscham. I saw that in "The Problem With Greta Thunberg’s Climate Activism/Her radical approach is at odds with democracy" (NYT, August 2):
In Germany the word “Flugscham” is one of the last year’s more interesting coinages. It means not fear of flying but shame of flying, and of the pollution it brings about. The German economist Niko Paech urges shaming people for booking cruises and driving S.U.V.s, too.
These are fascinating words, and I do think we need to be circumspect about the effect of travel on the environment, but I'm concerned about the increasing role of shame in our culture. Have we become a "shame society"?
In cultural anthropology, the distinction between a guilt society (or guilt culture), shame society (also shame culture or honor-shame culture), and a fear society (or culture of fear) has been used to categorize different cultures. ...
  • In a guilt society, control is maintained by creating and continually reinforcing the feeling of guilt (and the expectation of punishment now or in the afterlife) for certain condemned behaviors. The guilt-innocence world view focuses on law and punishment. A person in this type of culture may ask, "Is my behavior fair or unfair?" This type of culture also emphasizes individual conscience.
  • In a shame society, the means of control is the inculcation of shame and the complementary threat of ostracism. The shame-honor worldview seeks an "honor balance" and can lead to revenge dynamics. A person in this type of culture may ask, "Shall I look ashamed if I do X?" or "How people will look at me if I do Y?" Shame cultures are typically based on the concepts of pride and honour, and appearances are what count.
  • In a fear society, control is kept by the fear of retribution. Fear-Power worldview focuses on physical dominance. A person in this culture may ask, "Will someone hurt me if I do this?"...
  • Guilt-Innocence: more associated with Islam, Christianity and Judaism
  • Shame-Honour: more associated with Eastern religions
  • Fear-Power: more associated with animist and tribal societies

63 comments:

buwaya said...

More for me!

CWJ said...

I am bemused that this post followed the one giving some perspective on actual temperatures. But if some Swedes feel bad, I will neither shame them nor ridicule them. They are free to feel what they feel. (Snort)

JPS said...

Well, sure, but nowadays you can purchase indulgences - sorry, I meant carbon offsets - and set things right.

David Begley said...

Only if you are a CAGW nut would you feel shame about flying.

PM said...

Battery-operated passenger jets will lower the carbon footprint, one way or anothe....

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

ban jet fuel, maybe go back to the old wood-burning planes then

2 million trees cut down to make way for solar panels in 3 years: lawmaker

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190404000565

Sprezzatura said...

Even private, I don't do flygasm.

I did take a handi. That doesn't count for the club, as I understand the rules. So I don't count that.

And I only did it once.

Sprezzatura said...

I felt guilty.

Tomcc said...

As a conservative, I am conscientious about not being wasteful. As long as I can rationalize my airline travel, I don't feel guilty.
One man's necessity is another man's folly.

n.n said...

#Labels #Judgment #SelectiveExclusion #Stigma #Ethics #Faith #QuasiScience #Prophecy #Politics

Clyde said...

Given that Muslims have “honor killings” when they feel that their women have shamed the family by acting too Western, I’d put them firmly in the honor-shame society group.

Ray - SoCal said...

Arab world is VERY Tribal.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
~ Gordon Pasha said...

EARTH FIRST! We'll mine the other planets when we get there.

n.n said...

As a conservative, I am conscientious about not being wasteful

Yes, conservation is a conservative principle. There is no cause to indulge in liberal license and wallow in liberal excess.

Roughcoat said...

It's official: "A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine" is a dead letter as far as prayers go.

gilbar said...

The "Realization"? You mean to say; that they're Just NOW (this Very Second!) figuring this out?

Roughcoat said...

Which is to say (see above @8:36 PM): when did the descendants of the fierce warriors who terrorized Europe for several centuries lose their gonads?

Danno said...

Blogger gilbar said...The "Realization"? You mean to say; that they're Just NOW (this Very Second!) figuring this out?

The tards are really slow. That is why every thing they do come with unintended consequences that anyone with a lukewarm IQ and common sense can see right away.

gilbar said...

ngachuck'stoothlessARM said...
ban jet fuel, maybe go back to the old wood-burning planes then


Sail Planes! That's THE ANSWER! And i'm not JUST saying that because i've got some Schweizer 2-33's for sale

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Ha Ha you fat sluts !!
We got you!!!

we couldnt fat-shame you, or slut-shame you,
BUT WE SURE AS HELL CAN FLIGHT SHAME YOU !!

Unknown said...

The contrast between guilt and shame as societal factors is the conservative/progressive divide. In the conservative view personal responsibility based on conscience governs behavior, in the progressive view the shaming of wrong behavior (SJWs, Twitter mobs). The latter evolves into fear, enforced by Mao's Red Guards, Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Antifa...oh, we're pretty far along on that spectrum, aren't we.

CWJ said...

"Which is to say (see above @8:36 PM): when did the descendants of the fierce warriors who terrorized Europe for several centuries lose their gonads?"

Roughcoat, my guess is that Charles XII got the last of the true berserkers killed off in the Great Northen War. Once Charles himself got a bullet or shell fragment through the brain, that was all it took for the remainder to turn turtle.

effinayright said...

It's just a hop, skip and a jump from people feeling flugscham to those who will try to blow up the planes carrying passengers who don't give a flying fuck about it.

Just you wait.

effinayright said...

PM said...
Battery-operated passenger jets will lower the carbon footprint, one way or anothe....
************

Oh sure...that's the way jet engines work. Compressed air flowing over batteries.

Bob Boyd said...

flygskam. Emphasis on skam.

Sebastian said...

Swedes used to do guilt. Shame is what happens to guilt when God dies.

But of course, progs' shame is really just fear/power by any other name. They don't care if you feel shame; they just want to impose their will.

GRW3 said...

A modern commercial jet, with today’s typical load factor, is way more efficient than a celebrity’s private jet. It’s not Facebook r to apply celebrity numbers to the average airline passenger. Of course, when the elite say WE need to cut back on flying and driving, 5hey mean YOU.

Bob Boyd said...

Cagwskam

Unknown said...

once you fall for the first line of bullshit

There is no end to what you will go for...

D. said...

>It means not fear of flying but shame of flying, """and of the pollution it brings about."" The German economist Niko Paech urges shaming people for booking cruises and driving S.U.V.s, too.<

Die already and stop emitting CO2 you effin' clowns.

J. Farmer said...

Shame is a useful tool for social control. It's all in what you shame people for. Now it's tweeting, voting for the wrong guy, or sitting in an airplane seat. Remember when Laurie David used to be really proud of accosting Hummer drivers in parking lots? She was sure to let us know how "horribly guilty" she feels about flying private from LA to Martha's Vineyards, where she has a large mansion (built over protected wetlands) that is used a couple of times a year. What do you want her to do, fly commercial? Don't you know who she is? Yes, a very standard do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do limousine liberal hypocrite.

Roughcoat said...

Once Charles himself got a bullet or shell fragment through the brain, that was all it took for the remainder to turn turtle.

I think lutfisk had something to do with it.

traditionalguy said...

The perfect ideal creates sin by sinners weighted down by sin guilt. The radical aspect of Christianity is a final redemption from sin and guilt by one man's eternal sacrifice. The legalist versions step back from that free salvation deal and dare you to keep laws and then try to pay for your resulting certain guilt by payments to a Clergy monopoly that never end.

That is why the Gospel written by Paul is usually suppressed. It sets people free. And the translated and printed scriptures changed the world like the Internet is changing it again.

Lurker21 said...

For the time being, it's still a matter of personal guilt, not socially-imposed shame. Environmental activists may try to shame others, but Western moderns aren't ashamed unless they already feel guilty themselves. We are too individualistic to feel defined by what other people think of us. Or maybe we have so many other things to feel guilty or ashamed about,

Sprezzatura said...

"by one man's eternal sacrifice."

Ya do know that he's one of the trifecta? Right?

Not like you. And not like Palin or DJT or anything/one else you (re idolatry) worship.

BTW, aside from those two, does the Bible mean what it says? If it (all of it) does, how's that gonna work out for ya?

Crimso said...

We need a word (perhaps in German; guaranteed to be awesome) to describe intellectual dishonesty shame. It would, of course, be instantly recognized as an oxymoron, since being intellectually dishonest requires that you have no shame.

Fen said...

"Which is to say (see above @8:36 PM): when did the descendants of the fierce warriors who terrorized Europe for several centuries lose their gonads?"

Interesting point. In Frank Herbert's DUNE series, the fall of the Freeman (fierce nomadic warriors) is marked in history by the first legal case filed by a Freeman (he sued over something his father would have hacked a man to death over).

BTW, take a closer look at white men in advertisements these days - almost all of them are petite little sissy's covered with a beard to make them appear "manly". It's a pattern that you can't forget - once you pick up on it you'll start seeing it everywhere.

Fen said...

Tourists have been spooked by the realization that one passenger’s share of the exhaust from a single flight can cancel out a year’s worth of Earth-friendly efforts

Shorter: X > 0

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

For Shame

Surely He took on our infirmities
and carried our sorrows;
yet we considered Him stricken by God,
struck down and afflicted.
But He was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him,
and by His stripes we are healed.

from Isaiah 53

LYNNDH said...

Getting ready for next months flight to the UK. Not at all ashamed. Screw them.

CWJ said...

"I think lutfisk had something to do with it."

Well, that's one theory. I would have thought lutfisk ingestion would have helped preserve aggressive tendencies.

Jamie said...

Wholelottasplainin', you have succeeded in doing what all my ordinary run-of-the-mill fear of flying was unable to do: made me so nervous about flying that I'm considering changing travel plans to avoid it. Thanks a bunch.

DavidUW said...

Islam might have some guilt aspects as a religion, but it's a 7th century Arab penal code based mostly on the shame/honor system of Arab culture.

It's really only Judeo-Christian/western Europeans that have the guilt culture.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Why is it that doing things that actually hurt living, existing people doesn't bother the bourgeois?

Lydia said...

That is why the Gospel written by Paul is usually suppressed. It sets people free.

Suppressed by whom? Not the Catholic Church. Paul's letters feature as readings all the time at Mass. Just not Luther's falsified version of Romans 3:28. You know the one to which he added the word "sola" ("alone") before "fide" which not in the Greek.

Yancey Ward said...

There is nothing more frightening than a shame spiral in a jumbo jet.

Yancey Ward said...

We discussed this weeks ago- a typical passenger traveling point A to point B will produce less CO2 if they fly versus drive. The point, however, is this- you don't drive from the US to England, for example. You can drive from Oslo to the Arctic coast, though. If you are going to feel guilty for flying, then at least do so only for those trips you wouldn't have made if you would have had to drive or take a train or a boat.

PhilD said...

"Guilt-Innocence: more associated with Islam, Christianity and Judaism"

I don't know about that. Perhaps 'Guilt-Contrition-Redemption' for Christianity, 'Fatalism-Fear-(dis)Honor' for islam. As for Jews 'Chosen-(It's a)Burden'?

PhilD said...

"The legalist versions step back from that free salvation deal and dare you to keep laws"??

'dare you to keep laws'?

tim maguire said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim maguire said...

This isn’t new to the global warming skeptics. It’s a big contributor to the curious fact that, on average, global warming believers have a larger carbon footprint than do skeptics.

Another irony: the science deniers are up on the latest science and understand the strengths and limitations of the evidence while team science bases its opinions on shoddy studies many years old.

Hey Skipper said...

Tourists have been spooked by the realization that one passenger’s share of the exhaust from a single flight can cancel out a year’s worth of Earth-friendly efforts....

Just how shocked should they be?

Last night I flew a B757-200 nine-hundred miles.

TIME FUEL CORR
DEST 02:00 15808 ..../...... 892 NM

Along the way it burned 15808 pounds; at 6.8 pounds of Jet-A per gallon, that works out to 2325 gallons.

The 757-200 (not the newest and most efficient airplane) carries two-hundred passengers, or 11.62 gallons per passenger. Trip distance was 892NM.

So the NM/Gal/Passenger is nearly 77 NM/gal. But a nautical mile is 15% longer than a statute mile, so to put it in everyday terms, that's 88 mpg/passenger.

Clearly we need to stop jet travel, and let the Icelanders, Hawaiians, Caribbean Islanders, ad infinitum starve to death.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Suppressed by whom? Not the Catholic Church. Paul's letters feature as readings all the time at Mass. Just not Luther's falsified version of Romans 3:28. You know the one to which he added the word "sola" ("alone") before "fide" which not in the Greek.”

Hey, Papists have their own problems with tweaking the Bible. You can’t even get the 10 Commandments right.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Another irony: the science deniers are up on the latest science and understand the strengths and limitations of the evidence while team science bases its opinions on shoddy studies many years old.”

Of course, there seems to be a strong negative correlation between scientific understanding and certainty that we are truly doomed if we don’t immediately deindustrialize our country. I first noted this with AlGore, and his C- and D+ in his two boneheaded science classes in college. Far more training in theology than science. My guess is that part of his problem was keeping his decimal places where they belonged. If his figures had been accurate, his seaside mansions would probably be underwater by now.

Every time that I hear AOC and compatriots tell us that we are doomed if we don’t destroy our economy by implementing her Green New Deal, I marvel about this. Such certainty about a subject that she, and they, likely don’t have a clue about scientifically. Most of the Dem candidates for President, at least the most prominent ones, seemed to have jumped aboard this runaway train. Such certainty in a subject area that they are so ignorant in.

Murder of Crows said...

One major difference between the guilt society and the shame society; since the guilt society is built on Judeo/Christian principles, there is a built in mechanism for atonement or repentance. there is a way to be absolved of the crime. Pay a fine, go to prison, etc. In a shame society, I think the only exit strategy is apology followed by an honorable death, eg. stoning, seppuku, etc. How this translates in a non-capital punishment society like most of the US is a social death. They will strip you of job, title, family, finances, and name. You will become a non-person.

Nichevo said...

I know! Stop refugees from flying to Sweden! That'll be a big help. You can send them back on the slow boat. They can walk to the nearest safe country.

svlc said...

I will consider that article while we fly to England in September. I should feel bad for driving 500 miles to Penticton (from Vancouver) for a bicycle race in July, but I don't. In fact, I already thinking about registering for next year's event. I am such a terrible person.

PluralThumb said...

I think the cycle of emotion stemmed from fear is supposed to be; shame, blame then guilt. All good things in moderation. Then I eat a pound of sugar to express in words my prideful exageration. I then proceed to crush the sugar container on my forehead.

JamesB.BKK said...

It is good these people will not be on the planes. They tend to complain, to cut queues, to chatter, and to smell more than the average person. This should improve the currently dreadful experience stateside. Now, to get formerly unemployable people out of the terminal entry and boarding experience.

JamesB.BKK said...

Murder of Crows: If Judaism is defined by the denial of Christ and is therefore the antithesis of Christianity, how can there be a set of Judeo/Christian principles?

JamesB.BKK said...

The thing environmentalists are most dishonest about is their number for the correct (much smaller) population of the earth. Second is those individuals and family lines whose descendants they intend to eliminate to achieve it. It is an operation run by mostly childless and childlike consumerist social democrats though, so unsurprising.

Nichevo said...

Murder of Crows: If Judaism is defined by the denial of Christ

It is?