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When did shame become a value? This question kept nagging me since it was raised in class. It was not phrased exactly this way: the reasoning went more along the lines of, "if people are no longer ashamed of what they do, then they'll do anything that they want. If they do that, it will be the end of society." According to that logic, therefore, we need shame. We value it. Without shame, we would …

…enough to occupy this type of activity? Child pornography. We would have to jump to that, because according to child psychologists, everyone is hurt by this type of activity. Why do we get filled with such righteous indignation? Is this what prompts it? Was it the pornography in Times Square, because it was where we might be? Where we'd have to acknowledge it? It did go away, because we made it as a society disappear.