[imeron]

Don't forget that Japanese actively shame fat people! This is very much frown upon in Western societies but it works for them I guess.

[NaturalPhallacy]

They don't feel even slightly bad about it. It's as prevalent as obesity isn't.

[astrange]

There’s fat Japanese people. They drink so much it’d be a surprise if there weren’t.

They’re also getting strangely more common in porn, maybe because their society is getting so old.

[hollywood_court]

Shame should be a powerful motivator. It doesn’t seem to work too well in the west though.

[naikrovek]

shame is just as unhealthy as obesity. the west recognizes that, somehow.

[hollywood_court]

I suppose I should have clarified that I don’t advocate for shaming others.

But personal shame and shame avoidance has been the single greatest tool for my own success.

[naikrovek]

if you've come through that unharmed you're a miracle.

shame is a fantastic motivator and holy cow is it one of the most caustic things ever to the recipient's psyche.

[hollywood_court]

The most important thing in the world is leverage.

And shame can make for some pretty powerful leverage.

I’m a hyper critical individual especially when it comes to myself. If I didn’t work to avoid shame, it’s very likely I’d be a lot more miserable and a lot less successful.

[naikrovek]

> If I didn’t work to avoid shame, it’s very likely I’d be a lot more miserable and a lot less successful.

Ok, I am not going to say that is incorrect or anything; you know you far better than any internet strangers.

I would say that having a motivation which is based on avoiding negative outcome rather than being drawn towards positive outcome is by definition an unhealthy motivation, and that's my point about shame. It does work, it brings success, it brings money, and so on, and deep down, every last person motivated primarily by aversion to negative outcome is going to be very unhappy in their core. Those people know that just a small number of honest mistakes will bring failure and those feelings of shame, even if the source of the shame is completely internal and the mistakes that got them there trivial.

These people are not happy. Not really; they are only going in the correct direction because the bad direction is artificially acutely punitive, far more than it would be on its own.

Western culture does not recognize this very well at all; we are a results-driven society. In public, we openly scorn parents shovel shame onto their children, and the parents learn (via shame from the public) that they should simply do this privately, rather than openly. Shame begets shame.

Fear of failure should never be a stronger motivator than the desire to succeed.

[aaaaaaaaata]

If your countrymen allow you to make it to a "600lbs life" without abject comment, then they have done you a disservice; certainly you're bound to feel more shame and discomfort dealing with being in that state.

[hollywood_court]

Everyone on my mother’s side of the family are obese. Extremely obese. They all told me that it would happen to me due to genetics. They never mentioned their sedentary lifestyles or the packs of cigarettes or the 2 liters of soda they consumed each day.

I was so ashamed of them growing up that I was motivated to never allow myself to become that way.

[bergenty]

It does except we don’t shame people completely as a society, we have a lot of niches and self assuring peer groups that negates the shame coming from some segment of the population.