Obviously, if you have no honor, nothing can be detrimental to it.
Some people have honor, some people have the feeling of safety. They each will usually have few things they wouldn’t do to maintain and increase it.
I guess the increase of honor is glory. The increase of safety, authority.
Your #2 is certainly not shame. For something to be shame, it must be a reaction to a perceived mistake. In your case, no such perception takes place. Instead, we have a person predicting they will fall if they don’t do something about it. Their reaction is probably that of fear.
Surely, even being on a collision course is a mistake.
That’s not what they are reacting to.
Isn’t it? Isn’t the programming you are referring to intended to prevent something from happening?
Is the aftertaste of falling regarding the fall, or the failure to avoid it?
And in the case of a fall, it seems to me that feeling will be rage, in the case of a free person that doesn’t handle it well, and embarassment in the case of a slave that doesn’t handle it well.
Maybe the decrease of honor is shame, and the decrease of the feeling of safety is fear.
What would happen if a free person were bred among slaves? Would they not live in a state of constant confusion?
And if a slave were bred among free people? Would they not be constantly petrified?
What did Samson feel when his hair was cut? Was it fear? Or was it shame?
You can tell what someone is reacting to by examining their reactions. The person in your hypothetical scenario is obviously trying to avoid falling. That’s why he’s flailing his foot. He saw that he will fall unless he does something about it, so he’s trying to do something about it. He didn’t perceive something bad about himself that he’s now trying to fix. And even if he did in fact perceive something bad about himself – something that is highly unlikely in this type of scenario – he’s certainly not attempting to fix it. His focus is entirely external – there is little to no self-awareness involved in the entire process.
Shame is a reaction to a negative perception of your own self. It’s basically looking in the mirror and reacting with pain to what you see. This pain does not always manifest as a visible action; it’s often merely pain i.e. a feeling, not visible to the naked eye. But the pain itself is literally your brain attempting – rather aggressively – to motivate you to do something (e.g. lose weight) in order to avoid perceived negative future.
The reaction has to be toward yourself. It has to be toward your foot, your whole body, your motion. The possible outcome might trigger it, but it actually takes a highly trained and controlled mind to react only to the possible outcome, making no alterations for lack of observation to your own self, and witnessing the fall in real time.
When you notice you are in the collision course, your brain automatically does a massive shit from focus on the environment to focus on yourself. That is what overwhelms person #2, who finds himself in manual control and jamming the controls wildly, and what comes over person #1 who deals with the sudden shift of perception smoothely and directs his own self to take the appropriate measures.
Perosn #3, the illuminated martial artist, forces the perception back to the environment, and falls without any alteration.
Fear. What it takes to react to what a person like Peter Kropotkin does is fear. Gloom, obviously perfectly capable of shame, not only doesn’t react (in the desired way) but seems completely confounded by the proposition.
He assesses his positions, just in case, and returns that, honestly, he doesn’t see it.
A slave would have an ear for the threat. The reaction would be fearful. Negociation would ensue. “Well no, I mean I’m not saying… yes indeed you’re right, I just mean…”
Another thing to note is that the fear campaign is probably not aimed at Gloom himself, obviously free beyond repair, but at onlookers who might harbour secretly sedicious thoughts.
Herds are good at regulating themselves. They can’t direct themselves but, once given direction, they are very effective at regulation.
Someone who sees someone like a Peter Kropotkin doing his thing, has now in his mind the proxy experience of fear (what they would feel in Gloom’s shoes) and the recipe to head it off at the bend. Nothing they do will lead them to that collision, and if ever they interact with someone like a Peter Kropotkin, it will be to add emphasis to the fear campaign.
Let’s look at the following:
Most people have no understanding of what this virus actually is (a particularly harsh common cold), much less what the supposed medical response to it entails. No clue how a ninja mask interacts with the phenomenon, not the foggiest about what a vaccine does, much less a highly experimental one using RNA, much much less what RNA is. Yet they instantly have a set of statements ready for any situation where the topic comes up, and specially where the topic comes up because somebody questions any of it. How do they have this ready, having almost less than 0 understanding? How also is any of the statement so uniform with that that so many others make in the same situation?
They saw a person like a Peter Kropotkin at some point. They saw the weilding of fear, which fear tracks very easily and clearly in their minds, and took easy note of the motions. Their mind gives the dictate: “be NOT the person at the receiving end.” The best avoidance, they understand clearly, is assumption of the role as they understand it. Not processing of the information, which is nonsensical and hopelessly arbitrary, but the role. They mark the statements, the motions of fear.
At what point shame enters into this, I don’t know.
Try to imagine a situation with three of these people having a conversation, no Glooms in the vicinity, about the bug.
Will they be talking about the details of the disease? About how the medical responses and proposed cures work? Will they compare it with other similar situations in history, distant and recent? With similar experiences in their own lives previously?
What they will say to eachother, is exactly what they would say where a Gloom in the room. Scary sounding meaningless soundbites, and probably a fair amount of player hating on all the “crazies.” That’s what they would touch on, in the privacy of their own shared perspective.
Possibly other things too distasteful to mention, but not ever a reasoned assessment of the situation, or even excitement about any innovations.
Where is the shame?
“I used to think this, but now thankfully I see the truth that is this.”
They would NEVER say that. They would never feel that. Shame might say that. Fear wouldn’t.
God bless their souls.