Planet of the shamed

I still feel bad about a bold proclamations I made about the Uncanny X-Men comics when I was 11 years old. I once confidently spun a line of absolute bullshit about the history of Rogue. I remember where I was when I was explaining how Rogue was actually a Dire Wrath (a bold misreading of something I'd heard somewhere), and I remember who I was explaining it to.

I still feel shame about that. I think back on it and hope the person I was telling about this never found out the truth, or was so bored by my bullshit that it never even occurred to them to verify it. And I still feel dumb about my arrogant stupidity, and still feel ashamed about it, 40-something years later.

Is this normal? I know plenty of other folk who can't help fixating on their moments of mind-numbing stupidity, but do most people really give a damn? Do most people just forget about it, and move on in their life?

I'm not talking about the big shit in life, like heinous betrayals or great cruelties. Just the dumb crap that absolutely nobody in the world cares about, but that you can still carry around in your heart. 

But if we can't feel bad about the small shit, it's no wonder so many people can be totally sociopathic about everything in their life, without feeling any kind of shame or guilt about it.

We do now live in a brazenly shameless world, from your loud neighbours to the heinous creatures walking the highest corridors of power, and people do extraordinarily horrible things that I would not be able to bear, just on an emotional level.

It feels like a distinctly 21st century problem, with social media pouring gasoline on the fires of human ignorance. People have no shame in showing how fucking stupid, or bigoted, or just mean they are, because it gets them more attention. And they never feel any shame about it. It's a nice fantasy that Fox News presenters go home and cry into their pillow because they're obviously making the world a worse place every single day, but they fucking don't, or they'd actually stop that shit. They're fine with it.

And how shamed am I really, when I'm still somehow bragging about how I still feel the dumbest of guilt about an X-Men nonsense? Is that even helping, or am I just showing how I am so much better than  allthe meatheads with their blithe cruelties? 

All I really know is that shame can be a crippling social anxiety for some, but it also has its uses, and I really do think the world could use a bit more shame in it.