Shame

I think most people have some cause for nontrivivial shame. Some shame of a nature that we know better than to talk about it. It need not be debilitating, what psychologists call "toxic shame", but it looms over us, a threat that is sometimes forgotten but never really gone.

How realistic is our grasp of the seriousness of this shame-causing secret? It's hard to say. In the world of social media, a secret that would have been a cause for mockery in the past might be a career-ending moment now. Meanwhile, other secrets that used to cause people to commit suicide—King George V is reputed to have muttered, "I thought men like that shot themselves," when told that  Lord Beauchamp was gay—are now no reason for shame at all. But such issues are really much less significant than they appear. Social values have always been fluid and there is nothing new about such reversals. It is part of the human condition to be able to understand the shifting morals that will determine whether we are honoured members or pariahs of our society.

With that comes the recognition that many social values are merely contingent. The supposed permanent moral truths are often contingent but so are many of the new freedoms that supposedly replace them. I have little doubt that "gender fluidity" is not a freedom but a trap for the gullible who will shortly find themselves in the merciless care of the gods of the copybook headings. Because I believe this, however, I have no need to argue the point; when someone tells you they don't believe in Gravity, you don't need to convince them of their error, just sitting back and watching them fall will do. On the other hand, you needn't feel obliged to help bandage their wounds either.

A more important question for us regarding shame is to what degree it should restrict our behaviour. You might decide that some secrets are so troubling that you simply have to stop doing whatever it is that requires you to keep these secrets. Alternatively, when you see someone else's life being destroyed because they share a similar secret to your own, you might out yourself as an act of solidarity.

No matter what you do, however, some degree of esoteric messaging will be part of your life and it's foolish to pretend otherwise.

Another issue is the shame you may have been trained to feel by your family. Not all parents do this. My mother certainly did. She'd learned the trick from her mother so I don't blame her. Nevertheless, overcoming the effects of this was part of growing up for me.

I think that last concern is what is behind Don Draper's shame at his Korean war desertion.I can't prove my theory for, if it is true, the message is esoteric, which is to say hidden. You can't come right out and say that mothers are not necessarily good for their sons in our culture. So the message has to be hidden between the lines.

In any case, Don's secret identity is a MacGuffin. That is to say, it is a device to get the plot moving forward that is ultimately unimportant to the plot. It stands for something else and that something else is Don's need to shed his mother's influence. It's a need that all men have if they want to grow up (and, unfortunately, many men fail to recognize this).

My approach gives a vastly different reading of the series than the twist most people put on it. It also gives a different twist on male life.

This meditation was inspired by the twelfth episode of the first season of Mad Men. The title of the episode was "Nixon vs Kennedy". There will be more such meditations coming.