The Cost of Shame | Verashni Pillay | TEDxPretoria

Today I want to talk about failure. There has been a lot of really excellent research published recently about the importance of failure to us as human beings. In order to grow, we are told we must stop avoiding failure and instead learn to fail, fail fast. Go ahead, these are great buzz phrases, so we nod our heads and tell ourselves we've got it, but the fact is, most of you sitting in this room are used to doing things right, you're used to being rewarded when they accomplish things. true, and most importantly, you are used to being punished when you fail from school to university and even your work life, so when we talk about failure it is abstract at a deep level, we fight hard against failure, especially now because in these days we have We begin to punish failure with something much worse than traditional punitive measures such as prison or fines.

Today we have begun to punish failure with something that is much harder to come back from:

shame

, and when

shame

is combined with social media, the results are devastating. I know. I failed so publicly that it made headlines around the world. You've probably heard my story. I was the former editor of The Guardian newspaper and then became editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post South Africa. It was during my time in hospice that I had it happen that someone claiming to be a woman and a feminist sent a false and racially provocative blog to my blog editor. The blog was critical of white men, so it completely blew up.

The perpetrators are suffering from very intense sexist cyberbullying. This is what triggered me. I've been firmly exposed to that, so I jumped into the fight. I wrote a response asking for a civil debate making it clear that I didn't agree with everything the author had said, but accepted that white men have historically had as much power as you can imagine. I was very angry, so when the blog turned out to be a scam, it completely blew up. Turns out it was a white man's hoax designed to expose me and my newsroom, but the fact is, he had made a mistake.

There were many things I could and should have done better in that process, so I did a lot of introspection, apologized profusely, and looked from the bottom of my heart at the processes to fix the newsroom. I brought in experts to see what we could do better, but they weren't in It seems like there are no apologies these days, so here's what happened in the days that followed: A small group of people ran a surprisingly powerful social media campaign demanding that they fire me. There were some influential people among this group, including journalists and even the chief whip. from our party position, johnston hazen, who somehow found time to tweet me 33 times on that first day demanding that I resign, the pressure went up and up, it was the week since I couldn't sleep, couldn't think straight. under attack from all sides, including my company, it is very difficult to make a rational decision in that place within a few days of publishing that blog, our Press Ombudsman issued a ruling that can only be described as cruel, other editors had made similar mistakes, none had been Given such a severe ruling or such a misinterpretation of the South African press code, he would later appeal the ruling and win, but at the time it was the final nail in the coffin.

I quit a week after that blog was published. I then largely withdrew from public life and went silent and several months later I was diagnosed with severe depression before the age of 35 I thought my life was over I thought I had no career prospects I didn't know how I would pay my bills because the new of this intensified shaming is the online shaming that we have practiced as a culture it is no longer about punitive measures intended to rehabilitate the offender so that they can continue to do better there is a crucial difference that cyberbullies employ these days when it comes to mistakes, no longer It's that you made a mistake because if you did you could apologize and move on.

Instead the message they drive home over and over again is that you are a mistake and nothing you do can change that is what I experienced, the narrative behind many of the attacks I received was that I was never meant to be. be editor. I found this really disconcerting. I wanted the subjects to be someone who looks like me never was. I was destined to be an editor. It seemed like all my successes, my sacrifices, my learnings, or my hard work meant nothing. It was a fraud. Know. I have always had a strong sense of purpose in my life.

Normally, I have never suffered. of imposter syndrome but it seemed like others were determined for me to do it so this is the difference then between guilt and shame guilt is part of the human condition and from guilt comes repentance you cannot be absolved you cannot ask for forgiveness you can Do it It is corrected with shame, you are a mistake and there is no turning back. This is the message I constantly see for Pete from people for months and even a year after the incident, people he didn't know and who obviously would never say these things to me. expensive because that's not how cyberbullying works, shame was a powerful weapon in ancient times, but back then you had to pick up that stone yourself and throw it at the person in question, usually a woman, you have to lower yourself in the action cruel and being Seen doing it, it's much easier when you can hide behind a keyboard and not look that person in the eye in Monica Lewinsky's talk on public shaming.

She took a hard look at this new culture of public humiliation and asked for a better way I want to take. I didn't make that call because I was hurt, but because I think shaming is

cost

ing us Lee dearly as a society and not just with people who are being shamed because they lose their livelihood or sometimes even their lives, nor is it just for those that they are shaming because it dehumanizes them. I want to do this because I think shame is

cost

ing us a lot. It reads in the sense that the leaders who could be making our country a much better place, who are very influential, who are in high positions, can no longer watch. their mistakes and learn from them, they can no longer do a better job of leading us in South Africa and this continent and the world desperately need better leaders, but we will not let them learn that we have made it a blood sport to destroy them when Another cost of shame is that we personally I didn't feel embarrassed.

I thought many things. I felt anger. Depression. I was affraid. But the most worrying thing I felt was that all those emotions were almost threatening to swallow me whole. That was a numb feeling that consumed me long before I had a fire in my belly to change the world, to leave it a better place, to commit my life to a course I believed in and to work hard to help fix it. things and improve people's lives. raise my hand for big and scary opportunities, I suddenly felt the need to put my hand down to keep my head under the parapets and avoid getting blown away, I suddenly felt the need to live a safe little life and take those risks, I wonder .

How many other leaders you have tracked in a similar way experienced this type of trauma? They feel this way. Leaders who could be doing great things and helping change our world are too traumatized to try again for fear of being attacked again, and worst of all, I wonder how many of you? having never tasted public shaming having made the same decision having seen this scary new world we live in where someone can lose their job overnight and become a nurturing figure and you have made a decision in favor of self-preservation because I know there were many people who saw what I went through and didn't experience some kind of schadenfreude err, but they felt genuine empathy, that's what you feel when someone falls really badly and seeing that seeing myself and others get hurt, you decided not to say yes in a big way. terrifying opportunities that you decided not to raise your hand when you see what leaders go through in this new digitalized world where people are so angry and so unforgiving, you too are choosing to live a small life, what is that costing us as a society?

We're not leaving that's why we have so few women leaders running for senior management positions. I want to read you a quote. I'm human too. I make mistakes. I deeply regret these errors and ask for your forgiveness. Those were the words of the South African. former influential and almost close finance minister had made an error of judgment and had not been entirely honest in meeting a controversial Gupta family he did not make any deal with them he did not accept any bribe but he did not admit that he had met them, what I read was his apology, but we couldn't accept it as a society, so he had to resign.

This was a man who was a public servant of great integrity and talent, who had faced great corruption and lost his job. Previously, someone who has his entire professional life training for this important role, but we could not forgive him for this lapse in judgment and we lost a leader at a time when we desperately need leaders of integrity. This is what the mob that erupts from a The incident does not understand none of us is perfect none of us understands we are all on a journey we could all say and do problematic things I have had to learn that for myself too and I regret some of my previous writings that did not make it funny enough for people who go on a journey in your book, so you have been publicly shamed.

Author Jon Ronson is out talking to victims of people publicly shaming people who made stupid comments on social media and lost their livelihoods. People like Lindsey Stone who made a rude gesture and an American War Memorial or people like Justine Sacco who tried to parody racism and tweeted that she was going to Africa and hoped she wouldn't get AIDS but probably wouldn't because she's white right before taking a flight. In this country, both Justine and Lindsey lost their livelihoods and were hunted into darkness. I imagine the people who attacked Lindsey and Justine had deeply held beliefs about racism towards war veterans and felt like they were doing a good thing by standing up to these two and essentially trying. to destroy them I imagine those who came for me also felt they were doing something good who care deeply about the state of journalism in our country in our world who care about the scourge of fake news but another author who writes about online shaming The sous-chef points out that when activism gets confused or turns into a digital war, the message is lost and the only thing people remember is that noise change cannot and will not happen this way, but despite this , humiliation tactics continue to be used and confused with activism.

Numerous psychological studies show that when it comes to people struggling with issues like weight, psychological issues, addiction, in control studies where they were shamed, they didn't get better, what happened was they actually relapsed or got worse, so what is the solution? Researcher Brené Brown. He says the antidote to shame is vulnerability, but after my incident I try to be vulnerable. I was very vulnerable in my apology and they made fun of me for it and I think that was probably what hurt me the most. I talked about how deeply I feel. He believed that racial reconciliation is the only hope for our country.

I talked about the need for healing, understanding, and empathy, and people I knew made fun of me, so I don't know if limited capacity is something we need immediately after an incident like that. The mafia is not ready to listen to him. I think we have to go one step further as a society. We need to expect people to fail and clearly outline how we deal with it when they do. I dream of a country and a world where every organization, an institution has a policy and what happens to an employee, a student or a child when they make a mistake when they say something stupid, even if it is about race, sex, gender or sexuality , a policy that the organization can fulfill even when the outraged brigade has lost its individual humanity and its collective rage, a policy that incorporates aspects of correction and rehabilitation, and there is Plaza consistently not only based on what is being most loudly protected by the people with the biggest microphone because that is simply not fair and In addition to not being fair, it also, as I have shared, robbed us of so much that a leader cannot look at a mistake and grow from it because of the overwhelming response of shame .

I couldn't watch what happened for so long because I didn't want to. thinking about it is not how learning happens that is not how we grow as a society and I have learned my lesson. I'm working on new models to create deep, thoroughly researched journalism. I have learned that cheap clicks come at a great cost.because somehow SAP has enough, the best lessons are learned by making mistakes in the beginning, so let's allow each other to make mistakes, let's learn to have grace not just because it's the fear or the right thing to do, but because every soul has the potential.

To be a pole, every sinner has the potential to be the most effective and loudest evangelist. When we shame sexists and racists and the like into silence, we miss the enormous potential to transform the underlying evils in our society by creating an agent of change from within. You don't solve things like racism and sexism by preaching to the converted, so let's not waste that opportunity, let's do better.