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Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

But this always happens. There is no culture which doesn't have a strong element of self-censorship for at least some of its members.

But equally some groups/individuals will get the benefit of the doubt, while others will be aggressively bullied and scapegoated. And some groups/individuals will aggressively claim victimhood and martyrdom while actually being comparatively privileged.

The question is more the extent to which social dynamics are influenced by dark triad morality. Cultures with very little are far less inclined to public bullying than cultures where it's foundational.

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Missing the point. It does "always happen" but it doesn't always happen to the same degree or to the same proportion of the population.

The Overton Window can be enforced to varying degrees and contain different percentages of the population.

Contrast the atmosphere during the Cultural Revolution to the atmosphere of a 1990s liberal democracy where the large majority of the population was within the Window.

"There is no culture which doesn't have a strong element of self-censorship for at least some of its members."

while this may be true, it does not necessarily reflect that it is right. often times throughout history shame has been used to control minority groups and people who are less privileged.

which sadly means that popular consensus may not always have the best interest in mind. oftentimes the masses overreact and get it terribly wrong if there is awareness outside of pure groupthink

What are the examples of these shameless cultures? I'd like to join them.

Traditional American culture (as compared to traditional Japanese culture, for example). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fe...

Traditional American culture is rife with shame. The concept of “manly men” is based on shame. The concept that women are responsible if they attract unwanted male attention is based on shame. The concept that anyone can succeed so if you don’t it’s because you didn’t try hard enough is based on shame.

I could go on?

Most of these aren't really "traditional", they're constructs of the post-WW2 era, where the government & mass media/advertising very consciously tried to institute strong "national unity" norms.

I suspect that the "traditional American" culture GP is talking about is frontier/immigrant culture from c. 1840-1929. There's a good case for that really being a "shameless" culture - you do your thing, I do mine, we'll grab up all the land and all the gold and all the prime industries and not feel bad at all for the natives we're genociding.

In anthropology, there's a concept of a guilt-shame spectrum:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fe...

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