(no subject)

Eve Tushnet is one of those writers I find quite compelling even though I rarely actually agree with her, but her new essay on shaming, in the context of Middlemarch, is really good. (Conservative website, and you probably do not want to read the comments.)

Bulstrode reminded me a lot of me. Specifically, he reminds me a lot of what I was like in the year or two before I quit drinking. During that time, when I knew that I had a serious drinking problem but hadn’t yet quit, shame completely corroded my moral sense. It isolated me. I felt like there was nobody I could trust or talk to. I had no hope of change and no sense that there was any way out. I was able to imagine taking actions to hide what was going on, but stopping was completely unimaginable.

When you feel worthless and hopeless, you stop believing in the possibility of change. And if you can't believe in the possibility of change, then thinking about trying feels like you're rolling a boulder uphill...