The Feeling of Being Ashamed and Being Shameless: The Nature of Being Human

Shamelessness and nakedness without shame may mean the same thing if you only look through the word itself. However they are very different as you dig dipper to its meaning. A person named Christopher West discusses this topic with a student who is majoring in arts. Christopher said that he doesn’t believe in what the westerners think about body and that is “the total separation of the body from the person”. Separation of body and person or a soul means death while the reunification of body and soul means living.

In the Book of Genesis, the man and the woman at first, are both naked but they didn’t experience shame. When the man and the woman made a sinful act, shame entered that’s why it was natural for us to have that kind of feeling. Nakedness without shame occurs when the person is conscious that he/she is seen as total naked but doesn’t feel humiliated. It means that there is a respect for the person’s body, soul and dignity. On the other hand, shamelessness means the absence of the feeling of humiliation. One example of this is shameless nakedness. The nakedness in this aspect could be a threat to a man’s dignity. In this situation, the person’s body is not respected nor admired. The body is described as an object which is in the lowest chain of importance.

We can feel ashamed at many things. For most of us, alteration to our privacy could lead to the feeling of humiliation. We could feel ashamed when we show how vulnerable we are. Nakedness without shame could be attributed to acceptance of yourself being vulnerable and giving of your trust to others. When I have a problem regarding academics, I easily went and talk to my parents about it and how to solve my problem. They saw my “weakness”. Even though I know that they can use it against me I still gave my full trust because I know that they respect me not just as their child but as a person. The situation is different if a person opens up to someone who still invalidates the feelings of a person who opened up. The person is shameless if she don’t care even though others treat his/her as a trash or an object such as what is portrayed in pornography.

St. John Paul II once asked the difference of portrayal of human body as in nude art from pornography. He then said that the difference is the manner and the intention of each person. In pornography, separating the body from the soul is the intention. On the other hand, the intention of the artist is to make the audience see what he sees or simply to reveal the spiritual aspect through a medium or the art. A lot of people have still mixed feeling when it comes to nude art because they think of it as something like pornography but what’s certain is that nude art as portrayal of art is not comparable to porn. As humans, we should learn to appreciate our body as our own temples. We should give our highest respect and admiration to each and every body and soul we encounter. Treating the body as a low creature, an object or a trash should not be exercised. With it, we could eliminate all the malice we think of whenever we talk about bodies. We could understand and appreciate more our body as a model in an art if we get rid of all the malice and start thinking highly and respecting the dignity of each person we encounter.