Punishment for something you did is good and needed but there’s a certain point it turns into humiliation and what’s the purpose of that

Humiliation is not only harmful to others but to those who inflict it on them. It makes them careless about others and less empathy or others.

In The Sacrlett letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne he uses Hester Prynne to show how damaging public humiliation can be and how it can change someone’s view on things. My essential question correlation to the story can be seen through not only Hester Prynne, but also reverend dimsdale. Reverend dimsdale allowed the humaltion to continue, which slowly lead to his emotional, physical, and spiritual deterioration. He probably saw the humiliation Hester endured and was scared on how others would react if he came out with the truth, because if they viewed her like that, how would they view him? They didn’t view her with any compassion or care for her whole life. She still helped out with things and created things for people despite them not liking her.

People being publicly shamed and outed on social media is so normalized today, it’s just another thing to see on our timeline. We’ve become so desensitized to it that when we see others on social media doing it, it’s almost like a “tv show” or like a daily gossip that we find entertaining. When in reality if that was happing to us, we wouldn’t like it and it wouldn’t feel good to see yourself being famous for something that could have been blown out of portion.

In The Traumatic Impact of Media Humiliation, Misrepresentation and Victim-Shaming on Narrative Identity and Well-Being, Christine Marie states that, “the opportunity to be publicly exploited, misrepresented, humiliated, victim-blamed, or shamed has never been more common or normalized…In today’s world, people witness the humiliation and exploitation of others in the media almost daily…generates internet traffic, vies, clicks, and profit…we do not know how it affects the demeaned or misrepresented individual”. Continuing to engage in the act only adds more fuel to the fire and only helps spread it to other people. This causes people to normalize it and not be able to be compassionate and tell the difference between the right and wrong in it.

In the book of Matthew in verses 7:3-5 Jesus
says “why do you see the speck that is in your brothers eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother ‘let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye”. Jesus warns against judging others when you yourself have sins and are guilty, and to not be so blinding on trying to take the focus off of your own sins, that you hurt someone in the process.