Is there no shame anymore?

Sam Bankman-Fried seemed to be very interested in getting one thing over to bring one thing in the media flash, which he started last week. It is not so much about admitting something unethical or illegal (or not "knowingly"); Rather, he would like to let us know that he is in a particularly unpleasant emotional state: embarrassment.

"A mistake for which I was quite ashamed [is that] I underestimated the extent of a market crash," said the former CEO of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX to journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin in a live streaming interview from the Bahamas. "I had embarrassingly little know what was going on," he told the crypto podcast the block. "I was wrong with Alameda's credit on FTX for a rather large number and [on] embarrassing," he said to YouTuber Tiffany Fong.

Well, if you were careless, you could point out that it is quite surprising for someone who feels so embarrassing to choose such an extensive media tour, especially since his lawyers have advised against it. But the ego could violate such a devastating sin. After all, this is a man who was happily on the title pages of magazines in August, while he was described as "the next Warren Buffett".

However, I am not sure whether embarrassment cuts the moral mustard when we speak of the fact that up to $ 8 billion has disappeared, up to $ 1 million creditors have lost their money and a collapsed 32 billion dollar crypto empire is examined for alleged fraud on a large scale (which Bankman-Fried denies).

an emotion that I didn't see Bankman-Fried about is shame. There is a significant difference between the two states: embarrassing that we accidentally revealed a unattractive or negative aspect of ourselves to the outside world. To be ashamed, on the other hand, the unpleasant realization includes that we have done something morally wrong or reprehensible.

Bankman-Fried's feelings of embarrassment are more images than misconduct and therefore morally neutral. If he spoke of being ashamed, this would indicate that he takes on a kind of moral responsibility for what he did. Instead, his claims of embarrassment are simply a kind of emotional virtue signal, without the severe moral luggage associated with the takeover of responsibility.

"Shame is associated with the feeling that what you do or has done or what you are. "Pregnancy is a more superficial emotion and definitely not a moral emotion."

Bankman-Fried not only seems to be shameless; He seems to be almost contemptuous towards those who feel complex moral feelings. In some troubled Twitter messages between him and the Vox journalist Kelsey Piper, he criticizes former colleagues: "Gary is afraid, Nishad is ashamed and is guilty". He also says Piper that those who supervise FTX bankruptcy proceedings "try to burn everything down out of shame". Fortunately for his own conscience "the world is never so black and white".

Shame has received a bad reputation in recent years - for example, the Philosophin Martha Nussbaum has argued that it is a "primitive" emotion that is "wishing to hide from our humanity" and that it "hinders the moral progress of society". “. And indeed, the kind of shame that we feel for things that escape our control does not seem to be healthy or helpful.

But Teroni argues that even if we are ashamed of things for which we are not responsible, this does not mean that emotion itself is negative; Rather, it could help us concentrate in the type of values that we should accept.

A complete lack of shame seems to have led to the spectacular collapse of FTX. Had Bankman-Fried felt that more than his own image was at stake, would he have behaved so ruthlessly?

While the shamelessness of the crypto world may be particularly brazen, the problem goes deeper. With the decline of religion, it has become more difficult to agree on common values and to find the correct way of dealing with violations - both for others and ourselves. But we have to. Embarrassing is a much too weak emotional consequence.

jemima.kelly@ft.com