The Extraordinary Power of Standing For Something

So Zohran Mamdani won the election to be the next mayor of New York City. This made a lot of people in New York City very happy, and it made a lot of people outside of New York City happy, too. It also made a lot of people inside and outside New York City very upset—though not, it seems, as many as it made happy. It made me happy, so I'm in what appears to be the majority. What a conformist I am!

Unlike so many politicians, Mamdani focused almost entirely on things he stood for, most of which involved practical matters designed to make life more livable for the human beings in the communities where he lived, the neighborhoods and boroughs that make up the city of New York. He intends to marginally increase taxes on the corporations and the city's wealthiest people, who have benefitted the most from the massive value generated by the human system that is New York. He intends to use those revenues to fund programs that will benefit the humans in New York that generated the value, and during the campaign he talked about those programs a lot to anyone willing to hear, and as a result of these extraordinarily standard and picayune ideas, a lot of people now consider him a dangerous radical.

To say that he focused almost entirely on things he stood for is not to say that what he stood against was unknown or unknowable, by the way. You could see what he stood against if you looked at the negative space created by the shape of what he stood for and the standards to which he held—standards which made him the enemy of billionaires and bosses and authoritarians and bigots in New York City and outside of it—an opposition that also helped make what he stood against plain. These are entities and individuals who largely operate under the delusion that, because they have managed to gather the largest shares of the value that natural human systems in the United States have generated, they are also the source of that value, which would be like a chipmunk believing it is the source of peanuts because it has managed to get a cheekful. Anyway, they helped provide an instructive demonstration of the negative space, the things Mamdani stood against.

Speaking of the negative space, Mamdani wasn't ashamed of the things he was told he ought to be ashamed of.

He wasn't ashamed of being a democratic socialist, which he is, and that's not bad. Wasn't ashamed about being called a communist, which he isn't, though that's not bad either. Wasn't ashamed of being an immigrant from Africa. Wasn't ashamed of being a Muslim. Wasn't ashamed to suggest that cops should exist for protection of citizens and should therefore be answerable to them, even though it meant he would be painted as hateful toward cops. Wasn't ashamed to expect the wealthiest to contribute to their communities, even though it meant he would be portrayed as hostile toward business. Wasn't ashamed to stand up against our current and temporary president very directly and call him out as the authoritarian he is, even though it meant that he would be portrayed as murderously hateful to all conservatives. He wasn't ashamed to show solidarity with all of the people of New York, either: Wasn't ashamed to talk about unshakeable solidarity with trans people, with racial minorities, with foreigners, with religious minorities, with poor people, with homeless people. Wasn't ashamed to talk about government as the way that human beings organize and administer human society for the benefit of humans, which is what government is—even though it meant that he would be portrayed as a city-destroying dangerous Marxist terrorist jihadi.

A lot of highly-placed Democrats were ashamed of those things that Mamdani was not ashamed of. Were? Are ashamed of these things. Are terrified of those things. They often run campaigns and platforms that begin by agreeing with Republicans that they, as Democrats, are indeed all of these good things, and then they agree with Republicans that all these good things are, if not bad, at least far too unpopular to even consider supporting, and then they deploy a strategy of convincing voters that they aren't any of these things that involve solidary with human people. They then try to convince voters that despite all this, and within these restrictions, they will do what they can to improve people's lives. This has not been an inspiring message, if public opinion polls about highly-placed Democrats are to be believed.

The Republican candidate didn't have a chance this year against a Democrat, but high-profile Democrats were so freaked out by the prospect of a non-ashamed non-corporatist Democrat winning a high-profile election that they ran a Democrat against him. It was the same guy who had already lost the primary to Mamdani, a guy to whom the people of New York City had already said "thanks but no thanks." This guy's name is Andrew Cuomo, and, until he resigned in disgrace, he was governor of the state of New York, which by extraordinary coincidence is the state where the city of New York can be found.

I guess I'd better explain what I mean when I claim high-profile Democrats ran Andrew Cuomo against Mamdani. Technically speaking, Cuomo was not a Democratic candidate; he decided to stay in the race as an independent, so technically speaking, the Democrats did not run Cuomo, technically speaking. But also technically speaking, a lot of very prominent New York Democrats (including the current House Minority Leader, the current Senate Minority Leader, a former Democratic presidential candidate, and a former 2-term Democratic President) either waited until voting had nearly started to endorse the guy who (let's remember) was the actual elected Democratic nominee, or else they neglected to endorse him entirely, or else they endorsed Cuomo. Not to be outdone, the sitting president, a Republican, also endorsed Cuomo, and Cuomo did not decline it, though he did deny it had happened, which is something I have noticed you get to do when you believe that you're in charge of reality. The sitting president does this, too.

When I say that Cuomo resigned in disgrace, by the way, I mean that he was credibly accused of sexually harassing at least 13 women, and then he used $20 million in public funds to defend himself, and then he was forced to resign. So that is a disgrace, because he disgraced himself through his actions. Not enough of a disgrace, though, that he couldn't run for mayor even after losing the primary and still manage to be endorsed by a former president who also had his own sexual harassment accusations and scandals, and a current one who is an adjudicated rapist. I guess Cuomo must have redeemed himself somehow, though I can't think of how. Maybe it was just refusing to be ashamed of his pattern of sexually abusive behavior that effected his redemption; a lot of people do offer exoneration on those terms and then call it redemption. Apparently among high-profile leaders within the Democratic party, being a socialist is a more shameful thing than having a long history of sexual harassment and misusing public funds against your victims, or running an openly racist campaign.

Is it strange to you that I am talking about how a campaign that defined itself by positivity did so by negotiating shame? It's strange to me, too, but I've been thinking a lot about shame recently, so here we are.

What do I mean by shame?

I mean the negative space, I guess. There's always negative space; you can't avoid it. You wouldn't even want to avoid it, even if you want to focus on positive space, because creating positive space creates also negative space. The more you focus on one or another, the sharper the boundaries between the two become. Sometimes it's appropriate to focus on the negative space. Sometimes it's appropriate to focus on the positive space.

Let me see if I can unpack it.

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People often say "what a shame" to mean "this is not as it ought to be."

I think this is instructive when it comes to shame. "A shame" requires an "ought to be" in order to exist. And an "ought to be" generates "a shame" simply by existing. We all have our list of ought-to-bes, I think. I have one, and I bet you do, too. You might think of our ought-to-be as our non-negotiables. Often our ought-to-be guides our actions, which it probably should, provided our ought-to-be is a good one.

My ought-to-be that says that every human being is a unique and irreplaceable work of art carrying unsurpassable worth; that every person deserves to have the basic needs of life met as a natural human right; that all humans generate the value created by natural human societies and should therefore share in that value, which means that equality under the law and equal representation should be a bedrock given; and that diversity is not only a strength but a necessary foundation of strength. My ought-to-be says that these things should be defended at all cost from all that which would destroy the irreplicable diverse art of humanity and human beings. I would hope to make this ought-to-be a key part of my chosen identity, while I would hope to find my intrinsic identity in the intrinsic truth that I am human art. Maybe you have a different way of expressing a similar ought-to-be. Or maybe you have a different ought-to-be.

And, as positive space describes negative space, an "ought to be" also describes a "shame." If our ought-to-be doesn't guide our actions, then our actions have fallen short of it, which is a real shame.

People sometimes say "I am ashamed of myself." People sometimes say "I am ashamed of this situation." People sometimes say "I am ashamed of you." People even sometimes say "you are shameful" or "I am shameful."

When people say "you are shameful" or "I am shameful" it makes a shame not of behavior or situation, but of identity, so we should probably talk about identity.

When I think of identity, I think first of things that are intrinsic—who you are, attributes you can't change. You're a left handed, black-haired, green-eyed, gay, Brazilian, dark-skinned, Jewish, trans, clumsy, neuroatypical, cancer-surviving extroverted female dwarf with a beautiful voice, a dazzling wit, and large eyes. All part of the marvelous and diverse human art show.

I also think of your actions and behaviors—what you do. "We are what we repeatedly do," as Will Durant (paraphrasing Aristotle) once wrote. If you practice medicine, you are a doctor. If you write, you are a writer. If you fuck goats, then no matter your reasons, as the famous saying goes, you are a goatfucker. After a while, what you do is who you are; not everything you are, but certainly a part—the relationship is there between do and is, and we create this part of our identities through action. If you doctor or writer long enough, you'd be known as a doctor or a writer after you retire or even after you die; we don't call Toni Morrison a "former writer" or think of Jonas Salk as a "former doctor," after all, even though new novels and vaccines are not going to be forthcoming from those sources. It's just what they were.

If you do something long enough, you would often have to do something deliberate in order to be a "former" something. You'd have to personally take deliberate conscious steps to not be that thing. You could lose your medical license, for example. You could ... repudiate the act of writing? I don't know how you'd do it as a writer. Sometimes it's easier to change, though. If you're a goatfucker you just have to leave the goats alone and make restitution as best you can. I might recommend moving a few villages downriver, but that's not a matter of identity; it's just a social practicality.

Intrinsically, we are who we are, and we can't change it, and I think that's just great, no matter who we intrinsically are. So also, but non-intrinsically, we are also what we do, and how somebody might feel about that part depends on what it is you do. We can change this part of our identity, though if we do something long enough with significant enough effect, that change requires a significant conscious effort, and the more significant what we've done is, the more significant and conscious the effort required.

So that's identity for you. Let's go back to shame.

If somebody does something that is contrary to or short of some ought-to-be or another, you have a state you might call "a real shame."

If you fall short of or act contrary to your own ought-to-be, you'd feel personal shame. To get out of shame, you might change your behavior or your identity so you stop falling short of it. Or you might change your ought-to-be.

If your friend notices that you are falling short or acting contrary to your ought-to-be, they might tell you about it—particularly if this is an ought-to-be you both share. This creates what I'd call a state of interpersonal shame, where somebody is ashamed of another body, and which can be alleviated (if at all) either by changing the behavior or the ought-to-be.

If a group notices that its community or society or state or country is falling short or acting contrary to its ought-to-be, they might organize a movement about it—particularly if this is a shared ought-to-be. This creates a state of collective shame, which can be alleviated (if at all) either by changing the behavior of the collective or the collective's shared ought-to-be.

I think the way you'd change your behavior is by realizing that there is an ought-to-be, and that you're in the negative space. That awareness, and the conviction that you ought to change it, is what I mean when I talk about shame. It's what you get when you focus on the negative space. I think the way you change the ought-to-be is by focusing on where the ought-to-be ought to be. It's what you get when you focus on the positive space.

So which should we focus on? Is it better to change the behavior or the ought-to-be? That depends, I'd say, on what the behavior is, and what the ought-to-be is.

If you say "I am shameful" about your intrinsic identity—think of a gay kid raised in an Evangelical Christian environment—then I'd say you have believed terrible lies about your lovely and artful self, and you'd do much better to change your ought-to-be until it no longer reflects a belief that gay people are a transgression, and recognizes that there is nothing shameful at all about being gay. You can do this by focusing on the positive space of who you are so you stop trying to be you and instead truly become yourself, with a confidence that can say "I am not shameful" and mean it, and can say "I am not ashamed" to those who try to shame you. This strikes me as true liberation from the negative space of shame.

If you say "I am shameful" because you have come to awareness of a habitual abusiveness that you have incorporated into your non-intrinsic identity—if for example you run a gay conversion camp, and for a fee you kidnap children at their parent's behest and torture them to teach them to stop being gay by teaching them that they are inherently shameful, driving them to suicide and self-harm and lives of shame and lies—then I would recommend changing the behavior, so that you no longer identify yourself by your bigotry and your abuse. You'd start by drawing your attention to your presence in the negative space, and that would probably start with somebody else drawing your attention to it. In time, you won't have to focus any longer on the negative space, because you'll know that you are living in the positive space. You will be able to say "I am not shameful" even if you feel shame for the abuse you've done and as you work to correct the effects of that abuse. If you are firm enough in your principles and values, you might someday say "I am no longer ashamed" even as you accept potential consequences and pay potential costs of shameful things you've done. This strikes me as true liberation from the negative space of shame.

There's a time for the negative space. There's a time for the positive space.

A guy can be ashamed of his buddy for being a sexist—for not living up to their shared values of human equality. A guy can also be ashamed of his buddy for not being as emotionally closed-off and willing to dominate women as he believes real men ought to be—for not living up to their shared value of male domination. In either case, the guy, confronted for the infraction, can decide whether or not he accepts the shared standard, and change his behavior to match the ought-to-be they both share, or he can reject those boundaries, and refuse to be shamed for not sharing an ought-to-be he doesn't hold. But in one case the shared standard is based in a deep truth and in the other it is based in a toxic lie. Likewise: the Civil Rights movement used the shame of racial discrimination to change our country's ought-to-be to include greater equality under the law for all people, but for decades previous, white supremacists used the "shame" (as they saw it) of racial equality to make bigotry a virtue, and changed our country's ought-to-be to increase supremacy under the law. Again, in one case the shared standard is based in a deep truth and in the other it is based in a toxic lie.

My point is that you need to understand the positive space to understand the negative space, and you have to understand the negative space to understand where the positive space ought to be. You have to it all to see the picture.

Maybe you've noticed the way that people who focus exclusively on the negative space are often talking about themselves. It's a known fact that Donald Trump has a distaste for fat people and goes out of his way to shame fatness. He expends considerable effort shaming fat people for being fat. He gathered all generals and admirals together a while back and one of the reasons was to tell them that fatties would not be accepted. I just read that he's given instructions that visas should be denied to fat people trying to enter the country. Take it for what you will, but it strikes me as a way of living in the negative space of shame.

Or maybe you've noticed how some people try to identify all space as positive space, or suggest that nothing should be out of bounds of decency as long as it is being permitted; how they focus only on sharing any virtues, principles, and standards, without much thought as to what those virtues are. Their commitment appears to not to any sort of ought-to-be, but simply comfort for themselves within whatever ought-to-be others will choose for them. They may even frame this as a virtue, positioning themselves as positive people, excising negative space from public life, but in practice all they excise is virtue and principle, leading them to agree that negative things are positive, finding themselves running in shame from things they ought to believe.

Shame, then, is a human tool—not the only one, but a vital one—of negotiating the borders between ought-to-be and ought-not-be. If you focus on ought-to-be, you're in the realm of standards, principles, virtues, values—the realm of vision. If you focus on ought-not-to-be, you have infractions against standards, principles, virtues, and values—what I'd call "a real shame." If you change those borders, you have changed the standards. And awareness about an infraction against a shared standard, coupled with a conviction that behavior should change to align with that standard, is what I mean when I say shame.

Whether you focus on the ought-to-be or the ought-not-to-be, you are still describing the other one. Positive space defines not only itself but the negative space. Negative space shows the positive space by contrast. You can't have one without the other. Together they create the boundaries and define shared standards.

Let's return our attention to the New York election.

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The election was a battle between competing ought-to-bes. This is usually also a battle between parties, but as I mentioned, this time around the Republican candidate was basically an appendix, so highly-placed Democrats had to supply a Republican themselves.

Elected Republicans have an ought-to-be, if you listen to them, or if you notice that they've sent the military to U.S. cities to kidnap and enslave human beings, and that they are suing for the right to starve people on SNAP benefits, and many other actions animated by the idea that some people matter and other people do not matter, and that life must be earned by generating profit for people whose lives do matter, and other expressions of supremacy. I wish supremacy wasn't a popular ought-to-be, but unfortunately you'll learn it's very popular, if you go out and talk to people. People make this belief set a key part of their identity, too—the lie that they are the only people who matter—sometimes even the lie that they are the people who do not matter. Can they change this part of their identity? Of course. Do they? Sometimes. Not as much as ought to be.

What I'd say Republicans have been doing over the decades is creating a reprise of the old foundational American ought-to-be under which bigotry is a natural and salutary aspect of identity, in which wealth equals virtue and greed equals goodness, and under which the domination of whiteness and wealthiness and maleness and christian-ness and all other adherences to white supremacy—and all of the corruptions and abuses that this energizes—are seen as the correct shared standard, while all other forms of identity are seen as shameful infractions against the standard. They've managed to make supremacy our nation's societal standard through ruthless strategic institutional capture, and increasingly through force and threat of force, and through the help of comfortable people who are made uncomfortable by the idea of enforcing any boundaries of decency, who therefore decline to pass any sort of moral judgment. Now Republicans are trying to make their supremacy an interpersonal norm, too; attacking people for holding standards that were once considered tenets of basic decency. The Republican project doesn't usually declare itself as white supremacist (though this has been changing in recent times) but focuses almost entirely on the negative space of all the types of people they deem shameful and all the ways of being human that ought to be considered shameful, and all the punishments that they therefore deserve. So it is mainly by their negative space that you see what they truly believe to be good.

Mamdani declined to be shamed by this. This meant that he had no shame about his intrinsic identity or anyone else's, and his understanding of the values he held informed the repeated behavior that forms his non-intrinsic identity; organizer, politician, and now mayor, and he had no shame about that, either. The values he expressed were solidarity, progress, equality under the law, and justice for all. Not being ashamed of not sharing supremacist standards meant no fear of being accused of being different things that are not in any way shameful to be, and no running from it, either; just running toward real solutions to real problems for the benefit of real people.

Mamdani didn't just talk about solidarity with all types of people from New York City, he showed them he believed it. He spent time those people—Black people, Jewish people, Palestinian people, trans people. He talked to MAGA people, and he won a decent number of them over, if polls and interviews are to be believed. All of them? No. For many in the MAGA movement, their supremacy is so core to their identity they would rather have it than the basics of human need. But it seems some were won over. Interestingly, Mamdani didn't accomplish this by abandoning his support for marginalized people, which is the only path many highly placed Democrats, already ashamed as they are of the limited degree to which highly-placed Democrats have defended marginalized people, can imagine for capturing MAGA voters. Instead he actually created positive space, a place for those people to go, if they wanted to change. Some did, and good for them, and I think it means some sort of incremental positive movement into a different ought-to-be. Others didn't, which is their choice, and it means what it means.

Did Mamdani also use shame? I think so. Positive space defines negative space. Demonstrations of decency shames the indecent. Principles shame their lack. Solidarity shames bigotry. Mamdani focused on the positive space—a very different positive space than the one supremacy posits, and it was by this positive space that the negative space was defined. It was by the positive space of his standards that he demonstrated what sorts of things he finds shameful, which are the sorts of things I believe he would be ashamed to participate in.

Mamdani created shame the same way he created vision: by having standards, and then showing everyone what his standards are, and then proving that he truly held those standards by standing for something without shame. There is a massive power in standing for something that you'll never get by standing for whatever the most recent polls show. It's an attraction. It moves the lines of ought-to-be. It defines what is shameful by showing what is inspiring. It creates someplace else for people who have chosen shameful identities to go, if they so choose.

Mamdani didn't say "you are shameful" to the MAGA voters; he talked to them about things that simply cannot exist in the world of supremacy that MAGA defines in its positive space: things like human need and universal solidarity and making life easier in real ways for real people. Did they change their identities? He left space for them to do so. They personally took a deliberate conscious step. It's something. Maybe it's a lot. There are times to focus on the negative space. This was a time to focus on the positive space.

He didn't say "I'm ashamed of you" to anybody. I suspect it wouldn't be right or effective for a mayoral candidate to say "I'm ashamed of you" to constituents, even if what they have done is shameful and you are rightfully ashamed as a person in the same society. Those conversations are perhaps held most effectively between people who are close enough to know what values they both share, who respect one other enough so that their opinions matter to one another. In those circumstances I'd say that such conversations are not only effective, but vitally necessary. Mamdani did make it clear, though, that Andrew Cuomo should be ashamed of his history of corruption and abuse, and that moreover Cuomo should be ashamed to not be ashamed of it, and he did so directly and unashamedly. There were times to focus on the negative space, and Mamdani took them.

I don't know if Mamdani ever said "I am ashamed of this situation" in those exact words, but I did hear him speak of the distress and the shame that the people of New York feel about the ways their taxes fund cruelty and murder happening in this country and abroad; the shame they feel to live in a country where authoritarianism holds sway. This spoke to a collective societal shame that is forming in the hearts and souls millions of people who I dare hope are getting much more clear-eyed about what our ought-to-be ought to be, and who I dare hope are getting much more willing to pay a cost to establish and defend it. That was a focus on the negative space of shame, and an appropriate one, I think.

In the end what happened was that human beings harnessed the extraordinary power of standing for something. It's the extraordinary power of virtue, which shames vice without having to say a thing—not if the situation doesn't call for shaming words, which is often the case, though not always. Standing for something really feels like it could work anywhere to redraw the boundaries, to move the positive and negative space into some new configuration less aligned to terrible lies, more aligned to great truths.

And it seems people are already feeling the negative space of shame caused by standing for something. The opinion writers are hard at work to alleviate it.

There are people who are claiming that Mamdani's victory is a one-off deal, an non-replicable unicorn. These are folk who insist that what hasn't won yet is the only way to win in the future, and what has already just won can't possibly win. The old Democratic-consultant gaslight shuffle.

And there are people who are saying that while they support what Mamdani intends to do, he can't possibly succeed, and a lot of those same people are already at work to make it as hard as possible for him to succeed, which is a strange kind of support.

There are the usual threats from wealthy people to leave the city, threats they believe are credible because they still think everyone else believes as they do, that they are the source of the city's wealth. Who even knows what the long-tied temporary president has said. Who knows what his red-hatted army is saying. Look it up for me, would you? I saw a famous TV billionaire complaining he can't get a meeting with the mayor-elect, in a way that made me realize that famous TV billionaires cannot imagine anyone wanting anything more than a meeting with a famous TV billionaire.

I suspect that Mamdani would tell the TV billionaire and the rest that there is room for them in New York, but if they are too ashamed of progress, equality, justice, and solidarity to stay, then the rest of New York will have to pursue those things without their permission or their participation.

If they leave they're all missing a big party that everyone is invited to.

That's a real shame.

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A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He carve up a good hunk a wood.