I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate.—Nelson Mandela¹

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings. Mahatma Gandhi

Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder. Alice Miller
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Tommy confides to his teacher that he has not done his homework. He feels embarrassment. The teacher reveals this to the whole class. Now he feels even greater embarrassment. The teacher makes him sit facing into a corner, provoking the laughter of his classmates. This time, he feels humiliation.

Had the teacher quietly given Tommy an “F” grade, he would have felt not humiliated but offended. Offense is primarily cognitive, to do with clashing beliefs and values, whereas humiliation is much more visceral and existential.

The Latin root of “humiliation” is “humus”, which means “earth” or “dirt”. Humiliation involves abasement of honour and dignity and, with that, loss of status and standing. We all make certain status claims, however modest they may be, for example, “I am a competent doctor”, “I am a happily married mother”, or even “I am a human being”. When we are merely embarrassed, our status claims are not undermined—or if they are, they are easily recovered. But when we are humiliated, our status claims cannot so easily be recovered because, in this case, our very authority to make status claims has been called into question. People who are in the process of being humiliated are usually left stunned and speechless, and more than that, voiceless. When criticizing people, especially people with low self- esteem, we must take care not to attack their authority to make the status claims that they make.

In short, humiliation is the public failure of one’s status claims. Their private failure amounts not to humiliation but to painful self-realization. Potentially humiliating episodes ought to be kept as private as possible. Being rejected by a secret love interest may be crushing, but it is not humiliating. In contrast, being casually cheated upon by one’s spouse and this becoming public knowledge is highly humiliating.

To this day, humiliation remains a common form of punishment, abuse, and oppression. Conversely, the dread of humiliation is a strong deterrent against crime, and history has devised many forms of humiliating mob punishments. The last recorded use in England of the pillory dates back to 1830, and of the stocks to 1872. Pillories and stocks immobilized victims in an uncomfortable and degrading position while people gathered to taunt and torment them. Tarring and feathering, used in feudal Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, involved covering victims with hot tar and feathers before parading them on a cart or wooden rail.