The Indian concept of “izzat” has been in the news lately. It’s similar to the Chinese concept of “face”: concern with how an individual’s actions reflect on the group. These are sometimes called “shame cultures”. Most Asian cultures are shame cultures.

“Guilt cultures”, roughly speaking, dominates where Christianity dominated, and most strongly where Protestantism dominated. Guilt cultures look inward, focusing on individual failings and the need for improvement.

In a shame culture, self-improvement to overcome the shame does not seem to be a factor. Instead, the group needs to hide itself away for a while, or extirpate the shame by killing or ejecting or purifying the offender, or killing anyone who witnessed the shame.

Guilt cultures and shame cultures do not understand each other.

Guilt cultures and shame cultures are fundamentally incompatible and should not be mixed.