ritual – Stepping Stones

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson – Notes & Themes + Related Media

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed: A Micro Book Review

The book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson (2015) is a seminal examination of the modern form of public shaming – namely, online shaming – which been made increasingly prominent by the expansion and intensification of social media culture.
Although the text is a little lightweight for my preferences, the writing is effective and revealing of its topic. Ronson’s documentary style approach that blends some philosophy into investigative interview is quite fitting here, particularly in introducing the world of online shaming. Shamed seems especially valuable in that it appears to be the first popular work to explore and assess the nature of online shaming in its social and personal effects.
Since the book is based on a broad variety of personal insights that are revealing of human nature and cultural conditions, I imagine that most would find interest in its content even if not particularly engaged with social media (ironically, it so happened that I only signed up to ~~Twitter~~ 𝕏 a few months after having read this book).

On the Book Notes

The notes featured in this post are composed from my extracted highlights of the book and consist largely of my paraphrases of the original text. However, I have also altered, elaborated, and added to Ronson’s details and points to represent what I considered to be the essential significance of each passage. Thus, instead of creating a notes summary of the book I’ve compiled its most substantial information such to enhance the reception of its significance.

Munich’s Cycle of Vengeance in View of the Israel-Hamas War/Palestinian Conflict

An analysis of the 2005 Spielberg film Munich in the context of the Israel-Hamas war and Israeli-Palestinian conflict that identifies universally significant themes of profound current relevance.

Preface: Either With US or Against US

“Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make:
Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.)”
—President George W. Bush on September 20^th 2001 inaugurating the ‘War on trr’ (sic).

This article analyses Spielberg’s 2005 film Munich for its thematic relevancy to the Israel-Hamas War and resurged Palestinian Conflict begun by the October 7^th attack; and more essentially, to the globalised ideology of counterterrorism. Before doing so, I outline in this Preface the context in which I interpret the current war and significant themes from the film.

Pandemics in Perspective: Plagues and Peoples

A compilation of my notes from the book: Plagues and Peoples, by William H. McNeill (1976); complimented by my summarizing sub-headings.

Plagues and Peoples: a **historical** ***interpretation*** *by an **epidemiologically-learned** historian.**

**i.e. Pandemics **in perspective—**par excellence!*

As quoted by the Lancet behind the front cover of this book,

Professor McNeill is an American historian with a sound grasp of epidemiological principles.

As McNeill points out himself in this book (which can be seen immediately in the notes to follow), historians systematically gloss-over the significance of epidemic disease.

In choosing to read Plagues and Peoples third in my sequence of pandemic-themed books, I identified it as the one most complimentary to Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year: for while the latter is “the prototype of all accounts of great cities in times of epidemic”, the former has to be one of, if not the most substantial attempts at a historical interpretation of epidemics (—which is quite distinct from an epidemiological interpretation of history, I would add).