Human beings resonate emotionally with one another. We can read one another’s emotional states, choose to either match them or not, and become habituated towards resonating in particular ways with particular people - this is what it is to ‘know’ someone - and ultimately to influence and be influenced.
Shame arises when my intense emotions are not matched by the outside. Humiliation takes place when an outer emotion imposes itself on me without taking mine into account. Both shame and humiliation presuppose a lack of adequate knowledge, which is to say a suboptimal level of feedback between two systems or two elements in an assemblage. Evil arises only from ignorance, as both Plato and Shankara proclaim. Shame and humiliation generate traumatic modes of organization which, once they are unleashed into the world, create chaos and confusion.
Is there a technical, instrumental solution to the problem of evil? If we take a systems theoretic approach to consciousness, the answer is yes. Better feedback, knowledge at a higher degree of resolution, would prevent shame and humiliation from taking place. We simply need to enhance our cognitive abilities so that we are better able to understand and resonate. And what is this resonance? Is it music?