In Spanish, vergüenza is the word, technically, for “shame,” but it’s comprised of ‘ver’ (to see, or ‘the look’) and ‘guenza,’ which comes from the Latin name for the old world monkey species ‘Guenon.’ The guenon is rooted in the term for both ‘loose woman’s genes,’ and ‘wife,’ “kwenǭ,” (‘ken-awh’…like know…as in to Know biblically (to have sex with), and this is also the oldest root of the word ‘gene.’ Sex shaping and passing them on.
But in Spanish, the word vergüenza is also the shorthand word for ’embarrassed.’ The taxonomical name for the Guenon is the genus ‘Cercopithecidae.’ These are the largest group of primates with whom we share genetic ancestry. They have the most expressive faces, they are gregarious and communal like us, and they have bear (red) assess (for sexual attraction), and the males have, quite literally, blue balls.
They have the primordial preconditions for em-bare-ass-ment.
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
Mark Twain
The word ‘know’ from genesis’ first words on the ‘creation’ of man (his genus, his genes): “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Knew in Hebrew is יָדַע or ‘yada,’ which is Yiddish for what we say (‘yada yada’ ) when we want to ‘skip past’ the words too embarrassing to say… words about sex… embarrassing words, hence the loin clothes mentioned next: “and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.” These were the first tool of the patriarchy and they were employed by the female. Adam had to work (literally, his curse was to labor) for it if he wanted the pink parts now hidden under the fig leaf.
We are named after our earliest predecessors who were the monkeys who understood (became conscious of) their sexual mechanism, their bear asses, their ‘nakedness’, took shame, embarrassment (knowledge), and who’s females hid that ‘shame,’ or, more clearly put, became sexually selective: and the key difference between humans and other primates is just that—that because of our female sexual selectivity, men ordered themselves into hierarchical competition: the very earliest foundation of ordered society. Hence, the blue tastes of the male, an early testament to the secret of Jacob’s success over god.
Wisdom is a woman…
Nietzche, On the Genealogy of Morals
We came from these warriors. We tamed ourselves and competed cooperatively in order to be sexually selected. Our gorilla predecesores were originally spelled ‘guerilla,’ where our name war (Guerra) comes from. Slang for ‘face’ in Spanish (I use Spanish as a path to Latin) is ‘mono.’ Mono means monkey…the animal most aware of the face. We are also named for our hand: Mano, man. And our thought (self awareness): hombre pensante, pensar: to think, homo sa-piens (pensar is an irregular -ar verb so it is conjugated ‘se pienses,’ for example, for ‘you think.’
Embarrassment, bearing one’s ass, acting primally, like a monkey, becomes the founding principle: awareness of our animal instincts, shame (or social awareness more broadly), and the earliest orientation to ‘act right,’ is the fundamental building block of organized society–human society, morality.
…every system of morals is a sort of tyranny against “nature” and also against “reason”…
Nietzche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Embarrassment is social awareness. Awareness of social position is consciousness. Consciousness is mankind’s most singularly differentiating characteristic. And now you know more truly what it means to have really “shown your ass.”