It came down to the salt and pepper in the salt and pepper shakers. The restaurant was modestly sized, tucked into a storefront along University Boulevard just west of the Main Gate. It had a scattering of tables. On each one: inconspicuous, nearly invisible salt and pepper shakers.
It all blew up because of them.
Sam, the owner, decided to sell the restaurant. It had done well, partly because of the food, and partly because of its Middle Eastern customer base. Sam was Palestinian. One kitchen wall displayed a large picture of Yasser Arafat. Arabic conversations hung in the air.
Salt and Pepper
Sam was my client. He asked to close the sale of his restaurant in my law office. The attorney for the buyer, a friend of mine from law school, was okay with it, so I agreed.
We gathered at my office after regular business hours. Sam and Bassam, the buyer, arrived together. We went over the documentation. The inventory was a detailed line-item compilation of everything included in the sale, from the large freezer compartment to the dishes and silverware. I was confident we had included everything.
I was wrong.
Bassam pulled out a wad of cash -- $40,000 – and set it on the table. I handed pens to each gentleman. Then Bassam asked about something absent from the inventory: the salt and pepper inside the salt and pepper shakers on the tables.
The sale fell apart. Bassam swept the wad of cash back into his pocket. He and Sam left, wildly gesticulating while arguing in Arabic. A commercial transaction collapsed over pennies’ worth of salt and pepper. I turned off the lights, locked the door, went home, and poured a drink.
The Grand Gesture
Sam and Bassam returned to the restaurant and continued their dialogue. The resolution seemed obvious: Sam needed to buy some salt and pepper, or adjust the sales price by a few bucks. That would have been a measured, reasonable, and logical resolution.
This is what happened: when they returned to the restaurant, Sam opened a cabinet that contained huge jars of spices. They were not part of the sale because Sam, a chef, wanted to keep them. With a sweeping gesture, Sam declared: “I will give these to you” to resolve the dispute. Bassam agreed.
Instead of resolving a dispute with a ten-dollar bill, Sam gave away hundreds of dollars’ worth of spices. The issue wasn’t about money, but honor. Bassam felt dishonored. Sam felt dishonored by being regarded as dishonorable. He regained the high ground with his sweeping gesture. Bassam conceded the high ground, but walked away with the spices.
This episode taught me a lot about the Middle Eastern mindset, but the lesson is broader.
Honor and Humiliation
As an attorney, I knew how to close a sale. I understood laws and regulations and wrote contracts. But the salt-and-pepper lesson showed me what I didn’t know. Sam’s resolution of the dispute was illogical to me. Why spend hundreds of dollars when ten bucks would cover it?
“Humans make illogical decisions.” - Spock.
“A defining ethos of Middle Eastern society is the so-called culture of honor and shame,” wrote Gad Saad Ph.D., for Psychology Today. “A central tenet of such a worldview is that one must do everything to maintain one’s honor and accordingly to avoid public shame.”
The significance of honor and humiliation is not limited to the Middle Eastern ethos.
A Human Reality
A study published in the National Library of Medicine in 2012 explored the effect of humiliation, using participants solicited with Craig’s List and a recruitment service.
“The defining characteristics of humiliation were low levels of guilt and high levels of other-directed outrage (like anger and unlike shame),” wrote the authors, “and high levels of powerlessness (like shame and unlike anger).”
Sounds like a “fight or flight” response, doesn’t it?
“When faced with shame, the brain reacts as if it were facing physical danger, and activates the sympathetic nervous system generating the flight/fight/freeze response,” wrote Shirley Davis in the CPTSD Foundation website. “The flight response triggers the feeling of needing to disappear,” she added. “In comparison, the fight response expresses itself as verbal and behavioral aggression by the embarrassed person towards the other who caused them to feel ashamed.”
The Way of the World
Humiliation leads to retaliation, which leads to humiliation, which leads to retaliation, which leads to humiliation which leads to… You get the picture. The cycle, if left unchecked, can frustrate a commercial transaction – or level a nation.
The humiliation-retaliation cycle echoes everywhere. In Gaza and Israel. In Congress. In schools and workplaces. And, most certainly, on the Internet. What is “cancel culture” other than humiliation? Donald Trump exploits his followers’ perceived humiliation by the “elites.” When Trump promises “retribution,” he’s validating their humiliation and pledging to restore their honor.
What Hamas did on October 7th was the most grotesque savagery imaginable. The Israel government was humiliated. It responded by unleashing savagery in Gaza (and to a lesser extent, the West Bank). Their professed aspiration – to eliminate Hamas – is disingenuous. They want to humiliate Hamas. Annihilation is a by-product.
Turbulent campuses fit the pattern. Columbia University students set up an encampment to protest Israeli actions in Gaza. Perhaps the administration could have backed off, let the students blow off steam, and wait them out. Instead, goaded by members of Congress who humiliated university leadership, they called in the police to remove the encampment – and humiliate the students. Encampments set up elsewhere humiliated other administrators. On it goes.
People caught up in a vortex of humiliation and retaliation speak in terms of absolutes: intolerance; conquest; annihilation; victory. Suddenly, everything is black and white.
Like salt and pepper.