Rorty on humiliation
For the best way to cause people long-lasting pain is to humiliate them by making the things that seemed most important to them look futile, obsolete, and powerless. Consider what happens when a child's precious possessions - the little things around which he weaves fantasies that make him a little different from all other children - are described as "trash," and thrown away. Or consider what happens when these possessions are made to look ridiculous alongside the possessions of another, richer, child. Something like that presumbaly happens to a primitive culture when it is conquered by a more advanced one.

Richard Rorty Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (1989)