It's interesting you say this, because i've been thinking a lot about Nietzsche's slave vs. master morality, and i feel like we as a culture have to a large extent come to adopt something resembling the former. If this is true - and there are a lot of assumptions baked into this, so take it with a pinch of salt - then it stands to reason that we as a culture are inundated with shame, since the standards of a slave morality are so much higher and more proscriptive than those of a master morality. Master moralities tell you what to pursue and be; slave moralities tell you what not to do. So, yeah, in sum, if all of this is true, then it's no surprise that society at large is struggling a bit with motivation, since the slave morality is essentially etiolating everything.