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Why forgiving someone else is about you

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Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#211

Post by basch »

dsubburam wrote: post #200
yarrel wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So not only must we let those who wrong us off the hook and feel for them, if we can't it's because we aren't virtuous enough. I'm perfectly comfortable ignoring that moral claim. If people want to talk about letting go, talk about letting go . Talk of forgiveness is simply misleading.

Exactly. There is the case where the person who has given offense sincerely offers an apology, having become aware of their wrong, with an affect of proportionate contrition. The injured party might now deem to forgive them, and restore the offender's previous status in the relationship--e.g. as a friend, good neighbor, etc. Redefining "forgiveness" from this bilateral way that we have come to traditionally understan…

>Redefining "forgiveness" from this bilateral way

I would argue that the bilateral requirement is the redefinition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgiveness

"In most contexts, forgiveness is granted without any expectation of restorative justice, and without any response on the part of the offender (for example, one may forgive a person who is incommunicado or dead)."

>The injured party might now deem to forgive them, and restore the offender's previous status in the relationship--e.g. as a friend, good neighbor, etc.

That is more than forgiveness. It is reconciliation.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#212

Post by sngz »

basch wrote: post #208
sngz wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Making forgiveness contingent on someone elses action removes your own agency. says who? Never said forgiveness is a gift. You you have to earn it. One has to be deserving of it. In fact what everyone seems to be saying here makes it sound like it should be a gift, given with no conditions.

>You you have to earn it. One has to be deserving of it. That removes your agency. You can't forgive without getting something from them first. If they never give, you never forgive, and you continue to live with the hurt. Making forgiveness contingent on deserving, earning, or being worthy of it is something else entirely. The other person need not be involved in forgiveness in any way. A gift is something you give…

> That removes your agency...........land you continue to live with the hurt.

My agency is from moving on not based on forgiveness. you can't just blanket classify everyone's hurtfulness. Sometimes even after you forgive someone you're still going to continue to live in hurt. other times you can move on and not forgive someone and not be hurt anymore. It has nothing to do with forgiveness. Moving on is part of and a prerequisite for forgiveness, but not the other way around.

> The other person need not be involved in forgiveness in any way..... Forgiveness is only between you and yourself.

yep that is all true. and me and myself thinks that guy doesn't deserve forgiveness. I'm not losing sleep over it or suffering in anyway. Simply I don't associate myself with that person anymore and not have them be part of my life. Even if I forgive someone I don't tell them.

People in this thread seems to have different definitions of forgiveness and mix up acceptance/moving on with actual forgiveness of someones actions.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#213

Post by serverholic »

proto-n wrote: post #105
MegaButts wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume his/her parents didn't know any better? Some people really are selfish and malicious. You're going out of your way to assume the best when you don't actually have any reason to believe that's true.

There's a general sentiment that all dogs are innocent at heart. If the dog has bad or mean behavior, that's the consequence of its bad experiences, like being outcast as a stray, bad owners, having been hurt before, etc. You can apply the same line of thinking to humans. Everyone is a victim of their circumatances and experiences. And while I understand that "everyone is innocent at heart" might be true to only some…

Even if they are born that way you can still look upon them with pity. They didn't choose their parents and they didn't choose how the wiring of their brain.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#214

Post by sngz »

mcguire wrote: post #210
sngz wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Hating someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die" only true if the hate is affecting your life and taking over you

Hate, almost by definition, is similar to love: you make your happiness dependent on the state of someone else. If hate is not affecting your life, it's not hate.

you can hate someone but not act or let it bother you. its just that its super easy / common for people to let hate affect their life. Hate can also be channeled in a positive healthy way. I got out of a shitty life situation by channeling my hate towards my studies and self improvement to get the financial and logistical means to leave.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#215

Post by basch »

sngz wrote: post #212
basch wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You you have to earn it. One has to be deserving of it. That removes your agency. You can't forgive without getting something from them first. If they never give, you never forgive, and you continue to live with the hurt. Making forgiveness contingent on deserving, earning, or being worthy of it is something else entirely. The other person need not be involved in forgiveness in any way. A gift is something you give…

> That removes your agency...........land you continue to live with the hurt. My agency is from moving on not based on forgiveness. you can't just blanket classify everyone's hurtfulness. Sometimes even after you forgive someone you're still going to continue to live in hurt. other times you can move on and not forgive someone and not be hurt anymore. It has nothing to do with forgiveness. Moving on is part of and a…

>Sometimes even after you forgive someone you're still going to continue to live in hurt.

No, that would not be forgiveness. Forgiveness is you overcoming the negative emotion.

>other times you can move on and not forgive someone and not be hurt anymore.

That would be forgiveness.

>Simply I don't associate myself with that person anymore

That would be a lack of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not a requirement of forgiveness.

What you are describing is either excusing or pardoning.

>Moving on is part of and a prerequisite for forgiveness, but not the other way around.

There are multiple ways to move on, including forgetting.

I am generally a descriptivist. I acknowledge there is a second definition of forgiveness that is incompatible and mutually exclusive with the first, and that many people commonly use the word that way. That second definition however does not invalidate the concept of Forgiveness, with a capital F. It doesn't erase the first meaning of the world. I am not going to call it "misuse of a word" but the word is being used extremely loosely to describe other concepts that have other defined words. In this case, precision and clarity are required in conversation, and using definition two to have a conversation about the meaning of the concept in definition one, becomes a circular argument.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#216

Post by nonbirithm »

nitrogen wrote: post #178
M0T0K0 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. So many here have not had to deal with extensive emotional trauma brought upon manipulations, oversights, ignorance, inexperience, etc. of a parent who was totally a victim too, but THIS DOES NOT NEGATE HOW DANGEROUS they can be. My own mother whom was beaten and abused by an alcoholic grandmother will tragically never be capable of seeing her own faults due to the trauma that basically arrested her development…

I wonder how widespread this is under the radar. It seems like something people don't really talk about.

People are just afraid to recognize facets of human behavior that they don't see as normal. When people talk about schizophrenia they might say it's "difficult" or there's no easy solution or that they're still thinking about how to heal them, but the reality is that maybe these people can never be completely helped in a lifetime, to the point where they're accepted as "normal" again. Maybe there are some classes of neurodegenerative brain disorders where the tissue allowing for fudamental human capability is gone forever, and the functionality can never be fully restored. On one hand we strive to treat everyone equally, on the other some people will end up giving up on their dreams because those dreams will never be within their ability. Or, far more devastating, they will stop being able to realize they could even have dreams to begin with. I remember reading about the tragedy of the co-founder of Cloudflare, and the top comment by a person featured in the article that said there was nothing more to be done for his condition. And it was that much more painful because everyone believed he was still "normal" for the longest time, that his behavior could be explained in terms of human sociability or wit, until they realized that the only reason he acted the way he did was because of an underlying condition of the brain.

https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline...

Is a certain degree of extreme childhood trauma simply a fork in the road in a person's life that is never completely reversible? Does that kind of harm cause the person to be trapped in their own mind with the mental damage it causes? I personally believe it can in some cases. There is only so much you can do if you have the mental equivalent of your limbs being dismembered.

If my definition of "forgiveness" is giving someone else something of mine, then there are some people I will never forgive so long as I'm alive.

But if forgiveness is just acknowledging mistakes and moving on, never letting them take anything more from me, then I've completely forgiven them instead.

But that doesn't sound like forgiveness to me.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#217

Post by higeorge13 »

There are so many articles on forgiving, letting go and so on, but so little on encouraging people to retrospect their lives and wrongs and give sincere apologies. World would be a little bit better if people were encouraged to talk their differences or mistakes, to give closure, or give an apology, even if it took months or years for them to understand. Moving on is the easy part; reaching out the one you did wrong and asking forgiveness needs tons of courage and mental strength.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#218

Post by sngz »

basch wrote: post #215
sngz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That removes your agency...........land you continue to live with the hurt. My agency is from moving on not based on forgiveness. you can't just blanket classify everyone's hurtfulness. Sometimes even after you forgive someone you're still going to continue to live in hurt. other times you can move on and not forgive someone and not be hurt anymore. It has nothing to do with forgiveness. Moving on is part of and a…

>Sometimes even after you forgive someone you're still going to continue to live in hurt. No, that would not be forgiveness. Forgiveness is you overcoming the negative emotion. >other times you can move on and not forgive someone and not be hurt anymore. That would be forgiveness. >Simply I don't associate myself with that person anymore That would be a lack of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not a requirement of f…

> Forgiveness is you overcoming the negative emotion

no its not

>other times you can move on and not forgive someone and not be hurt anymore.

no its not, its called moving on

> That would be a lack of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not a requirement of forgiveness.

no forgiveness is between yourself so reconciliation has nothing to do with it.

> There are multiple ways to move on, including forgetting.

yep and forgiveness is one way to move on. but moving on is not forgiveness.

Re: Why forgiving someone else is about you

#219

Post by barrkel »

throwanem wrote: post #180
nitrogen wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a recipe for redirecting the grudge toward some other external target I think that's antithetical to the term forgiveness, so I suspect that's not intended by the parent comment(s). In fact, the exact opposite is how I read their comment, that is that you take your grudges toward external targets and let them go.

I don't know. Framing it in terms of opposition to a perceived political trend doesn't read that way to me, and my own relevant experience includes nothing to suggest that framing forgiveness in any way related to any kind of political anything would be a useful way of dealing with the ramifications of past emotional trauma. Perhaps the original commenter will come along and clarify.

I'm not trying to frame it as oppositional to a political trend, but rather that it's unfashionable an angle to take, to not take up the mantle of victimhood. I was commenting on the relative location of my position because I'm aware of its unfashionability as I write.

If anything, I was being peremptorily defensive, not redirecting to some other external target.

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