251–260 of 403 posts
Sorry but this is utter bullshit. In the toxic melting pot that is today’s public opinion, the lesson learned is never admit you’re wrong EVER. The moment you publicly express remorse you are done. The master of this is Ricky Gervais eg https://youtu.be/uEawbnXaIDs No one will care of remember whether you found some way to apologize. The only thing groupthink will remember is whether you could be intimidated or not.…
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The "progressives" you're referring to aren't progressive. They're reactionary authoritarians, hijacking the ideals and preferences of whatever group they're attached to. You can find them in all forms of debased public discourse and lowbrow populism, with a history going back millennia, and uniformly distributed across the political spectrum. No-one called the Spanish Inquisition progressive. I hold a very special l…
This is a a good point; and one I wish I could give you a decent response to as this problem is such a big one and one that I've seen hit plenty of groups I once subscribed to, and evidently from history quite an old one too however I'm at a loss on what the correct response to the phenomenon is. The cheap response is to whine about "no true scotsman" but I'd love to see ideas on how to prevent groups actually gettin…
The major problem with the left leaning political spectrum in america is a somewhat blind authoritarian “respect” for “diversity” where what counts as diverse is rather restricted and generally doesn’t include disagreement on the subject.
The key missing ability is getting people to empathize with each other and not to confuse radical ideas which one finds abhorant and moderate ideas one finds disagreeable.
A cheap way to make this much easier is to ban labels like political party, gender, etc. If you stop sorting people (and yourself) into bins it becomes a whole lot more difficult to be so polarized as you aren’t dividing the world into us and them by dealing with a new human one by one.
I don't know. Years ago, I was on an email list and I did a lot of sincere public apologizing, in part because the internet was younger, so we didn't have a lot of stuff worked out. We were just stumbling our way forward as best we could. And the end result was that I became everyone's bitch. People would intentionally pick on me and be ugly to me and when it went sideways, the group as a whole would go "There she go…
I'm the nicest most contrite person you'll ever meet -- until I'm not.
The form of words of an apology is extremely important. The worst form (in my personal opinion) is the qualified apology as in IF I have offended I apologize . It questions the need, it implies that its open to doubt. I apologize unreservedly is far better.
The doubt is sometimes valid, as it might not seem (or in fact be) reasonable for the offended party to be offended. If person A says something that person B takes offense at, but person A had no intention of being offensive, _and_ it is not obvious (or rational) why B is offended, then it makes sense to offer "if what I said offended you, I apologize". That's polite and considerate.
If an apology is genuine, heartfelt, it requires no qualifications. If it is qualified something is not reconciled.
I agree that in hypothesis, an issue could be moot or open, but do you really think this predominates?
I am by the way a serial offender and a serial apologiser. I know from bitter experience how hard it can be to accept fault and apologise for hurt caused.
The number of people in this thread arguing that apologies can only make things worse is shocking. Are these the same people who reject addressing war crimes with truth and reconciliation, and instead advocate "deny everything, make counteraccusations"? A proper apology—one that (1) acknowledges the specific harm caused, (2) acknowledges responsibility and remorse for specific choices, (3) explains how they hope to m…
Are you new here? No, so you shouldn't be surprised by these techbro echo chamber responses?
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As a Briton, I sympathise. It's easy to say and then feel foolish by the reaction of the counter-party - that you've made something bigger of it than it is, or that you've inadvertently (been considered to having had) admitted guilt to something serious! 'Sorry' to me ranges from 'Excuse me', through 'ha-ha we both reached for that/side-stepped in the same direction at the same time', all the way of course to the ser…
The American equivalent to the "sorry" you're used to is, at least in the Midwest, "oop" or sometimes more like "ope" depending on accent. It's more of an utterance than a word but it means the same thing.
(And sometimes it's followed by an 'alright?', which is practically a C21 howdoyoudo.)
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To preface, we're talking about people with jackasses-tendencies here. Normal, well-adjusted people don't like to make their colleagues feel bad. But as you say, it's also been my experience that apology and... "ownership"(?) are two very different things in American (Southern) culture. "I'm sorry I did X" seems to signal weakness and invite criticism, if people are already so inclined. "I did X. It wasn't the best a…
As a Canadian, I was quick to realize that the mere word "sorry" has a different meaning to some people down south. In Canada I'll just say it casually to mean a polite "hope I'm not troubling you" or "sorry that happened to you", and never thought of it as immediately declaring responsibility let alone fragility. But in the US, I've been pounced on for a casual use of that word, as if I'd announced failure and that…
But there is also a difference between using "sorry" as an expression of sympathy when interacting with close relations, and public apologies.
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> Am I apologizing? Hardly! The full sentence is, "Sorry, did you just actually step on my foot, what the hell?" At least in the UK, that's not the full sentence, or it could be, but only with a change in tone ('SOrrY?!') - to me it's more like 'Oops my foot was in your way I think, so sorry'. (Said of course before you have a chance to think 'no hang on, I wasn't in the way, you weren't looking, this isn't my fault'…
Your interpretation is normal in Canada too.
I don't know. Years ago, I was on an email list and I did a lot of sincere public apologizing, in part because the internet was younger, so we didn't have a lot of stuff worked out. We were just stumbling our way forward as best we could. And the end result was that I became everyone's bitch. People would intentionally pick on me and be ugly to me and when it went sideways, the group as a whole would go "There she go…
I also apologize more than usual. Even at work. But I've also learned that if someone is unfairly trying to blame me I will vigorously defend myself. Maybe even going a fair bit over the top. I feel like people learn pretty quickly that I'm not someone they can just dump stuff on -- I've literally had people say, "remind me not to mess with you". I'm the nicest most contrite person you'll ever meet -- until I'm not.