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The past is not true

sive.rs

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Re: The past is not true

#251

Post by e40 »

miiiiiike wrote: post #134

He did the right thing by seeking her out to apologize. The rest doesn’t hold water. “There’s a small chance that the chaos and ruin I’ve visited upon others may not be as bad as as those people made me think. Thanks, I knew my negligence/malice wasn’t that big a deal.” The worst people that I’ve ever met would love for that to be true. They’ll stab people in the back or work to damage people’s careers and when you c…

> Negative equity is a real and it compounds over time.

I don't think this is always true. For me and you, yeah. For good people. But, there are a significant percentage of humans (I have no idea what the number is) where this is completely false. They can move forward in time without a scintilla of guilt or negative repercussions. I fact, for some people, it seems to be fuel for them. They enjoy it. The percentage of those folks is much smaller, I believe. Thankfully.

Re: The past is not true

#252

Post by mrguyorama »

bittercynic wrote: post #229
mrguyorama wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accept that sometimes when you do a bad thing that permanently harms someone else you don't deserve forgiveness (not everyone is christian FFS) and it's not wrong for that to follow you around forever. If that makes you uncomfortable, too fucking bad, don't irreversibly blind someone.

If you make a mistake like this, where you owe a debt that can never be repaid, I think we need some social mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and get some measure of closure. This probably should follow you around forever, but maybe it shouldn't dominate every moment of the rest of your life.

No, victims are not obligated to forgive you and neither is society. Sometimes people do bad things that cannot be undone and should not be forgotten. Sometimes that person doing the bad thing is you. Even if you didn't intend to harm someone, even if you did nothing wrong, even if you followed best known procedures and were fully attentive, you can still cause irreparable harm to someone else, and we shouldn't just pretend that's okay as some coping strategy.

Sometimes you hurt someone and you should feel bad about that. Deal with it. It's a part of life to be an imperfect human and this should help you keep in mind that EVERYONE IS AN IMPERFECT HUMAN.

Re: The past is not true

#253

Post by bittercynic »

mrguyorama wrote: post #252
bittercynic wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make a mistake like this, where you owe a debt that can never be repaid, I think we need some social mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and get some measure of closure. This probably should follow you around forever, but maybe it shouldn't dominate every moment of the rest of your life.

No, victims are not obligated to forgive you and neither is society. Sometimes people do bad things that cannot be undone and should not be forgotten. Sometimes that person doing the bad thing is you. Even if you didn't intend to harm someone, even if you did nothing wrong, even if you followed best known procedures and were fully attentive, you can still cause irreparable harm to someone else, and we shouldn't just…

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it seems like we're in agreement, no?

Re: The past is not true

#254

Post by mrguyorama »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #232
mrguyorama wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accept that sometimes when you do a bad thing that permanently harms someone else you don't deserve forgiveness (not everyone is christian FFS) and it's not wrong for that to follow you around forever. If that makes you uncomfortable, too fucking bad, don't irreversibly blind someone.

This is basically the raison d'etre of the American justice system today. Of course, I also think it would be nice if someone who committed hate crimes was justly punished for it, but stepping back from this specific example, I think the bloodlust around what constitutes a "just punishment" goes too far in most cases.

My stance says nothing about punishment. Punishment has nothing to do with lack of forgiveness. Forgiveness is also not a necessity to treat other people, including those who have harmed you, as inherently flawed humans that deserve basic things like dignity.

Forgiveness is a broken concept. Just because you can be a better person later in life should not absolve you of bad things you did before. This isn't a call for everyone to carry grudges, but a call that we should stop trying to play this dumb "just keep pretending everything is always and will always be 'okay' in some way" ideology. People sometimes do bad things because they are bad people or do not care about others, and it's okay to not forgive that. People sometimes do bad things through no real fault of their own and it's okay to still not forgive that.

Re: The past is not true

#255

Post by csours »

Every history book is a narrative.

Do you listen to:

The generals and presidents and industrialists?

or

The privates and citizens and workers?

Most of the narrative of WWII I learned in high school is built off of grains of truth, but other grains of truth are much more important, depending on where you live.

You learn that Japan surrendered because of the atom bombs, then you learn that they surrendered because the Soviets invaded Korea, then you learn that it's a combination of factors.

People want to hold a complete story in their heads, with a satisfying conclusion. If you can find someone or something to blame, that is a very satisfying conclusion. If you are fighting a fight, you will read that fight into all of the history you encounter.

Re: The past is not true

#256

Post by dragonwriter »

rexpop wrote: post #192
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Images play a big role in how events are perceived. Whenever there's a natural disaster you tend to see all of the worst examples, even if they're not fully representative of the event. But I think it's sometimes necessary in order to get people to take these events seriously, since they can negatively affect so many people. Otherwise people might look at images where some things look normal and think that those who…

If you are interested in images' role in public perception of events--particularly suffering and tragedy--you might look to read Susan Sontag's essay collection "Regarding the Pain of Others," published in 2003: > To the militant, identity is everything. And all photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their captions. During the fighting between Serbs and Croats at the beginning of the recent Balkan wars, the…

> A photograph is supposed not to evoke but to show. That is why photographs, unlike handmade images, can count as evidence.

While this is mostly a good piece of writing, in the real world handmade images (and handwritten notes) are, like photographs, potentially evidence, and the issues raised with photographs are the reasons both photographs and hand-written/hand-drawn items (and all other physical items) as evidence tend to demand supporting (and admit opposing) testimonial and physical evidence of provenance (and, the physical evidence offered for this purpose has the same features, such that ultimately, it all rests on testimonial evidence of provenance.)

I also don't think the first parr of the sentence is true: pictures may be supposed to show, but pictures have been noted for their evocative power long before this piece was written—pictures are in certaim circumstances understood to show, and under other and frequently overlapping circumstances to evoke; there is certainly a common danger in mistaking evocative power for also indicating informative power, but few anywhere have denied the existence of the evocative power of photography.

Re: The past is not true

#257

Post by mrguyorama »

Jiro wrote: post #216
stronglikedan wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accepting those things seems like a miserable way to live. No thanks. I prefer to move on with my life, even when I was wronged.

This is about if you have wronged someone else, not if you are wronged, If you've wronged someone else, maybe you should live miserably if you can't possibly make up for the wrong.

Eh, not that harshly. Not that you should be miserable but that such a large event SHOULD have a large impact on you as a person and SHOULD maybe cause changes in how you live your life. You should still be treated with dignity and basic human decency unless and until you show yourself to continually harm others for selfish or negligent reasons. One bad action doesn't make you a bad person but it is still a bad action and that should be remembered.

Actions have consequences and we shouldn't try to hand wave those away because some people seem uninterested in going to therapy and dealing with the guilt they have. You can always do better, but that doesn't invalidate the bad.

People are complex, the world is not black and white, everyone is a huge story with complex rationalizations. Reflect on why you do things, reflect on how you affect those around you.

Re: The past is not true

#258

Post by mrguyorama »

superb_dev wrote: post #250
Jiro wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is about if you have wronged someone else, not if you are wronged, If you've wronged someone else, maybe you should live miserably if you can't possibly make up for the wrong.

Are some accidents truly unforgivable? No one should be punished for the rest of their life because they wronged someone in their childhood. If they’ve grown, feel remorse and regret, then they’ve done their time and need to forgive themselves. There no point in carrying around such a burden. Very few people deserve to be miserable.

This post does not limit itself to true accidents. Indeed, both people involved were negligent. Preventable harm that you do not prevent through your own choices can very well be unforgivable. Pretending that everything should be forgivable is a heinous thing to do to victims, and they have every right to not forgive or forget if you have caused them irreversible harm through negligence or accident. A victim has the right to never forget how you changed their life.

You do not have a right to be free from the burden you have caused someone else.

Re: The past is not true

#259

Post by brightlancer »

bittercynic wrote: post #229
mrguyorama wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accept that sometimes when you do a bad thing that permanently harms someone else you don't deserve forgiveness (not everyone is christian FFS) and it's not wrong for that to follow you around forever. If that makes you uncomfortable, too fucking bad, don't irreversibly blind someone.

If you make a mistake like this, where you owe a debt that can never be repaid, I think we need some social mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and get some measure of closure. This probably should follow you around forever, but maybe it shouldn't dominate every moment of the rest of your life.

> I think we need some social mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and get some measure of closure.

It's called prison.

> This probably should follow you around forever, but maybe it shouldn't dominate every moment of the rest of your life.

Prison (and convictions generally) shouldn't follow folks forever because it disincentivizes rehabilitation, it incentivizes recidivism, it labels someone based upon behavior 20 years ago but not necessarily since, etc.

The victims are not morally obligated to forgive anyone. As a society, it's more beneficial to legally and morally treat offenders as having paid their sentence.

Re: The past is not true

#260

Post by vacuity »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #148
kritiko wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think magical, positive thinking is protective even in the most dire times or atrocities. This is an intuition that's based on anecdotes from watching the documentary Shoah and reading Man's Search for Meaning, both of which cover how survivors dealt with the Holocaust.

True. If humans didn't have a positivity bias our own intelligence would be unbearable. We have to be able to viscerally imagine and reckon with the worst possible realities while keeping our heads above water. It's also why I believe humor exists: it provides a psychological and social reward for effectively navigating negative circumstances.

I think that people tend to mix emotion and reason too readily. To an extent we are governed by our emotions, but we shouldn't let them consume us. Negativity bias is definitely detrimental but so is positivity bias. That's different from being compassionate. Compassion is a principle, a moral axiom that many people hold, but positivity bias is saying we should feel blindly feel good. We should have a tempered view of our principles and personalities.

Your explanation of humor seems woefully inadequate. What is the corresponding solution to a negative solution in making a dad joke?

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