Why not forgive?

I have written before about Bonds that Makes Us Free being a good book about self deception. It's also a good book about getting over and not succumbing to the feelings mistreatment that we regularly experience. I've been listening to the author's talk about forgiveness, which definitely comes from his religious perspective but also from a philosophical perspective. One of the main points is akin to the Maya Angelou quote, “Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” He talks about how evil wants a response, it wants to turn you dark inside, that's the whole point of evil. And I think this is true, at least of true evil and not just the sort of banal evil that we see of people just having lost their way in a deep moral confusion. Like I would say most of the Nazi force type people and the prejudice and hate that we see daily is banal evil, in which people honestly believe that their feelings of hate are justified in the moment, no matter how impossible that seems to more rational minds. In other words, I think that most people have to be sort of tricked into evil by being fed a distorted reality often enough and persuasively enough (e.g. X are our enemy, we need to defend ourselves against X).

So we have two types of evil (1) true evil for the sake of being evil (super rare, think Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars) and (2) evil that comes from confusion, a true "they know not what they do," at least not the full extent of what they do and definitely not in that moment because they've been led down a path of self-deception and confusion about the actual nature of reality (think Darth Vader). And true evil wants you to respond in an evil way because that is its goal is -- to twist your heart and mind towards dark things. And banal evil people don't really know what they're doing and the worst you could say about them is that they have allowed themselves to become pawns in something deeply dark and destructive. So how should you react in the face of evil? The argument is that it does no good to return evil for evil, as religious types like to say. Because for true evil, that's exactly the response they're trying to get from you. And for banal evil, those people are just clueless pawns who think they're somehow in the right, and you're not likely to convince them otherwise.

When I saw the family of Dylann Root's victims extend him forgiveness, I was really impressed -- not that it was necessarily a courageous or morally right thing to do (although I'm sure it was), but that it just showed a lot of wisdom. Predictably, somebody didn't like that reaction. In a NY Times op ed titled, Why I Can't Forgive Dylann Root, Roxane Gay says "I, for one, am done forgiving." Why? Basically because the problems have been going on so long and white people just want to pretend the problems don't exist and black people forgive to survive but that doesn't help either because the problems haven't gone away. But when has not-forgiving ever helped? Did not forgiving help with Germany post World War I? Is not forgiving helping with the sky high number of adult American men in prison? Could there be peace in Northern Ireland without forgiveness? In the former Yugoslavia? Does anyone think the Hutus and the Tutsis should have kept at it in Rwanda? Or that the French Revolution was particularly effective in its calls for blood to atone for the past sins of the aristocracy? Do we really need to annihilate our enemies? Or nurse lifelong distrust and hatred of each other?  

I do not mean to dismiss at all people's pain or to condone those that wrong others. But nor does forgiveness come even close to doing either of those things. Forgiveness still acknowledges the wrong and the hurt, in fact forgiveness is only implicated and imported in serious cases of wrong and hurt. And when you have been wronged, there are basically two choices: forgive or don't. So for people to say that they're done forgiving is frankly shockingly anti-social, even to someone like me.

I know that I am not a good person and not a reliable source for moral judgment. But if even someone like me could understand why it is absolutely vital that we forgive each other, than that suggests to me that (1) there's really something to this forgiveness thing and (2) that there's hope for everyone else to learn why too.

How feelings lead to self-deception

One of my favorite books that explains the way most people navigate their feelings and relationships is Bonds That Make Us Free, by C. Terry Werner, founder of the Arbinger Institute. The book and institute are primarily about self-deception. Here's an illustrative quote:

“Fable: When we're stuck in troubled feelings we believe that all our feelings are true-- that is to say, we believe that by our emotions at that moment we are making accurate judgments about what's happening. If I'm angry with you, I'm certain that you are making me angry.

Fact: Though we truly have these feelings, they are not necessarily true feelings. More likely I'm angry because I'm misusing you, not because you are misusing me.” 

I wrote a little bit about empaths' tendency to endow their emotions with feelings of Truth here.

This recent comment reminded me of this principle:

I think most people don't consider sociopaths as 'unknowns'. Most people think they know everything there is to know, and no amount of reasoning or metaphorical musings is going to change that.

[P]eoples' lives revolve around sparing their conscience. All their thoughts and actions must be justified, and they treat their morality as if it's entirely objective. When someone gets a 'bad feeling' about someone, then the source of that bad feeling is evil. I've realized that there are topics I choose to avoid, they give me a 'bad feeling'. When I examine that feeling, though, I realize that it says more about my own inner workings than anything that's happening outside my head.

Racism, bigotry, and discrimination stem not from some objective truth about the targeted population. It comes from parents, the media, and peers teaching young minds to dislike groups of people, and this dislike is rationalized by exaggerations and outright lies until the population is appropriately villified. I hate smokers because I find the stench of burning tobacco absolutely revolting. I hate hobos because they ask for and feel entitled to my money. They force an unwelcome interaction with me, be it through a pervasive miasma or trying to sell me pins and dirty papers.

Black guys and flamboyantly gay guys make me uncomfortable. I don't hate them, but I grew up in an ultra-conservative, ultra-white area. Fortunately, my family is not composed of bigots, so the extent of my racism and homophobicity is that I merely feel uneasy. I understand that this is a learned behavior, and the only way to unlearn it would be to interact with these people that make me feel uncomfortable, to teach myself that they are human, and not at all unlike myself. Most people, however, just consider people that make them uncomfortable to be evil somehow. It's much easier to reconcile their bad feelings this way, rather than recognize, admit, and try to change the fact that they themselves are the ones with the defect.