"Forgiveness" is the process of cutting away the importance of something.
Thank you. You think good. I've had trouble explaining this for years. But you cut to the heart of it.
Although... for me the experience feels like the causality is reversed from what you said. I don't really believe in forgiveness by force of will, precisely because I don't believe in my ability to cut away importance and resonance.
What I believe is that the importance heals away on its own, in its own time, which can't be rushed even when I'm trying to. I wake up one day and look, the wound is closed, the scar is faded, and I can't even remember where it was exactly.
At that point I'd have to make an active decision to reopen it, or fetishistically dwell on the memory of recieving it, in order not to forgive. Which IMO is sometimes worthwhile, but I find strenuous and generally I'd rather not.
I think a lot of the misunderstandings about forgiveness in pop culture come from a conflation of the "wound not yet fully healed but you feel like you SHOULD be over it" and the "putting the effort in not to let it heal completely emotional scarification" states.
People tell you it saps your energy not to forgive, which I think is true in the latter case. It takes energy, anyway. You have to think real carefully about whether the gain is worth the cost. But I also think it saps your energy to try to force forgiveness artificially, in the former.
I also think people equate forgiveness with starting again, and it ain't necessarily so. I forgive my father, mostly, these days. I'm not quite sure when that happened. But that doesn't mean I want him in my life again. Just because the bruises healed doesn't mean I'm going back in range of the fists. (Metaphorically only. He never hit me.)
I also think you can forgive a role, which is someplace in between an action and a person. You can let go of the importance of what a person was supposed to be to you, or what you wanted them to, without letting go of the importance of the person altogether.
As for whether mercy is always unjust, I don't think justice is so ... small a thing, as that. There's a book called Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin, that I tend to recommend to anyone who'll sit still for it. It contains the line "the perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone."
But Helprin's view of justice is -- big. Mystical. abstract. Devine, almost. Justice is practically a synonym for beauty. Everything balances. He's a little too dismissive of the ordinary sort of justice that a human eye can see for more than a transcendant moment, in my view, but it's still interesting to think about.
I think mercy is often justice, but bigger, including more of the picture. Justice that takes into account the abuser's own abused childhood. Justice that takes into account that being petty and vindictive and fucked up often is its own punishment. Justice that takes into account that hope is as cruel a thing as fear, sometimes, and that to break a cycle and show that you can choose to do a different thing is terrifying to people who don't want to make their own choices.
Mercy, when its done right, doesn't seem to me to be unjust. Only a different kind of justice. Or easy on its victims, if they have any conscience at all. Mercy is the exercise of empathy for those who have not practiced it themselves. Coals of fire, you know?
Of course, mercy when its done wrong lets people off the hook for their own cause and effect and sends them off merrily to do harm again, in the belief that either its not harm or someone else will clean it up.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-07 06:57 pm (UTC)Thank you. You think good. I've had trouble explaining this for years. But you cut to the heart of it.
Although... for me the experience feels like the causality is reversed from what you said. I don't really believe in forgiveness by force of will, precisely because I don't believe in my ability to cut away importance and resonance.
What I believe is that the importance heals away on its own, in its own time, which can't be rushed even when I'm trying to. I wake up one day and look, the wound is closed, the scar is faded, and I can't even remember where it was exactly.
At that point I'd have to make an active decision to reopen it, or fetishistically dwell on the memory of recieving it, in order not to forgive. Which IMO is sometimes worthwhile, but I find strenuous and generally I'd rather not.
I think a lot of the misunderstandings about forgiveness in pop culture come from a conflation of the "wound not yet fully healed but you feel like you SHOULD be over it" and the "putting the effort in not to let it heal completely emotional scarification" states.
People tell you it saps your energy not to forgive, which I think is true in the latter case. It takes energy, anyway. You have to think real carefully about whether the gain is worth the cost. But I also think it saps your energy to try to force forgiveness artificially, in the former.
I also think people equate forgiveness with starting again, and it ain't necessarily so. I forgive my father, mostly, these days. I'm not quite sure when that happened. But that doesn't mean I want him in my life again. Just because the bruises healed doesn't mean I'm going back in range of the fists. (Metaphorically only. He never hit me.)
I also think you can forgive a role, which is someplace in between an action and a person. You can let go of the importance of what a person was supposed to be to you, or what you wanted them to, without letting go of the importance of the person altogether.
As for whether mercy is always unjust, I don't think justice is so ... small a thing, as that. There's a book called Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin, that I tend to recommend to anyone who'll sit still for it. It contains the line "the perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone."
But Helprin's view of justice is -- big. Mystical. abstract. Devine, almost. Justice is practically a synonym for beauty. Everything balances. He's a little too dismissive of the ordinary sort of justice that a human eye can see for more than a transcendant moment, in my view, but it's still interesting to think about.
I think mercy is often justice, but bigger, including more of the picture. Justice that takes into account the abuser's own abused childhood. Justice that takes into account that being petty and vindictive and fucked up often is its own punishment. Justice that takes into account that hope is as cruel a thing as fear, sometimes, and that to break a cycle and show that you can choose to do a different thing is terrifying to people who don't want to make their own choices.
Mercy, when its done right, doesn't seem to me to be unjust. Only a different kind of justice. Or easy on its victims, if they have any conscience at all. Mercy is the exercise of empathy for those who have not practiced it themselves. Coals of fire, you know?
Of course, mercy when its done wrong lets people off the hook for their own cause and effect and sends them off merrily to do harm again, in the belief that either its not harm or someone else will clean it up.
Mer