I wanted to kick off a discussion between subscribers. Feel free to talk about anything you like, but the question I wanted to flag was:
We have good reason to think that our culture needs to be more forgiving, that a lot of our problems from the big (the incarceration crisis) to the tiny (people screaming at each other on Twitter) come from a lack of a framework for understanding forgiveness in a secular world.
We also have good reason to think that people don’t change that much. A lot of evidence- from everyday life to longitudinal studies- suggests that substantial moral improvement is rare.
How can we be more forgiving without holding unrealistic beliefs about the extent to which people can improve themselves? Isn’t forgiveness without an expectation for change just moral licence?
From the perspective of purely wanting to reduce the amount of bad things people do, there will be an optimal level of harshness/gentleness where being more harsh will cause more harm via shaming and other consequences than the amount of improvement in behavior it brings about, and being more gentle will “leave on the table” some potential for improvement via pressure.
In this framework, there’s no need to consider moving to a more ideal level to be “moral license” any more than giving hospital patients with bacterial infections less-than-lethal amounts of antibiotics is “giving bacteria license to grow”.
Perhaps it helps to think of forgiveness vs. vengeance as closer to the emotional side of healthcare - there may be an optimal dose of antibiotics independent of emotion, but addressing how Grandma and her family feel about her gangrenous leg is pretty important to her wellbeing if you want a functioning healthcare system!
I mean, if bitterness and resentment doesn't change people's behaviour, why not try forgiveness for your own sake?
I think in a secular context forgiveness is just a social contract - we've all done stuff we're not proud of, we can either all agree to forgive each other, or spend all of our time looking for people worse than ourselves to condemn - the former seems a lot more pleasant in the long run, even if it's hard short-term.
I'd like to borrow a model from Judaism, where we have a pretty tight distinction between repentance, forgiveness and atonement.
*Repentance* is a process that a wrongdoer undergoes, where they make amends for the harm they've caused. This includes things like apologizing (perhaps publicly), undoing the harm if possible (or making a symbolic restitution if not), refraining from doing the wrong again, genuinely understanding why the action was wrong, etc.
*Atonement* is when a higher power (Perhaps God or broader society or the legal system or a union or grievance council) decides the wrongdoer has sufficiently repented.
*Forgiveness* is when the wronged party decides the wrongdoer has sufficiently repented.
I think the distinction between atonement and forgiveness is crucial. The criminal justice system says that a murderer receives atonement when they've completed their jail time, and that's a pretty popular view in normie society. But the victim's family may never forgive the murderer. That's OK.
Society should grant the wrongdoer a path to atonement, but the victim is not required to grant a path to forgiveness. Atonement is necessary feature of our social system, forgiveness is an optional feature of an interpersonal relationship.
This is a very interesting framework, but I'm afraid some features of the modern world make it less relevant to us than to the people who came up with it (presumably some agrarian or pastoralist society). What I have in mind is this: what happens when the wronged party is not a person or small group (family/clan) but "all black people" or "all women"? It's hard to have a formal, society-wide process of atonement if a significant fraction of the polity do not condone it because they (or a majority thereof), as the wronged party, have not forgiven the wrongdoer. This is much less of an issue for "private" crimes like murder or burglary, but not for other quintessentially modern things like genocide or offending millions of people with a single tweet.
Forgiveness is an important useful fiction. It gives people the means to move on emotionally without the rational expectation that it will change. (For forgiveness to work, people have to believe they did something wrong, and in a world where SJWs are aggressive postmodern marxists bent on subduing the entire world to their intellectual hegemony--remember, that's what the online right actually believes--no one is going to admit they are wrong.)
I don't know if I'd consider it forgiveness a "useful fiction", that implies it's something we've invented like the concept of property or the nation or human rights to serve a specific purpose, whereas I feel forgiveness is deeper in human nature than that.
I suspect forgiveness is an emotional response that evolved to keep the desire for vengeance in check in situations where revenge would be counterproductive. This isn't to say it's entirely rational, but does make it more ingrained and less malleable than a mere useful fiction.
It's definitely a true and meaningful phenomenon, but there are times that people are urged to undergo the mechanical ritual of forgiveness without true expiation. Abused forgive their abusers as a means of moving on and letting go, regardless of if the abusers believe they have committed harm.
And that's not even a forgiveness I consider 'fictional.' I think that's a very real forgiveness. I'm not sure where, now that I delve into it a bit more, the fictional forgiveness crops up. Forgiveness is useful that way: it works regardless of whether or not the people in the situation participate in it sincerely.
You bump into someone, you know it was their fault, you say 'sorry' by reflex, they don't, but you move about your day. That's along the lines of the 'fiction' I think I meant.
Maybe I'm particularly dense, but how is asking others to change their bad/transgressive behavior different than asking yourself to be more forgiving? It seems like it's just taking the burden of personal change onto your back.
Perhaps the issue is that putting people in jail is not a good way to keep them from doing things that are illegal. Or perhaps the issue is that what's currently illegal is a bad fit to the behavior of large parts of the population. In either case, I'm not sure the answer (or at least the first thing to try) is more forgiveness.
You're thinking of punishment from a very rational, utilitarian perspective in which it's all about deterrence and reform, overlooking the most emotionally important function of punishment - revenge. I genuinely think this is so ingrained in human psychology that any functional system of criminal justice needs to address it.
Forgiveness is the ability to punish people less than we feel they deserve, and I honestly think it's essential to any system that actually plans to release people from prison - without the ability to forgive, how can we pretend that a murderer can be released after a mere 16 years in prison - many people would feel that hanging's too good for them!
But in that case I'm not sure what we're talking about. The criminal system does release people who commit murder, and we certainly don't execute all of them. So by that definition of forgiveness, we as a society do already practice it, though I'm sure not all members within society forgive in the sense of feeling this is the way to go.
Perhaps we're talking about two separate things — the individual experience of forgiveness, something I feel is manageable and worthwhile... and the collective social transformation of making large numbers of people (or even everyone) feel differently about transgression to fundamental social norms.
I disagree that those are two separate things, although I admit they're not exactly the same. But society is a group of individuals that define and enforce norms, if nobody in a society is willing to forgive, I don't expect a very compassionate approach to criminal justice.
As for my comment on capital punishment, I was just emphasising what a criminal justice system with no concept of forgiveness looks like - Lifelong imprisonment and lasting stigma are other examples of unforgiveness in action. I'd argue that forgiveness is essential to any form of restorative justice, although you could replace forgiveness with rehabilitation in this context - I'd still say the concepts are related. Fundamentally, it's about whether we should give people a second chance, even if they don't deserve it.
Isn't the revenge impulse pretty convincingly explained by the deterrence perspective? The desire for revenge/punishment is an efficient emotional heuristic that imitates deterrent action without needing complicated decision theory to work.
Alas, as conditions diverge from the ancestral environment (society's a lot bigger these days, for example), this correlation breaks down more and more. That's the reason we have the rule of law, which at least isn't completely about retributive justice, and tries to evaluate crime impartially - which includes being independent of the aggrieved party's wishes for revenge. It doesn't work perfectly, but it's a whole lot better than blood feuds.
So, as the desire for revenge become increasingly obsolete, it really does make sense to counterbalance it with an unconditional heuristic for forgiveness. Note that I'm not even talking about interpersonal forgiveness - which probably doesn't have a justification as universal and convenient - just a certain degree of trust in the rule of law to appropriately punish the people who break the community's rules.
The only thing you're missing is that, in a democracy, our relative weighting of vengeance and forgiveness will influence how laws are written. There's not a 1:1 correspondence or we'd still have hanging here in the UK (based on public opinion polls), but I do think interpersonal forgiveness is an essential counter to the desire for righteous vengeance, because as you point out the emotion and the rational motivation behind it do not perfectly correlate in our modern society. I just don't think its possible to have a system that's entirely uninfluenced by human emotion - human emotion decides what we're optimising for!
Subjectivity. The faith in the Western Sovereign Subject is dangerous. Subjectivity is a process, is interdependent, is traversed with failure. Universality is the name for a kind of antagonism where it encounters its own particulars. The human universality is struggle against power. Choosing to servitude to the universal human struggle is solidarity that, taken to the end, means infinity and actual freedom. Paradoxically, choosing the freedom of western sovereign subject means servitude to power and attachment to the particulars every which way. Hence polemics. Sex and the Failed Absolute (Zizek) is about this and a great read if you are experienced in philosophy.
From the perspective of purely wanting to reduce the amount of bad things people do, there will be an optimal level of harshness/gentleness where being more harsh will cause more harm via shaming and other consequences than the amount of improvement in behavior it brings about, and being more gentle will “leave on the table” some potential for improvement via pressure.
In this framework, there’s no need to consider moving to a more ideal level to be “moral license” any more than giving hospital patients with bacterial infections less-than-lethal amounts of antibiotics is “giving bacteria license to grow”.
Perhaps it helps to think of forgiveness vs. vengeance as closer to the emotional side of healthcare - there may be an optimal dose of antibiotics independent of emotion, but addressing how Grandma and her family feel about her gangrenous leg is pretty important to her wellbeing if you want a functioning healthcare system!
I mean, if bitterness and resentment doesn't change people's behaviour, why not try forgiveness for your own sake?
I think in a secular context forgiveness is just a social contract - we've all done stuff we're not proud of, we can either all agree to forgive each other, or spend all of our time looking for people worse than ourselves to condemn - the former seems a lot more pleasant in the long run, even if it's hard short-term.
I'd like to borrow a model from Judaism, where we have a pretty tight distinction between repentance, forgiveness and atonement.
*Repentance* is a process that a wrongdoer undergoes, where they make amends for the harm they've caused. This includes things like apologizing (perhaps publicly), undoing the harm if possible (or making a symbolic restitution if not), refraining from doing the wrong again, genuinely understanding why the action was wrong, etc.
*Atonement* is when a higher power (Perhaps God or broader society or the legal system or a union or grievance council) decides the wrongdoer has sufficiently repented.
*Forgiveness* is when the wronged party decides the wrongdoer has sufficiently repented.
I think the distinction between atonement and forgiveness is crucial. The criminal justice system says that a murderer receives atonement when they've completed their jail time, and that's a pretty popular view in normie society. But the victim's family may never forgive the murderer. That's OK.
Society should grant the wrongdoer a path to atonement, but the victim is not required to grant a path to forgiveness. Atonement is necessary feature of our social system, forgiveness is an optional feature of an interpersonal relationship.
This is a very interesting framework, but I'm afraid some features of the modern world make it less relevant to us than to the people who came up with it (presumably some agrarian or pastoralist society). What I have in mind is this: what happens when the wronged party is not a person or small group (family/clan) but "all black people" or "all women"? It's hard to have a formal, society-wide process of atonement if a significant fraction of the polity do not condone it because they (or a majority thereof), as the wronged party, have not forgiven the wrongdoer. This is much less of an issue for "private" crimes like murder or burglary, but not for other quintessentially modern things like genocide or offending millions of people with a single tweet.
Forgiveness is an important useful fiction. It gives people the means to move on emotionally without the rational expectation that it will change. (For forgiveness to work, people have to believe they did something wrong, and in a world where SJWs are aggressive postmodern marxists bent on subduing the entire world to their intellectual hegemony--remember, that's what the online right actually believes--no one is going to admit they are wrong.)
I don't know if I'd consider it forgiveness a "useful fiction", that implies it's something we've invented like the concept of property or the nation or human rights to serve a specific purpose, whereas I feel forgiveness is deeper in human nature than that.
I suspect forgiveness is an emotional response that evolved to keep the desire for vengeance in check in situations where revenge would be counterproductive. This isn't to say it's entirely rational, but does make it more ingrained and less malleable than a mere useful fiction.
It's definitely a true and meaningful phenomenon, but there are times that people are urged to undergo the mechanical ritual of forgiveness without true expiation. Abused forgive their abusers as a means of moving on and letting go, regardless of if the abusers believe they have committed harm.
And that's not even a forgiveness I consider 'fictional.' I think that's a very real forgiveness. I'm not sure where, now that I delve into it a bit more, the fictional forgiveness crops up. Forgiveness is useful that way: it works regardless of whether or not the people in the situation participate in it sincerely.
You bump into someone, you know it was their fault, you say 'sorry' by reflex, they don't, but you move about your day. That's along the lines of the 'fiction' I think I meant.
Maybe I'm particularly dense, but how is asking others to change their bad/transgressive behavior different than asking yourself to be more forgiving? It seems like it's just taking the burden of personal change onto your back.
Perhaps the issue is that putting people in jail is not a good way to keep them from doing things that are illegal. Or perhaps the issue is that what's currently illegal is a bad fit to the behavior of large parts of the population. In either case, I'm not sure the answer (or at least the first thing to try) is more forgiveness.
You're thinking of punishment from a very rational, utilitarian perspective in which it's all about deterrence and reform, overlooking the most emotionally important function of punishment - revenge. I genuinely think this is so ingrained in human psychology that any functional system of criminal justice needs to address it.
Forgiveness is the ability to punish people less than we feel they deserve, and I honestly think it's essential to any system that actually plans to release people from prison - without the ability to forgive, how can we pretend that a murderer can be released after a mere 16 years in prison - many people would feel that hanging's too good for them!
But in that case I'm not sure what we're talking about. The criminal system does release people who commit murder, and we certainly don't execute all of them. So by that definition of forgiveness, we as a society do already practice it, though I'm sure not all members within society forgive in the sense of feeling this is the way to go.
Perhaps we're talking about two separate things — the individual experience of forgiveness, something I feel is manageable and worthwhile... and the collective social transformation of making large numbers of people (or even everyone) feel differently about transgression to fundamental social norms.
I disagree that those are two separate things, although I admit they're not exactly the same. But society is a group of individuals that define and enforce norms, if nobody in a society is willing to forgive, I don't expect a very compassionate approach to criminal justice.
As for my comment on capital punishment, I was just emphasising what a criminal justice system with no concept of forgiveness looks like - Lifelong imprisonment and lasting stigma are other examples of unforgiveness in action. I'd argue that forgiveness is essential to any form of restorative justice, although you could replace forgiveness with rehabilitation in this context - I'd still say the concepts are related. Fundamentally, it's about whether we should give people a second chance, even if they don't deserve it.
Isn't the revenge impulse pretty convincingly explained by the deterrence perspective? The desire for revenge/punishment is an efficient emotional heuristic that imitates deterrent action without needing complicated decision theory to work.
Alas, as conditions diverge from the ancestral environment (society's a lot bigger these days, for example), this correlation breaks down more and more. That's the reason we have the rule of law, which at least isn't completely about retributive justice, and tries to evaluate crime impartially - which includes being independent of the aggrieved party's wishes for revenge. It doesn't work perfectly, but it's a whole lot better than blood feuds.
So, as the desire for revenge become increasingly obsolete, it really does make sense to counterbalance it with an unconditional heuristic for forgiveness. Note that I'm not even talking about interpersonal forgiveness - which probably doesn't have a justification as universal and convenient - just a certain degree of trust in the rule of law to appropriately punish the people who break the community's rules.
The only thing you're missing is that, in a democracy, our relative weighting of vengeance and forgiveness will influence how laws are written. There's not a 1:1 correspondence or we'd still have hanging here in the UK (based on public opinion polls), but I do think interpersonal forgiveness is an essential counter to the desire for righteous vengeance, because as you point out the emotion and the rational motivation behind it do not perfectly correlate in our modern society. I just don't think its possible to have a system that's entirely uninfluenced by human emotion - human emotion decides what we're optimising for!
Subjectivity. The faith in the Western Sovereign Subject is dangerous. Subjectivity is a process, is interdependent, is traversed with failure. Universality is the name for a kind of antagonism where it encounters its own particulars. The human universality is struggle against power. Choosing to servitude to the universal human struggle is solidarity that, taken to the end, means infinity and actual freedom. Paradoxically, choosing the freedom of western sovereign subject means servitude to power and attachment to the particulars every which way. Hence polemics. Sex and the Failed Absolute (Zizek) is about this and a great read if you are experienced in philosophy.