I think talk of redemption and forgiveness might beg the most important question: how long *should* we let a person's bad actions follow them around? This obviously depends to at least some extent on the gravity of the action. But we do usually accept the importance of letting minor transgressions go - we typically think less of someone who is still bitter that their spouse forgot their birthday once, fifteen years later. Even for major crimes, the way our system is *supposed* to work involves rehabilitation: after twenty years in jail you have *done your time*, and now you should be able to start again.
There's nothing inherent about bad actions that says the stain of them *must* follow a person around, in a way that necessitates redemption or forgiveness if the stain is to go away. To decide to continue to vilify a person for vile actions is as much of a decision as deciding that we don't need to worry about that anymore.
The problem of secular redemption has bedeviled me recently. When Ivan confronted Alyosha with the theodicy problem in the Brothers Karamazov, Christian redemption was Alyosha's answer. For a secular mind, though, that's not an option, which is pretty cruel. Just because a person doesn't believe in God doesn't mean they don't have to find an answer to the theodicy problem.
Socialist utopian visions or other teleological frameworks seem just as hard to swallow as an all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God. From whence then redemption? What could ever justify or redeem the mind boggling, massive, untold suffering of our living world? The only options I see are to hope things shake out on the upside of the abhorrent conclusion or just abandon myself to romantic fatalism in the face of lovecraftian horror. Neither option satisfies.
> I am not the first to notice that there is no natural secular concept of redemption.
I think there's actually a pretty straightforward secular concept of redemption, but it has a different vibe.
In religion, there's an idea that people "deserve" to be punished because God wills it. When you lose the god, that whole idea goes away. What would it even mean to "deserve" something in an uncaring universe? Some atheists still want to see people punished for punishment's sake, but they can't defend this as anything other than schadenfreude.
So the only justified secular usages of punishment are either as a retrocausal disincentive or as a preventative measure where the punishment is just a side effect of people not liking confinement.
In your example the main punishment at play is social ostracization, which is a bit of both; people don't behave in unpopular ways because they don't want to be excluded, and also by excluding them from your circles you protect the other people in your circles from them.
The secular concept of redemption then is when this is no longer necessary. In particular, it's the point at which other people no longer predict that the future behavior of the violator is likely to be a problem.
Consider a kleptomaniac, whom I'll refer to as Alice. She steals money from all her friends, so they cut off contact with her, and warn others away too. She has sinned and is now unclean. If she says "hey I've changed, I don't steal anymore", people would be right to be wary, since that could be a lie, or an unintentional false statement if her actions are due to poor self control. But if she goes for a period of several years without ever stealing anything, it becomes plausible that she really has changed. Her prior friends now have no reason to continue avoiding her, since she doesn't pose a significant risk to them anymore. She has redeemed herself.
Note that the religious concept of forgiveness and redemption is often applied far too liberally. This is is how, for example, priests can repeatedly get away with child abuse, by simply apologizing for it when discovered. Whether they're likely to do it again is not the primary consideration; rather what matters is just whether they can say the right words in an emotional tone of voice. Not the best basis on which to build a society.
I'm with you and your friend in that I find "grieving" to be the right word for it. I find that I also tend to grieve for the relationship (however small) I had with that person as well. Whether I decide I can no longer be around them or not, what relationship we had is going to be permanently altered just by the knowledge that they're that kind of person.
I am a Christian, and forgiveness is *hard.* Whether or not someone apologizes, you've still got all the feelings of hurt and betrayal and grief to sort through (and maybe other things, depending on what they did). If I didn't have my faith as a forcing function, as practice for getting out of my own head and seeing something else as more important than myself, I think I would still be holding grudges against kids who were pettily mean in middle school!
I guess I'm saying that to say that although forgiveness the concept is baked into most religions, it's also still a choice that has to be affirmed. It has to be preached about, to remind people it's an option. It has to be practiced, starting from a young age and with the small things, and all the adjacent skills need to be practiced regularly too. And then people have to choose to do it, in the moment, when the chips are down and they're hurting.
"That seemed to me to fit well. It is grieving, because it’s like finding out someone you thought you knew has died."
I think this also applies to how our view changes of ourselves. Depending on the level of transgression and the level of intimacy (romantic or otherwise) one had with the person causes us to ask questions like: should I have seen it? why didn't I see it? did I sense it but something in me (weakness, darkness, neediness etc.) kept me drawn in?
So in a way the person you thought YOU were can change and that can be tough to swallow.
Or, perhaps worse, you evaluate and decide there really weren't any signs and that is unsettling because it appears random and unpredictable.
Love your... icon? I don't know the substack verbage...
Robert Sapolsky has a pretty good way of making non-compatibilism harmonious with responsibility, at least on a criminal justice level. He invokes the concept of "quarantine" for those who are so inclined towards destructive behavior that they can't be allowed to circulate in an open society. He advocates that such incarceration be non-punitive, but absolute in a way somewhat analogous as one used to see with some penal colonies (like early Australia). Similar also to Robert A. Heinlein's concept of Coventry in his novella of the same name.
Forgiveness is not in vogue anymore, and I think that's a damned shame. We're more than our worst moments
I think talk of redemption and forgiveness might beg the most important question: how long *should* we let a person's bad actions follow them around? This obviously depends to at least some extent on the gravity of the action. But we do usually accept the importance of letting minor transgressions go - we typically think less of someone who is still bitter that their spouse forgot their birthday once, fifteen years later. Even for major crimes, the way our system is *supposed* to work involves rehabilitation: after twenty years in jail you have *done your time*, and now you should be able to start again.
There's nothing inherent about bad actions that says the stain of them *must* follow a person around, in a way that necessitates redemption or forgiveness if the stain is to go away. To decide to continue to vilify a person for vile actions is as much of a decision as deciding that we don't need to worry about that anymore.
The problem of secular redemption has bedeviled me recently. When Ivan confronted Alyosha with the theodicy problem in the Brothers Karamazov, Christian redemption was Alyosha's answer. For a secular mind, though, that's not an option, which is pretty cruel. Just because a person doesn't believe in God doesn't mean they don't have to find an answer to the theodicy problem.
Socialist utopian visions or other teleological frameworks seem just as hard to swallow as an all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God. From whence then redemption? What could ever justify or redeem the mind boggling, massive, untold suffering of our living world? The only options I see are to hope things shake out on the upside of the abhorrent conclusion or just abandon myself to romantic fatalism in the face of lovecraftian horror. Neither option satisfies.
> I am not the first to notice that there is no natural secular concept of redemption.
I think there's actually a pretty straightforward secular concept of redemption, but it has a different vibe.
In religion, there's an idea that people "deserve" to be punished because God wills it. When you lose the god, that whole idea goes away. What would it even mean to "deserve" something in an uncaring universe? Some atheists still want to see people punished for punishment's sake, but they can't defend this as anything other than schadenfreude.
So the only justified secular usages of punishment are either as a retrocausal disincentive or as a preventative measure where the punishment is just a side effect of people not liking confinement.
In your example the main punishment at play is social ostracization, which is a bit of both; people don't behave in unpopular ways because they don't want to be excluded, and also by excluding them from your circles you protect the other people in your circles from them.
The secular concept of redemption then is when this is no longer necessary. In particular, it's the point at which other people no longer predict that the future behavior of the violator is likely to be a problem.
Consider a kleptomaniac, whom I'll refer to as Alice. She steals money from all her friends, so they cut off contact with her, and warn others away too. She has sinned and is now unclean. If she says "hey I've changed, I don't steal anymore", people would be right to be wary, since that could be a lie, or an unintentional false statement if her actions are due to poor self control. But if she goes for a period of several years without ever stealing anything, it becomes plausible that she really has changed. Her prior friends now have no reason to continue avoiding her, since she doesn't pose a significant risk to them anymore. She has redeemed herself.
George MacDonald actually got at this idea from a religious perspective in his sermon "On Justice".
He says that people would no longer feel a desire to see evildoers punished if they could be certain that they they were *genuinely* remorseful.
It's a compelling idea--I wonder if it could be experimentally tested. https://www.online-literature.com/george-macdonald/unspoken-sermons/31/
Note that the religious concept of forgiveness and redemption is often applied far too liberally. This is is how, for example, priests can repeatedly get away with child abuse, by simply apologizing for it when discovered. Whether they're likely to do it again is not the primary consideration; rather what matters is just whether they can say the right words in an emotional tone of voice. Not the best basis on which to build a society.
I'm with you and your friend in that I find "grieving" to be the right word for it. I find that I also tend to grieve for the relationship (however small) I had with that person as well. Whether I decide I can no longer be around them or not, what relationship we had is going to be permanently altered just by the knowledge that they're that kind of person.
I am a Christian, and forgiveness is *hard.* Whether or not someone apologizes, you've still got all the feelings of hurt and betrayal and grief to sort through (and maybe other things, depending on what they did). If I didn't have my faith as a forcing function, as practice for getting out of my own head and seeing something else as more important than myself, I think I would still be holding grudges against kids who were pettily mean in middle school!
I guess I'm saying that to say that although forgiveness the concept is baked into most religions, it's also still a choice that has to be affirmed. It has to be preached about, to remind people it's an option. It has to be practiced, starting from a young age and with the small things, and all the adjacent skills need to be practiced regularly too. And then people have to choose to do it, in the moment, when the chips are down and they're hurting.
"That seemed to me to fit well. It is grieving, because it’s like finding out someone you thought you knew has died."
I think this also applies to how our view changes of ourselves. Depending on the level of transgression and the level of intimacy (romantic or otherwise) one had with the person causes us to ask questions like: should I have seen it? why didn't I see it? did I sense it but something in me (weakness, darkness, neediness etc.) kept me drawn in?
So in a way the person you thought YOU were can change and that can be tough to swallow.
Or, perhaps worse, you evaluate and decide there really weren't any signs and that is unsettling because it appears random and unpredictable.
Love your... icon? I don't know the substack verbage...
Robert Sapolsky has a pretty good way of making non-compatibilism harmonious with responsibility, at least on a criminal justice level. He invokes the concept of "quarantine" for those who are so inclined towards destructive behavior that they can't be allowed to circulate in an open society. He advocates that such incarceration be non-punitive, but absolute in a way somewhat analogous as one used to see with some penal colonies (like early Australia). Similar also to Robert A. Heinlein's concept of Coventry in his novella of the same name.
There's nothing religious about repentance.
Step One: admit what you did
Step two: regret it
Step three: resolve not to do it again in the future.
This is standard Jewish theology