Forgiveness - It's Why We Fight

It struck me recently (yes, it hurt) that humans don't forgive and that lack of forgiveness drives our societies, religions and politics.

Our histories are rife with acts of revenge, blood feuds and grudges held against a people, families or tribes that can last centuries. In some cultures, such demands of vengeance are considered honorable and good. People don't avoid it, they embrace it. We as a people seek revenge instead of justice, demanding not just that biblical limit of only an eye for an eye and only a tooth for a tooth (yes, folks, it's a call for restitution, not bloody retribution - Exodus 21:22-25. And Matthew 5:38-48 says to turn the other cheek anyhow.), but to take the whole body (and then some) for incidents that aren't even criminal in some cases.

Remember the Alamo! Remember Pearl Harbor! Remember the Maine! Remember 9/11!

All of these have been used as rallying cries to inflict harm and damage on people who had nothing to do with the atrocities mentioned. It wasn't uncommon for prisoners to be shot, so the Alamo had no survivors. Pearl Harbor was a strategic mistake in many ways, but would it have made any difference if the Japanese had managed to declare war before the attack? Germany didn't attack us and look what happened there. Millions of Japanese civilians who had nothing to do with the war died. Investigations have since determined that the Maine probably blew up due to a coal dust explosion, but a lot of Spaniards who had nothing to do with it died because of our seeking revenge for it. And 9/11... It was used as a political excuse to go to war with a country we didn't have to fight, resulting in well over a million casualties and countless more people seeking vengeance.

Our tendency to fight first, understand later is what makes humans so dangerous. We kill in haste, repent at leisure, but the problem is that those we kill are often not responsible for what happened to us. And they knew people who hold grudges over friends being killed for something that friend didn't necessarily do. If we throw in the tendency to rationalize our violence (like convince ourselves that because the people who flew planes into the twin towers and the Pentagon were Middle Eastern Muslims that all Middle Eastern Muslims are dangerous and should be exterminated before they do the same to us again), we end up going far and away beyond the eye for an eye concept. When the fact that those being killed have the same reaction to being killed as we do (because to them, they're perfectly justified in killing us) the violence never ends.

Look at the Palestine/Israel conflict. The damned thing's been going on for 62 years. The conflict has raised the stakes so that now, even if the Palestinians got a "home" and all demands on both sides were met, the violence would not end because both sides carry grudges.

This is the essential nature of mankind: Vengeance, revenge, retribution. Making someone hurt and pay for what they did to you. There is no INHERENT goodness in man. There is only the caveman hunched by a fire with a sharpened stick waiting for the tribe from which he stole one of their women to come after him and wipe out his tribe because of it - then kill the woman he stole because she was no longer "pure".

Sound familiar?

Here's the funny thing: We LOVE this stuff. We can't get enough of it. How many movies, books, stories and such are based on the simple concept of over-kill in retaliation for a wrong? We sacrifice horny teens by the gory score at summer blockbusters just to build up the concept that an entity (or person) is bad and deserves to die. While this would be fine in the normal scope of things, the simple fact is humans DON'T KNOW WHEN TO STOP. In real life, if that entity or person was slaughtered in an imaginative and sufficiently gory way, attention would then turn on their friends, associates, family members, religion and/or workplace. How many times has it happened that innocents suffer for what someone they know did?

Way more times than is comfortable to think about.

Let's face it, mankind doesn't WANT to forgive transgressions against it. No one ever believes themselves to be in the wrong. Even if they know they are, they deny it. So they fight, and maim and kill all in the name of righteous retribution for a transgression against them - be it real or imagined. The ridiculous lengths to which we go over this kind of thing is beyond imagination, but sadly not beyond reality.

How many sports fans have attacked and killed other sports fans for what a member of or a whole team did? How many Muslims died in protest over the depiction of their Prophet and how many of them wanted to see the entire West die because of it? An accident in one household can lead to murder in another. There is an inherent lack of perspective when it comes to events such as this that we are not willing to embrace. We seek the "noble cause", the "righteousness of our cause" or some other high-minded rationalization to justify our basic desire to kill people over what we see as harm. Politicians and religious leaders have played on this concept for so long, it is part of our culture and mindset. It's not like we're going to be able to change that anytime soon.

Now, I'm not advocating that we all take a Christian point of view about forgiveness. After all, reality doesn't work that way in the first place and in the second, not everyone can stomach the Christian morality. Forgiveness isn't about saying, "What you did was bad but I forgive you." Real, true human forgiveness should be about saying something to the effect of, "I won't take it out on people who aren't responsible, and once you are punished for what you have done, I won't hold a grudge."

Be aware that, in the human mind, the balance of scales regarding acts demanding revenge are skewed. Therefore, it's necessary to seek a proportionate punishment for the act on the individuals actually responsible for the act. This is the root of the beginning to understand real human forgiveness. It's a forgiveness that is realistically attainable for most people which can help contain the mindless, directionless violence that often accompanies vengeful acts.

Mankind will never give up the desire to seek retribution. At least not anytime in the next few thousand years. But a "civilized" species can learn to moderate that desire for revenge by acquiring some perspective and spending a lot of time in anger management lessons.

We COULD, I suppose, get into a long, involved discussion about "justice" as an alternative to revenge, but let's face it, revenge balances the scales in the mind of the one seeking revenge. Justice is strictly something society does and really doesn't address an individual's harm. Learning "forgiveness" is the simple act of seeking a revenge that balances the scales in proportion to the act being avenged and then moving on without letting the original act consume your life or bringing others into the picture.

Forgiveness: Proportionate revenge with the perspective of an outsider.

Now let's examine the proper application of this idea, since in religions we get a lot of rules without a lot of ideas in exactly how to go about this in real life.

To begin with, let's quantify what we're talking about: Personal harm should be defined only as acts intentionally directed at you specifically intended to inflict emotional, physical or mental damage. If it isn't personal harm, let it go.

First of all, examine the act. This is the anger management part. Were you hurt? Was property damaged? Was there any lasting harm to you? If not, get over it. You only have one shot at this life. Filling it up with petty garbage from slights and insults that have done nothing to you will only screw up your life and I'm sure you have better things to do than to have your life screwed up by something which did you no personal harm.

Always think first. Not about how many tiny bloody bits you can carve someone into, but about what happened in proportion to what you want to do. Did someone in another land do something you don't like? Did it hurt you personally? If so, how much? Is it righteous indignation you feel? Let that go. Others don't share your faith and if you don't respect their right to have a different one, you don't deserve to have your faith respected by others, either. Did they disrespect your faith? Fine, let them. If you think your faith can't handle the disrespect of others, then you need to find a stronger faith. Their disrespect for your faith doesn't hurt you or your faith. Are they killing you over your faith? Go for the ones who are doing the killing, not the ones you think have the same faith.

The point here is that what you believe is personal harm usually isn't. The other point is that you need to know who is actually responsible for inflicting that personal harm because it's usually not the ones you hurt back.

Stop and think about things, folks. That's how to implement this whole concept. Revenge is a dish best served cold and you can't do that when you're enraged. Once you cool off, you may realize that it wasn't an act deserving of any retribution at all. I don't advocate forgiveness as a free pass. Human nature demands punishment for acts that cause harm. But we do need to learn some perspective about what we think is harm and be proportionate in seeking any retribution. We don't swat flies with shovels or spank babies with axes. Why do we do that kind of thing when it comes to revenge? Perspective and proportion. Those are realistic interim behavioral goals that humans can actually achieve on our paths of spiritual exploration and evolution. Rome wasn't built in a day. Human instincts have had millions of years of evolution to get to this point and only thousands of years to get used to civilized behavior.

As for me, I think about revenge a lot, but my personal philosophy doesn't let me seek retribution without incurring grievous harm on myself. For the most part, I let the universe sort it out. It takes patience but it keeps the dry cleaning bills removing blood stains to a minimum.