"Modern societies, horrified by the abuses of law in the era of World War II and by totalitarian regimes, are moving towards humanizing the law and replacing criminal law with rehabilitation law".
When the guilty go unpunished, the innocent are punished by default.
When the perpetrators go unrestrained or unexposed, the "innocent" are punished.
The key is to identify them and then restrain them, expose them. The general population must also be educated on how this actually works. And then they have a chance to avoid further suffering. Making the "guilty" suffer just reinforces the cycle of punishment. In the long run, it rarely helps anyone.
This may be, but the law is undermined because it is based on unworkable assumptions. Restraint of the psychopath is workable if it is practiced properly.
I remember in 'The Gift of Fear' by Gavin de Becker, he talks about not getting tricked into these dangerous para-appropriate responses. Very often, part of your brain knows that something is 'off', but you feel like a bad person for not responding with compassion. Until it's too late to be on guard. BE ON GUARD.
I was appalled when Erika Kirk made a public display of "forgiving Charlie's killer". First of all, we don't know for sure that the accused guy was, in fact, the killer. Second, even if is was/is, we don't know that he repents. That kind of grandstanded "forgiveness" is just suicidal to our species.
There is a problem when you are the leader of a large enough group that it statistically must contain some psychopaths who are just looking for a pretext to go on a murderous rampage, and others who are just hurting and being angry that much that it begins to look like a good idea. I'd have greatly preferred it if she had said "-if- he repents I am -already- willing to forgive" ... but I can understand it if she wanted to simplify the message for those who would find the conditional one hard to comprehend.
She knew that justice would be meted out by God and "Caesar."
It was therefore incumbent on her to cease extracting payment personally, which is in accordance with the tenets of her faith.
The assassin of her husband has not been forgiven. Were that to be the case, your point in re: suicidality, would obtain.
There is much in what you say, but with sincere respect, I disagree with the "grandstanding" aspect as applicable to Mrs. Kirk's public expression of personal forgiveness.
She mouthed those words. We don't know what is in her head or in her heart. She also said she will leave it to the judicial system to mete out punishment, which I take to indicate that she will neither demand nor stand in the way of the death penalty.
I'm not personally Christian, so I don't understand the forgiveness thing. Firing squads seem more effective at removing the genes for leftist-criminal personality traits such as sociopathy, sadism and narcissism from the gene pool.
Forgiveness might be an internal virtue signal within mythic religion that attempts to encourage humility, which is probably a good thing as far as maintaining social order goes.
Funny because I feel similarly, I was thinking to myself that while I believe in God in my own personal way no frigging way am I a good enough person to forgive an assassin with intent! Nor any of the other powerful psychos currently ruining my country with intent. No forgiveness, hoping for karma in this world or in hell.
From an evolutionary (scientific) perspective, the human mind tends to try to fix problems. The Bronze Age collapse has been proposed as a tipping point in cultural evolution (Karen Armstrong, Karl Jaspers) where old, "pagan" social and religious systems had been disrupted by techno-economic and climate change, violence within and between tribes, and people were exploring new myths based on a transcendent God/Spiri (eventually monotheism) FOR SURVIVAL PURPOSES.
A transcendent God allowed tribes to join together and form larger social forms such as city states that had greater social cooperation and order than "pagan" (pre-monotheistic) social forms.
The core feature of the new "Axial" social forms, purity myth, (including Dharma in the east, such as Buddhism which has a variation on evil) was Renunciation of evil and sin. "Axial" societies had a greater capacity for complex social hierarchy, rules and roles. They had more "breathing room" to take on social innovations that increased group survival.
Armstrong's book on the Axial social form proposes that monotheism was an attempt to reduce the widespread, increasing violence and chaos that emerged in "pagan" societies with increased human urban populations, agriculture and new technology (improved metals).
In that context, "evil" and "sin" was defined as regression to pre-transcendent , "pagan" (embodied) Spirit.
So maybe "forgiveness" was part of how monotheistic societies sought a higher level of social cooperation (non-violence).
The problem with Axial beliefs was that in denying embodied Spirit ("paganism"), a major part of human consciousness was denied and repressed. The repression gives postmodern relativists/pluralists a hammer that they have used with glee to beat traditional, mythic religion.
Genes, though, aren't what creates sociopathy, sadism or narcissism. Those attitudes and behaviors are the creation of Spirit. And killing a body does not kill Spirit. So they just come back in anew body and start again. "Forgiveness" is a way to take your attention off a harm that otherwise could consume you and ruin the rest of your life. It keeps you from becoming more criminal. But it doesn't help the criminal that much. Thus, it is only a partial solution to the problem of crime and psychopathy.
Killing criminals is a crude form of eugenics, a known failed system.
I'm pretty sure that genetics is very much involved with psychopathology in many cases. I would even suggest that many pathologies are evidence of lack of a soul.
This is a common belief that I disagree with. I find "genetics" to be a synonym for "past life experience" among those who aren't clear about reincarnation or the influence of past lives in the current life. See the work of Steve Burgess.
"Soul" as it is often used is a failed concept. It fails to imagine the extent to which a being can be corrupted. Psychopaths don't "lack souls." They are simply very damaged beings. They are not fit company, but that does not make them soulless.
Again, you are scientifically illiterate. You make religion look extremely stupid. Playing silly word games is a waste of time and doesn't actually solve the problem under discussion (the insanity inherent to "leftism", neo-Marxism and postmodern relativism).
Neo-Marxists and postmodernists exploit the FRAGILITY TO DISRUPTION of both traditional, mythic religion and modern, scientific rationalism.
Unless you have a way to increase the anti-fragility of mythic religion (and you don't) you will continue to be a dismal failure that accomplishes nothing. You are regressive. Regressives have neither the ability to understand the problem or any solutions.
neo-Marxists are something else than really people reflective of "Marxism"
If you were able to follow the so-called Marxist trend inside the guy, and track it down deep, and reach whatever core it is originating from (no clue what this could be) - you would not find Marxism but something else
If you would do the same exercise in Hitler, Mao and others, you would find the same stuff. Same core. You would expect to find some ideological core? No luck - it's something else there.
Very odd! There exists an additional stuff that we did not know of
So it's not even people themselves who exploit the fragility of whatever tradition
It's something perennial which exploits the fragility of whatever tradition. It was there at the time of Hitler, Stalin, etc
Same thing all the time. Dynamic stuff, parasiting human structures, twisting them from the inside and making them act as if their name is what is acting.
An additional "player" out there. A new definition. We got "water", "air", political regimes & green trees - and a new stuff needs classification.
The way is thus not "to increase an anti-fragility" but a knowledge of this "thing" and a specific antidote. Because it would attack other aspects. Then you would need to develop an anti-warrior feature - because it attacks the flaws of the warrior. You would need to then develop an anti-priest feature. Etc See? This is endless and it's because we don't know the stuff inside.
Today, it attacks the left. Everybody think that "it's the left". The left has the stuff inside.
So you have your perspective. I'm just saying you should consider changing it. Because "evolution" and that whole narrative is getting us absolutely nowhere.
Your gross ignorance isn't of any interest or relevance.
I can make a "scientific case" for why mythic religion EVOLVED to be important to human survival (the idea that renunciation of evil is necessary to social order), but your ignorance is a good reminder that mythic religion has severe limits.
I find your gross ignorance of interest. If "science" gets it wrong, it needs to try harder. Don't you think that scientific methods have been applied to the Intelligent Design hypothesis, as well as many others currently shunned by "Science?"
"Forgiveness" can only be productively understood by means of its primary definition; the cessation of payment extraction.
There is sophistic confusion surrounding how this manifests within the emotional "ecosystem" of the creditor.
When a debt is "forgiven," payment must cease to be extracted not only from the debtor, but from the creditor.
Psychopaths are predators, all are their prey. During a struggle against an everyday psychopath, the prey experiences a neurophysiological cascade. Concisely; the fight/flight/freeze response to stimuli arouses endocrine and neurological responses. These responses have associated "costs" to those experiencing them. Chronic inflammatory response is one example of the payment that prey extracts from itself.
"Forgiveness" thus includes cessation of incurring those costs.
Another outstanding essay in the series, Mr. Koehli.
Thank you for this. I had a very troubling incident as a child and because my victimizer was younger than me every single councilor I have opened up to about it, with my intention of developing strategies to mitigate my trauma responses, has instead become fanatically concerned with potential parental abuse of my abuser, and then demanded that I forgive her because obviously I haven’t done that in their view.
I know all that, I am mildly conserved as an adult for her as a child, I pray she had a come to Jesus moment and left all those behaviors behind, I doubt it, and realistically think she is probably psychologically abusing patients as a Psychiatrist, the last thing I heard she was doing, years and years ago. But I don’t know because I went no contact decades ago.
When you have a patient who is trying to get to the root causes of why her life is like the refrain of ‘Because of You’ and you decide to make the whole session about how the victimizer must have been being abused by adults in her life, which is indeed likely, and that somehow the reason you have a hard time trusting anyone is because you haven’t forgiven her.
Quite often, this insitence on "forgiveness" is simply a ruse by the psychopaths to disarm the victim. And, of course, in the modern Western court system, lenience to the perpetrator is downright sadism on the victim. The duty of a Christian is to fight evil, not to "forgive" it.
In the original form, western religions require the RENUNICATION of evil and sin.
Forgiveness can only work in societies that uphold such renunciation and that impose punishment for violating morals.
Evil people (psychopaths, sociopaths, sadists, narcissists, leftists) that are incapable of or unwilling to conform to morals are also incapable of the authentic renunciation of evil and sin. They are a basic danger to the social order that traditional, mythic religion provided historically.
Right on point! You want to forgive on a personal level so hate doesn’t eat you up, but evil must be fiercely combated and punished. People don’t seem to realize that a lot of personality disorders are not redeemable.
For a Christian, it's actually a matter of mistranslation of the notrious "love your enemy". It doesn't say "love" in the modern sense of the word, which was "philia" in Greek, it says "agape", which is roughly "behave like a human should", i.e. shoot the bastard between the eyes if you have to, but don't gloat, and do not dance on the coffin, like we observed after Charlie Kirk's murder. And also, after Holliwood pushed the "secondary spychopathy" version down everyone's throat "Oh, he eats young girl for breakfast because his mom was sadistic and abusive!" - and no one asks why on earth the mom was like that? - very few people understand that psychopathy, aka human evil, is inborn and inherited - heritability is 80%, by the way. And who stands to gain from the idea that a Christian should somehow have an unlimited number of cheeks? The Evil Ones, of course, and nobody else, certainly not the Christian in question.
Minor quibble: that isn't the definition of "agape".
In the "Three Faces of God" model*, western religion is premised on a father-child model of God and humans, so Divine love is personal. (Buber's I-Thou)
Eastern religions/mysticism put more emphasis on the non-personal, abstract, universal nature of Spirit and love.
-----
note that "integral" here is not integral catholicism (anti-marxist/anti-liberation theology), it refers to Sri Aurobindo and Jean Gebser's new-age-ish idea that spirituality has to be re-integrated into modern, scientifically rational, western civilization to form a more holistic system of consciousness. Gebser's 1950s book (original german title "Ursprung und Gegenwart" or "The Ever Present Origin") elaborates on that theme.
I think that some people believe that there are only two possible states in a person. "Carrying a grudge" and "forgiving". I think we need to push for the understanding that it is possible to both be unforgiving and not carry a grudge whenever this comes up because this is the option people should take very often, almost all of the time when you have been wronged but the other person either doesn't acknowledge the wrong or isn't contrite.
Some models of evolutionary psychology define human morals as a (primitive) survival adaptation that increases social cooperation, within a gene pool.* When violations of morals, cheating, is unpunished the moral system fails.
-----
* Peter Richerson, PhD ecology, UC Davis, quotes Darwin (as an example of group selection hypothesis and the neurobiology of sympathy in "primeval times"):
"It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and
[--->] an advancement in the standard of morality
will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection (178-179)."
The deterioration of a being into the position of a crime victim is a rather complex process.
"Forgiveness" is a very Christian, and very Buddhist, thing for a crime victim to do. It has its benefits, mostly personal and mostly spiritual.
It doesn't do much for the fact that crime and criminals exist, are created and propagated by psychopaths, and somehow find people to prey on that for some reason leave themselves open to it.
In these matters, most religions have basically given up. It is just too inscrutable. But it is also in the interest of the control structure for us to never figure this out. So those of us who are attempting to figure it out are up against a lot of resistance.
I think in the end that to the extent that we do figure it out, we will be in a better place spiritually than those who simply forgive. But part of this ultimate understanding is that forgiveness in the only real solution. The difference is a matter of depth of understanding.
They have certainly attempted to take over religions, as they have attempted to take over governments. These are some of their prime dangers, from their view. But I don't know that they have been that successful. They are outnumbered, after all. But these human organizations have become quite polluted - and often hopeless because of the knowledge that has been kept away from them.
I quite like the idea of restorative justice, but like you make clear in the essay, forgiveness can only begin when the perpetrator(s) seek redemption.
The other thing is finding strategies at the individual level to overcome being the victim without having to confront the perpetrator, allowing victims to bring closure and move on, in a society that is in general indifferent, and especially concerning "civil law", which places the burden of seeking justice on the victim.
In this sense the essay is useful for identifying and understanding why society across the West is going to shit. Too many rabid dogs running around. As someone who works with victims of malfeasance, I find the theme of lack of justice, especially for white collar rule breaking and forms of social bullying, particularly prescient of the mess we're in. One of the strategies I tell my clients (dealing with condominium issues) is to sell and change their neighbors, because this is just simply easier, less time consuming and ultimately cheaper, than confronting and dealing with assholes.
How can one forgive when the person has no remorse or even a clue of how their actions affected the other person? It seems that people are showing less and less self awareness these days. It would seem that if those people were "rebuked", that maybe, just maybe they could become aware and seek forgiveness. On the other hand, they may be so self absorbed that they take that rebuke as a reason to become the victim.
> But such mercy is only possible if one of logocracy’s main principles is put into practice: “that the power on which the fate of other people depends should always rest in the hands of normal people.” That is not currently the case.
That's for sure! In my whole life I've yet to see a single pathocrat held to account, or any signs that "normal people" hold any of the levers of power.
Forgiving the unrepentant is moral cuckoldry, and receives the same reward. On the social level it's the celebration of cuckoldry, and the fruits thereof (fatherless children, embittered men); the passive form of sin is just as deadly as the active. We must excise misguided sympathy from our hearts.
Doesn't forgiveness depend on the offended coming to grips with it?
For example, the public still can't comprehend that their government lied to them and killed many of them with the covid fraud.
So we see this week, people responsible for covid fraud like Peter Marks in his FDA position being hired on by Eli Lilly. In a situation that comprehends his misdeeds, he would be shunned at a minimum and rightfully prosecuted.
Connected to this is anther thing that has ben erased, both in reality and in consciousness:
Justice is revenge, and vice versa.
The reason, on purpose and planned or just an espression of belief in illogical ideals, for the removal of vengeance and the pathologising of wrongdoing is this:
Forgiveness is cheap, safe and doesn't put you at risk.
(This is in error, obviously, but that is the mental position behind the idea that forgiveness is the only correct response to injury and abuse.)
Vengeance, revenge, justice is risky. It requires you to actively pursue action against the perpetrator.
While it is oft argued that we via social contract-theory defer vengence to the state acting as our proxy, this is a lie and a coping-mechanism; the state has since the late 1800s also pursued the route of seeing crime not as an act of wronging an innocent but as an expression of some kind of pathological state where society itself is the ur-cause, thereby absolving the criminal of any guilt, responsibility and safeguarding her from revenge.
And thus the modern cult of "forgive all, love the criminal" is ever-strengthened by a state no longer willing to take revenge on behalf of the weak, powerless and victimised. In effect, the state co-operates with the criminal in allowing her to cause maximum harm, again and again, since the state is always ready to step in and penalise those who indeed do actively seek revenge.
"Justice rests at spear's end" is an old pre-Christian saying. My ancestors in that terse sentence condensed the entirety of what law, justice and revenge is, in itself and as itself.
"Modern societies, horrified by the abuses of law in the era of World War II and by totalitarian regimes, are moving towards humanizing the law and replacing criminal law with rehabilitation law".
When the guilty go unpunished, the innocent are punished by default.
When the perpetrators go unrestrained or unexposed, the "innocent" are punished.
The key is to identify them and then restrain them, expose them. The general population must also be educated on how this actually works. And then they have a chance to avoid further suffering. Making the "guilty" suffer just reinforces the cycle of punishment. In the long run, it rarely helps anyone.
Restraint is fatally undermined like the rest of the law.
This may be, but the law is undermined because it is based on unworkable assumptions. Restraint of the psychopath is workable if it is practiced properly.
I’m was unclear.
Allow me to remedy.
The unworkable assumption is good will and honest mistakes, this is a lie; the truth is malice and harm manifested for generations. Enough.
The lawyers and courts are the Apex predator enemies.
The law is very workable by the psychopathic enemies who wrote, control and staff it at every level.
The law is the enemy.
Forget the Law, we soldiers have and our kin* and brothers in the police have quite had enough.
Force and law are in a sham marriage that now enters lethal divorce, this is the price of survival.
Be certain the price of survival is always paid.
*literally kin.
OK, buddy. Can't really tell where you're coming from, but we all can be free to express ourselves.
The Law is silent in war.
Silent Enim Leges Intra Armas. - that came from Cicero.
The Legal Institutions in America have betrayed the American people and their defenders.
- That’s Me.
I’m a veteran.
We’re at war in America with other Americans-political violence and killing as a long if low level campaign- Me.
Trump at Quantico in his speech was giving the Generals *Orders*. With the exception of Venezuela he spoke of the USA. (? War?)
That’s where we are, now you know where I’m coming from…
You are a profoundly confused person.
I remember in 'The Gift of Fear' by Gavin de Becker, he talks about not getting tricked into these dangerous para-appropriate responses. Very often, part of your brain knows that something is 'off', but you feel like a bad person for not responding with compassion. Until it's too late to be on guard. BE ON GUARD.
Great book. Everyone should read it.
I was appalled when Erika Kirk made a public display of "forgiving Charlie's killer". First of all, we don't know for sure that the accused guy was, in fact, the killer. Second, even if is was/is, we don't know that he repents. That kind of grandstanded "forgiveness" is just suicidal to our species.
There is a problem when you are the leader of a large enough group that it statistically must contain some psychopaths who are just looking for a pretext to go on a murderous rampage, and others who are just hurting and being angry that much that it begins to look like a good idea. I'd have greatly preferred it if she had said "-if- he repents I am -already- willing to forgive" ... but I can understand it if she wanted to simplify the message for those who would find the conditional one hard to comprehend.
Good point. I just wouldn't have been able to get up there and do that if it were my husband who had been killed that way.
me either.
She knew that justice would be meted out by God and "Caesar."
It was therefore incumbent on her to cease extracting payment personally, which is in accordance with the tenets of her faith.
The assassin of her husband has not been forgiven. Were that to be the case, your point in re: suicidality, would obtain.
There is much in what you say, but with sincere respect, I disagree with the "grandstanding" aspect as applicable to Mrs. Kirk's public expression of personal forgiveness.
She mouthed those words. We don't know what is in her head or in her heart. She also said she will leave it to the judicial system to mete out punishment, which I take to indicate that she will neither demand nor stand in the way of the death penalty.
She had Government agents prodding her.
They say the CRS was shut down, but the pattern of pressuring (especially White) victims to not notice continues?
I don’t know.
I'm not personally Christian, so I don't understand the forgiveness thing. Firing squads seem more effective at removing the genes for leftist-criminal personality traits such as sociopathy, sadism and narcissism from the gene pool.
Forgiveness might be an internal virtue signal within mythic religion that attempts to encourage humility, which is probably a good thing as far as maintaining social order goes.
Funny because I feel similarly, I was thinking to myself that while I believe in God in my own personal way no frigging way am I a good enough person to forgive an assassin with intent! Nor any of the other powerful psychos currently ruining my country with intent. No forgiveness, hoping for karma in this world or in hell.
From an evolutionary (scientific) perspective, the human mind tends to try to fix problems. The Bronze Age collapse has been proposed as a tipping point in cultural evolution (Karen Armstrong, Karl Jaspers) where old, "pagan" social and religious systems had been disrupted by techno-economic and climate change, violence within and between tribes, and people were exploring new myths based on a transcendent God/Spiri (eventually monotheism) FOR SURVIVAL PURPOSES.
A transcendent God allowed tribes to join together and form larger social forms such as city states that had greater social cooperation and order than "pagan" (pre-monotheistic) social forms.
The core feature of the new "Axial" social forms, purity myth, (including Dharma in the east, such as Buddhism which has a variation on evil) was Renunciation of evil and sin. "Axial" societies had a greater capacity for complex social hierarchy, rules and roles. They had more "breathing room" to take on social innovations that increased group survival.
Armstrong's book on the Axial social form proposes that monotheism was an attempt to reduce the widespread, increasing violence and chaos that emerged in "pagan" societies with increased human urban populations, agriculture and new technology (improved metals).
In that context, "evil" and "sin" was defined as regression to pre-transcendent , "pagan" (embodied) Spirit.
So maybe "forgiveness" was part of how monotheistic societies sought a higher level of social cooperation (non-violence).
The problem with Axial beliefs was that in denying embodied Spirit ("paganism"), a major part of human consciousness was denied and repressed. The repression gives postmodern relativists/pluralists a hammer that they have used with glee to beat traditional, mythic religion.
Thank you, you just explained why our societies have become so sickeningly over moralistic. I appreciate your knowledge about this topic very much.
Genes, though, aren't what creates sociopathy, sadism or narcissism. Those attitudes and behaviors are the creation of Spirit. And killing a body does not kill Spirit. So they just come back in anew body and start again. "Forgiveness" is a way to take your attention off a harm that otherwise could consume you and ruin the rest of your life. It keeps you from becoming more criminal. But it doesn't help the criminal that much. Thus, it is only a partial solution to the problem of crime and psychopathy.
Killing criminals is a crude form of eugenics, a known failed system.
I'm pretty sure that genetics is very much involved with psychopathology in many cases. I would even suggest that many pathologies are evidence of lack of a soul.
This is a common belief that I disagree with. I find "genetics" to be a synonym for "past life experience" among those who aren't clear about reincarnation or the influence of past lives in the current life. See the work of Steve Burgess.
"Soul" as it is often used is a failed concept. It fails to imagine the extent to which a being can be corrupted. Psychopaths don't "lack souls." They are simply very damaged beings. They are not fit company, but that does not make them soulless.
Well, I've seen the passing of such genes up close and personal. We'll just have to agree to disagree on both your remarks.
Again, you are scientifically illiterate. You make religion look extremely stupid. Playing silly word games is a waste of time and doesn't actually solve the problem under discussion (the insanity inherent to "leftism", neo-Marxism and postmodern relativism).
Neo-Marxists and postmodernists exploit the FRAGILITY TO DISRUPTION of both traditional, mythic religion and modern, scientific rationalism.
Unless you have a way to increase the anti-fragility of mythic religion (and you don't) you will continue to be a dismal failure that accomplishes nothing. You are regressive. Regressives have neither the ability to understand the problem or any solutions.
(an example of a potential solution to postmodern relativism: construct-aware metarationality: https://metarationality.com/introduction )
neo-Marxists are something else than really people reflective of "Marxism"
If you were able to follow the so-called Marxist trend inside the guy, and track it down deep, and reach whatever core it is originating from (no clue what this could be) - you would not find Marxism but something else
If you would do the same exercise in Hitler, Mao and others, you would find the same stuff. Same core. You would expect to find some ideological core? No luck - it's something else there.
Very odd! There exists an additional stuff that we did not know of
So it's not even people themselves who exploit the fragility of whatever tradition
It's something perennial which exploits the fragility of whatever tradition. It was there at the time of Hitler, Stalin, etc
Same thing all the time. Dynamic stuff, parasiting human structures, twisting them from the inside and making them act as if their name is what is acting.
An additional "player" out there. A new definition. We got "water", "air", political regimes & green trees - and a new stuff needs classification.
The way is thus not "to increase an anti-fragility" but a knowledge of this "thing" and a specific antidote. Because it would attack other aspects. Then you would need to develop an anti-warrior feature - because it attacks the flaws of the warrior. You would need to then develop an anti-priest feature. Etc See? This is endless and it's because we don't know the stuff inside.
Today, it attacks the left. Everybody think that "it's the left". The left has the stuff inside.
Scientifically illiterate, mythic explanations of evil that ignore evolution are silly (from my perspective).
So you have your perspective. I'm just saying you should consider changing it. Because "evolution" and that whole narrative is getting us absolutely nowhere.
Your gross ignorance isn't of any interest or relevance.
I can make a "scientific case" for why mythic religion EVOLVED to be important to human survival (the idea that renunciation of evil is necessary to social order), but your ignorance is a good reminder that mythic religion has severe limits.
I find your gross ignorance of interest. If "science" gets it wrong, it needs to try harder. Don't you think that scientific methods have been applied to the Intelligent Design hypothesis, as well as many others currently shunned by "Science?"
"Forgiveness" can only be productively understood by means of its primary definition; the cessation of payment extraction.
There is sophistic confusion surrounding how this manifests within the emotional "ecosystem" of the creditor.
When a debt is "forgiven," payment must cease to be extracted not only from the debtor, but from the creditor.
Psychopaths are predators, all are their prey. During a struggle against an everyday psychopath, the prey experiences a neurophysiological cascade. Concisely; the fight/flight/freeze response to stimuli arouses endocrine and neurological responses. These responses have associated "costs" to those experiencing them. Chronic inflammatory response is one example of the payment that prey extracts from itself.
"Forgiveness" thus includes cessation of incurring those costs.
Another outstanding essay in the series, Mr. Koehli.
Thank you for this. I had a very troubling incident as a child and because my victimizer was younger than me every single councilor I have opened up to about it, with my intention of developing strategies to mitigate my trauma responses, has instead become fanatically concerned with potential parental abuse of my abuser, and then demanded that I forgive her because obviously I haven’t done that in their view.
I know all that, I am mildly conserved as an adult for her as a child, I pray she had a come to Jesus moment and left all those behaviors behind, I doubt it, and realistically think she is probably psychologically abusing patients as a Psychiatrist, the last thing I heard she was doing, years and years ago. But I don’t know because I went no contact decades ago.
When you have a patient who is trying to get to the root causes of why her life is like the refrain of ‘Because of You’ and you decide to make the whole session about how the victimizer must have been being abused by adults in her life, which is indeed likely, and that somehow the reason you have a hard time trusting anyone is because you haven’t forgiven her.
Sorry.
Evil flourishes in the "culture of therapy" (mainly because of "leftism").
Quite often, this insitence on "forgiveness" is simply a ruse by the psychopaths to disarm the victim. And, of course, in the modern Western court system, lenience to the perpetrator is downright sadism on the victim. The duty of a Christian is to fight evil, not to "forgive" it.
In the original form, western religions require the RENUNICATION of evil and sin.
Forgiveness can only work in societies that uphold such renunciation and that impose punishment for violating morals.
Evil people (psychopaths, sociopaths, sadists, narcissists, leftists) that are incapable of or unwilling to conform to morals are also incapable of the authentic renunciation of evil and sin. They are a basic danger to the social order that traditional, mythic religion provided historically.
Right on point! You want to forgive on a personal level so hate doesn’t eat you up, but evil must be fiercely combated and punished. People don’t seem to realize that a lot of personality disorders are not redeemable.
For a Christian, it's actually a matter of mistranslation of the notrious "love your enemy". It doesn't say "love" in the modern sense of the word, which was "philia" in Greek, it says "agape", which is roughly "behave like a human should", i.e. shoot the bastard between the eyes if you have to, but don't gloat, and do not dance on the coffin, like we observed after Charlie Kirk's murder. And also, after Holliwood pushed the "secondary spychopathy" version down everyone's throat "Oh, he eats young girl for breakfast because his mom was sadistic and abusive!" - and no one asks why on earth the mom was like that? - very few people understand that psychopathy, aka human evil, is inborn and inherited - heritability is 80%, by the way. And who stands to gain from the idea that a Christian should somehow have an unlimited number of cheeks? The Evil Ones, of course, and nobody else, certainly not the Christian in question.
Minor quibble: that isn't the definition of "agape".
In the "Three Faces of God" model*, western religion is premised on a father-child model of God and humans, so Divine love is personal. (Buber's I-Thou)
Eastern religions/mysticism put more emphasis on the non-personal, abstract, universal nature of Spirit and love.
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note that "integral" here is not integral catholicism (anti-marxist/anti-liberation theology), it refers to Sri Aurobindo and Jean Gebser's new-age-ish idea that spirituality has to be re-integrated into modern, scientifically rational, western civilization to form a more holistic system of consciousness. Gebser's 1950s book (original german title "Ursprung und Gegenwart" or "The Ever Present Origin") elaborates on that theme.
https://www.integralchristiannetwork.org/three-faces-of-god-new
I think that some people believe that there are only two possible states in a person. "Carrying a grudge" and "forgiving". I think we need to push for the understanding that it is possible to both be unforgiving and not carry a grudge whenever this comes up because this is the option people should take very often, almost all of the time when you have been wronged but the other person either doesn't acknowledge the wrong or isn't contrite.
Some models of evolutionary psychology define human morals as a (primitive) survival adaptation that increases social cooperation, within a gene pool.* When violations of morals, cheating, is unpunished the moral system fails.
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* Peter Richerson, PhD ecology, UC Davis, quotes Darwin (as an example of group selection hypothesis and the neurobiology of sympathy in "primeval times"):
"It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and
[--->] an advancement in the standard of morality
will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection (178-179)."
The deterioration of a being into the position of a crime victim is a rather complex process.
"Forgiveness" is a very Christian, and very Buddhist, thing for a crime victim to do. It has its benefits, mostly personal and mostly spiritual.
It doesn't do much for the fact that crime and criminals exist, are created and propagated by psychopaths, and somehow find people to prey on that for some reason leave themselves open to it.
In these matters, most religions have basically given up. It is just too inscrutable. But it is also in the interest of the control structure for us to never figure this out. So those of us who are attempting to figure it out are up against a lot of resistance.
I think in the end that to the extent that we do figure it out, we will be in a better place spiritually than those who simply forgive. But part of this ultimate understanding is that forgiveness in the only real solution. The difference is a matter of depth of understanding.
You are regurgitating religious fundamentalism and have no idea what the author is even talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetics
"crime and criminals exist, are created and propagated by psychopaths, and somehow... most religions have basically given up"
Is an explanation that psychopaths may have gotten control said religions and used that control to keep the spotlight off of themselves?
They have certainly attempted to take over religions, as they have attempted to take over governments. These are some of their prime dangers, from their view. But I don't know that they have been that successful. They are outnumbered, after all. But these human organizations have become quite polluted - and often hopeless because of the knowledge that has been kept away from them.
If a person does not repent, forgiveness is inappropriate. Then it's between them and their Maker.
Letting go is how I deal with it.
You are right... our society is mum on the repentance part. That baby was thrown out with the bath water of traditional religion.
I quite like the idea of restorative justice, but like you make clear in the essay, forgiveness can only begin when the perpetrator(s) seek redemption.
The other thing is finding strategies at the individual level to overcome being the victim without having to confront the perpetrator, allowing victims to bring closure and move on, in a society that is in general indifferent, and especially concerning "civil law", which places the burden of seeking justice on the victim.
In this sense the essay is useful for identifying and understanding why society across the West is going to shit. Too many rabid dogs running around. As someone who works with victims of malfeasance, I find the theme of lack of justice, especially for white collar rule breaking and forms of social bullying, particularly prescient of the mess we're in. One of the strategies I tell my clients (dealing with condominium issues) is to sell and change their neighbors, because this is just simply easier, less time consuming and ultimately cheaper, than confronting and dealing with assholes.
How can one forgive when the person has no remorse or even a clue of how their actions affected the other person? It seems that people are showing less and less self awareness these days. It would seem that if those people were "rebuked", that maybe, just maybe they could become aware and seek forgiveness. On the other hand, they may be so self absorbed that they take that rebuke as a reason to become the victim.
> But such mercy is only possible if one of logocracy’s main principles is put into practice: “that the power on which the fate of other people depends should always rest in the hands of normal people.” That is not currently the case.
That's for sure! In my whole life I've yet to see a single pathocrat held to account, or any signs that "normal people" hold any of the levers of power.
Forgiving the unrepentant is moral cuckoldry, and receives the same reward. On the social level it's the celebration of cuckoldry, and the fruits thereof (fatherless children, embittered men); the passive form of sin is just as deadly as the active. We must excise misguided sympathy from our hearts.
Doesn't forgiveness depend on the offended coming to grips with it?
For example, the public still can't comprehend that their government lied to them and killed many of them with the covid fraud.
So we see this week, people responsible for covid fraud like Peter Marks in his FDA position being hired on by Eli Lilly. In a situation that comprehends his misdeeds, he would be shunned at a minimum and rightfully prosecuted.
Connected to this is anther thing that has ben erased, both in reality and in consciousness:
Justice is revenge, and vice versa.
The reason, on purpose and planned or just an espression of belief in illogical ideals, for the removal of vengeance and the pathologising of wrongdoing is this:
Forgiveness is cheap, safe and doesn't put you at risk.
(This is in error, obviously, but that is the mental position behind the idea that forgiveness is the only correct response to injury and abuse.)
Vengeance, revenge, justice is risky. It requires you to actively pursue action against the perpetrator.
While it is oft argued that we via social contract-theory defer vengence to the state acting as our proxy, this is a lie and a coping-mechanism; the state has since the late 1800s also pursued the route of seeing crime not as an act of wronging an innocent but as an expression of some kind of pathological state where society itself is the ur-cause, thereby absolving the criminal of any guilt, responsibility and safeguarding her from revenge.
And thus the modern cult of "forgive all, love the criminal" is ever-strengthened by a state no longer willing to take revenge on behalf of the weak, powerless and victimised. In effect, the state co-operates with the criminal in allowing her to cause maximum harm, again and again, since the state is always ready to step in and penalise those who indeed do actively seek revenge.
"Justice rests at spear's end" is an old pre-Christian saying. My ancestors in that terse sentence condensed the entirety of what law, justice and revenge is, in itself and as itself.
Apt as always, brother. By the way, I put out a post today that I think is right up your alley. Feel free to check it out: https://veryofficialnews.substack.com/p/october-7th-who-knew-what