Healing and accountability

Thought I would post this here in case other's do not find it funny.

thomas, I totally don't find that funny.

Yes, "unity" will be difficult to achieve if problems are not at least "acknowledged", but I know many people who have found that "forgiveness" is a far more powerful motivator and facilitator of true change and progress than accountability and even more so than consequences. "Consequences" are too often "punishments" with a pretty bow (not always, but making sure they aren't takes skill and maybe even a little luck).

If the whole world jumped to "unity" and "healing" - lets heal the toxins, the air quality, the water quality, the farmland, etc, etc - then I personally would forgive those who made the mess in the first place and rejoice in a healed planet.

Jay Angler wrote:thomas, I totally don't find that funny.

Yes, "unity" will be difficult to achieve if problems are not at least "acknowledged", but I know many people who have found that "forgiveness" is a far more powerful motivator and facilitator of true change and progress than accountability and even more so than consequences. "Consequences" are too often "punishments" with a pretty bow (not always, but making sure they aren't takes skill and maybe even a little luck).

If the whole world jumped to "unity" and "healing" - lets heal the toxins, the air quality, the water quality, the farmland, etc, etc - then I personally would forgive those who made the mess in the first place and rejoice in a healed planet.

So I have a criminal law response to this.  I can forgive someone for molesting me without requiring he be made accountable and faces consequences but then he'll just do it again. And again. And again. Without acknowledging the problems root and fixing that, you can't really ever move past it as it'll just keep re-occurring.

Accountability is a prerequisite to forgiveness in most cases, in my opinion.  I suspect that accountability needs to come first in accordance with many people's sense of fair play and justice.  It does in my world view.

Was that meme really meant to be funny in the first place?
 
I think it sounds more like someone was trying to be profound and have a cut and dried answer for a current political situation here in the US maybe?

I don't really think the thought fits all situations where healing might be called for.

It really depends on the circumstances and what the 'crime' or 'affront' was?

I do think in many instances accountability goes hand in hand with healing and forgiveness.

Yes Judith;  
You hit the nail on the head.
That meme is directly aimed at the current political situation here in the US.
It is just my warped sense of ironic humor.
I should not have used the word funny, as those words have do broad meanings to different people.
My Apology's!

As a non American the whole thing made no sense whatsoever to me until I read the comment about current politics. And to be honest most US politics is actually quite funny when seen from outside.

This IS the cider press, folks - where politics and other sensitive topics are allowed, so long as we don't get pissy, right? And, quite frankly, I can truly see this meme applying to things other than politics in the USA. For example, while not worded the same, it was most definitely applied in my child rearing days.

thomas rubino wrote:Yes Judith;  
You hit the nail on the head.
That meme is directly aimed at the current political situation here in the US.
It is just my warped sense of ironic humor.
I should not have used the word funny, as those words have do broad meanings to different people.
My Apology's!

no apology necessary at all Thomas.....it's obvious where my head is at though isn't it?

It is quite an interesting philosophical discussion topic though...

...and I definitely agree with the meme as relates to the riots here January 6....actions have consequences....break the law and expect them.

I was active in anti war protests in the past and there were always those who pushed the boundaries and expected to be arrested.

I'm hearing a lot of blame and backtracking and excuses from this recent group of protestors...much the same as some children might respond.

I think who is calling for the unity and healing makes a huge difference.
Our cousin is a con artist who could never con me-I gave what I had to give freely, be it labor, food or money.
He offered to sell my family a truck, my wife got involved, and sure enough, he tried to cheat us.
My wife wasn't having it, she called him out, and a war of words erupted, mostly between the two wives.

I no longer speak to them, but if they came to me for help, I would help them if I could.
I would help them , knowing I was nothing more than a mark to them, because I care about the wellbeing of their children.
If they came offering forgiveness I would turn them away.
We have done nothing to be forgiven for, and they would not be accepting  responsibility for what they had said and done.


I suspect both sides of the political divide here in this country feel the same way as I do, at best.

For what it is worth, unity requires neither healing or accountability.
Oppressed minorities of all kinds fought for the allies in WWII, for example.
This is after the lynching's of black soldiers returning from WWI and during the internment of the Japanese.
The native Americans might have had to overlook some oppressions to serve as code talkers as well.
During that war, they served under people who differed from the Axis only by degree , not in general philosophy.
This is not unique to minorities.
Most people have had to make this kind of choice, so I hope everyone involved sucks it up and gets on with it.

Agreeing that there is a virus that has taken a lot of lives and  would be start, but that isn't something that is agreed upon.

It's also not anything that we as individuals seem to have any effect upon.
There is something I do do on a personal level.
I don't tease my conservative coworkers and I don't cosign the cheering I see from my colleges on the left.

Judith Browning wrote:
I'm hearing a lot of blame and backtracking and excuses from this recent group of protestors...much the same as some children might respond.

William Bronson wrote:
I would help them , knowing I was nothing more than a mark to them, because I care about the wellbeing of their children.

Childhood is such a pivotal period with respect to this issue and how the 'yung-uns' perceive the world through the lens of their nurturing has been noted,....possibly even gaining more steam.

Actions do have consequences, if not in the short term then ultimately in the long term, and in the current context.....and context is not to be trivialized I feel....I'm inclined to agree with most sentiments here.  Yet picking up on Judith's line of "I'm hearing a lot of blame and backtracking and excuses from this recent group of protestors...much the same as a child would respond"  I continue a lifelong grappling with this issue of what to make and what to do with dangerous and damaging infantile sentiments in an adult population that is, on an individual basis, reacting to absent, neglectful, or abusive contexts of upbringing.  On the one hand, it's hard to argue that the consequences of such recent violating actions should not be realized.  In the broader context, however, .... and requiring much more thought and wisdom....what actions and approaches to put forth to at least maximize the "best" in people and their place in a society, hopefully the latter of which is bent on sustainability and conviviality.  A discussion for a different time is, given a theorectical emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically healthy population, at what point is aggressive resistance justified?  Perhaps there are no hard answers to these and they've been, and likely will continue to be, bandied about for eons.

When it comes to apparent and appallingly childish behavior in adults, I can't help but to drag out a favorite author whose work I've pasted here too much,.....but seems so relevant:

"All Westerners are heir, not only to the self-justifications of recent technophilic Promethean impulses, but to the legacy of the whole. We may now be the possessors of the world’s flimsiest identity structure, the products of a prolonged tinkering with ontogenesis — by Paleolithic standards, childish adults. Because of this arrested development, modern society continues to work, for it requires dependence. But the private cost is massive therapy, escapism, intoxicants, narcotics, fits of destruction and rage, enormous grief, subordination to hierarchies that exhibit this callow ineptitude at every level, and, perhaps worst of all, a readiness to strike back at a natural world that we dimly perceive as having failed us. ......

In the city-world of today, infinite wants are pursued as though the environment were an amnion and technology a placenta. Unlike the cultures of submissive obedience, those of willful, proud disengagement, or those obsessed with guilt and pollution, this made world is the home to dreams of omnipotence and immediate satisfaction. There is no mother of limited resources or father of rigid discipline, only a self in a fluid system.

...... Characteristic of the schizoid features of this immature subjectivity is difficulty differentiating among fantasy, dream, and reality. The inability to know whether one’s experiences originate in night dreaming, daydreaming, or veridical reality is one of the most familiar disabilities of seriously ill mental patients. Drug use and New Age psychedelic athletics in search of a different reality, even the semantics of using “fantasy” as synonymous with creative imagination and “dream” with inspiration, suggest an underlying confusion. They are like travesties of the valid adolescent karma that expresses the religious necessity of transcendence. The fears associated with this confusion in adults are genuinely frightening. The anguished yearning for something lost is inescapable for those not in psychiatric care or on weekend psychic sprees, but who live daily in time-serving labor, overdense groups, and polluted surroundings. Blurry aspirations are formulated in concealed infantilisms and mediated in spectator entertainment, addiction to worldwide news, and religious revivalism."  -- Paul Shepard, excerpt from "Nature and Madness".

-- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/paul-shepard-nature-and-madness

Just to speak to something mentioned earlier regarding traditional protests and protesters, one thing that has remained constant from everyone I have talked to and hung out with and heard about on the news, is that protesters going to high-profile protests prepare not only for confrontation with overzealous police, but even when things are expected to remain orderly, they prepare to be arrested.

I know that celebrities often have greater resources to call upon, but every time Jane Fonda's crew went to protest, they were prepared to be arrested, because it had happened before, and they knew it would happen again. That's the nature of responsible, conscientious, peaceful public protest. That is the consequence of their actions, which they walked into with eyes wide, because they knew what they were fighting for was important, even if it was just to make sure their side of the argument was heard and remained in public discourse long enough so there could be a conversation.

I am in full agreement that if you don't see consequences and accountability, and personal acceptance of said, then there can be no healing, as one side won't have even properly acknowledged that a wrong has been committed. It's like assuming an apology from an unapologetic offender who has also not been jailed or otherwise punished. What in their experience has informed them that they have been anything other than simply "hard done-by" by those individuals and groups that they vilify?

This is not an easy situation, and I am sorry for all concerned. I certainly don't have a solution for you all.

But I do know that those impulses I have sometimes, to do exactly what those on the other side of the political spectrum did that I found so morally objectionable, the whole "Fuck your Feelings" response, which objectively might look fair, which would feel so good and righteous to "Return to Sender," as it were, is actually only self-righteous.

There is a lot of healing to do. I don't think that letting crimes go unpunished will be likely to encourage those on the other side to do much forgiveness. Personally, though I know some might not agree, I would definitely prosecute all who could be identified as having breached the security perimeter in the specific event in question, with consequences scaling up with the degree of crime committed. It's not like they'd be handed to a mob. The justice system would sort it out.

But ultimately, in the states, I'd suggest just listening. Listen to eachother. Listen to your president. Debate what he says, debate everything, hell, (except here, remember). But at least make it an honest conversation. Stop the ad hominem attacks and actually deconstruct your policies, if you're going to argue. Get down to brass tacks.

Have the moral courage to look at those parts of the argument, and even of yourself, that you disagree with, or that you'd prefer didn't exist. I deplore my own schadenfreude. It's excessive. And yet, if I don't look at it, it tends to overwhelm things.

Over all, and this might be the hardest for some, to change things, to improve them, one must work within the infrastructure designed to allow that change. Otherwise, well you saw what happened. If we don't all pull together, we'll end up pulled apart. If we don't share the same grid, parts of that grid can fail, and there won't be a thing any of the rest of us can do to fix it.

I think right now, we all need to be concentrating on actually having the conversation that has been deflected by party polarity and identity politics, and by poisoning of the information well. We all need to be well aware of the money trail, with things like the news and with scientific (versus scientistic) publications, and we need to be brutally honest in a way that doesn't immediately shut down communication.

I think there needs to be a refocusing on the common good, and the duty that each person owes the other, and above all the increased duty of care that scales up with responsibility, as the "power" for which so many vie actually is, to paraphrase a friendly neighbourhood arachno-philosopher.

-CK