October 21, 2025 • 66 mins
When you think about it, forgiveness is pretty weird, and these Fools have some questions: What does it really mean to forgive? What happens inside of us when we forgive? Can we show someone kindness without forgiving them? Does forgiving make us better? Must the other person have a role, i.e., repentance? What is the relationship between forgiveness and justice? These fools discuss. Hope you enjoy!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Good afternoon, Brian. How are you doing, Sir?
I'm doing pretty well, thanks. It's definitely feeling like
fall here in Philadelphia, briskin the mornings.
So yeah, I'm. I'm starting to imagine the
Gray, bleary winter, but enjoying fall while it's here.
(00:34):
Yeah, yeah. We're getting a bit of that
crispiness, too. You're just starting.
Yeah. And which is OK, when I kill
some of the flies and mosquitoes, I'm all for that
part. Yeah, and it's AI think you
mentioned in our last episode. It's a good time to get work
done for sure. It is, it is, and I have been,
which is nice cool little coolerand yeah.
(00:57):
Good. So we just finished the High
Holiday season in in Judeo Land in Judaica.
And throughout it, I there was atheme of belonging that we
talked about in our last episode.
But the other theme is forgiveness.
(01:17):
And I've been thinking a lot about it because there's some
nuance to it and some complexityto it.
So, so one thing I've been thinking about is what does
forgiveness really mean? Like when we when we forgive
somebody, we might be letting goof a grudge that we're holding,
(01:44):
but we might also be allowing them to participate in community
in some way that we weren't previously.
Or we might be, we might be forgiving them, but not their
actions. Or a friend of mine said once
(02:04):
that forgiveness is like peelingan onion.
Not like onion peelings, but like peeling an onion where you
might forgive somebody and then five years later you might
realize you were still holding on to some piece of that and you
need to let go of that also. And then interestingly, there's
this maybe metaphysical questionwhere, what involvement do we
(02:29):
need from the other person in order to forgive them?
And, and does that depend on circumstance?
So Ray and I were talking about this and she mentioned a rabbi
who was who who encountered a former Nazi on his deathbed.
(02:49):
And the Nazi asked him for forgiveness.
And he said he doesn't have the authority to do that because the
to to speak on behalf of others who were harmed is was out of
scope for him. And that seems quite different
from the Christian version of forgiveness, or at least the
(03:11):
Catholic version of forgiveness,where confession or atonement
and then and repentance does thejob.
And that seems to be the Case Nomatter the extent of the sin.
So I, I think in, in Judaism, there might be this expectation
that somebody has to seek forgiveness in order to get it.
(03:34):
And, and yeah, that might be different from from group to
group. So, so I guess there's a
psychological component where letting go seems to be good for
us, but then there's also this, I guess religious, spiritual
(03:55):
component that gets a little murky.
And I was wondering what your thoughts are about it and maybe
we could kick it around some? Yeah, I guess I think about this
from a couple different angles and I and it probably comes down
to a definitional issue, you know, the definition of terms.
(04:21):
If we're talking about forgiveness as a purely internal
state, then I have one set of thoughts about it.
If we, if our idea of forgiveness is this relational
thing, then maybe there are somecomponents where, where the, the
(04:46):
wronging party needs to participate on in some way that,
and then there's this question, well, what, what are we exactly
expecting out of this forgiveness?
You know, and, and I think the rabbi's probably correct when he
(05:08):
says, you know, I can't, I can'tgive you time off in hell if
you've earned it, you know, basically.
And, and I think that that at least points to the
psychological aspect of it. You know, the Buddha talks about
his example is you're, you're ina boat and another boat
(05:33):
basically runs you over. And as you're there in the
water, you're, you know, you're of course cursing whoever is
steering the other boat because they're obviously doing this
very irresponsibly and it's causing you suffering.
But then as the other boat goes by, you can you glance over and
you realize there's, there's nobody on the other boat.
(05:56):
The other boat is just operatingas a pure mechanism of nature,
the hand of Spinoza's God and noone else's, just physics, just
this here at this time. And you're there at that time.
And, you know, and I think that there's that forgiveness falls
(06:19):
naturally out of a certain metaphysical view if we're
thinking about it purely as a psychological state in the, in
the component of the forgiver. And I think that it's a
(06:40):
byproduct. It's not the, it's not the main
character, right? It's sort of realizing the
givenness of things. It's, it's it, it butts right up
against that concept that we've mentioned before, Amor Fatih,
which is the love of 1's fate, which comes, you know, which,
(07:05):
which is this, You know, I wouldhave to say a sort of a deep
psychological condition that's arrived at through a lengthy
process of coming to terms with one's own identity on some level
and coming to terms with with that one is and the ways in
(07:31):
which one is and the things thatseem to be stuck on us in a, in
a unique way and not stuck on anybody else per SE.
And so, so that that love of fate, you know, is, you know, I
when we talked about even Ella Robbie, there is this there is
(07:52):
this level of realization that he points to wherein even those
suffering punishment realize that even this punishment is
sweet because of the underlying sweetness of existence itself.
(08:15):
And so with that same idea, one can choose to be in the fate of
outrageous slings and arrows sort of out of that place, which
is different than forgiveness onthe part of the forgiven and the
(08:38):
social and relational implications.
You know that that that internalpsychological stuff I'm
suggesting pushes it past something to do with you and the
other person, the wrong or and having to do with you and the
conditions of existence. So it's like you and
metaphysics. But when we get into relational
(09:00):
stuff and forgiveness as a sociological dynamic, then I
think there's some questions again about what are we hoping
to achieve by this forgiveness. And some of the better arguments
say that if there is no genuine regret, no genuine seeking of
(09:26):
forgiveness, that no internal state change has occurred.
And if that internal state change hasn't occurred, then
some lesson has yet to be transmitted.
And then forgiveness in that case might be seen as, as, you
know, losing the social leveragethat could be motivating some
(09:49):
sort of awareness shift. And so I certainly would be
subject to, you know, to hear some of those arguments from
that side, as opposed to this idea that we're going to
socially release people of responsibility just for our own
internal behavior or, you know, our own internal condition.
(10:11):
And, and that to me seems kind of selfish and, and, and a
little, a little like main character syndrome because our
our relations are happen in this, in this whirlwind or this
(10:31):
cyclotron of other human behaviors.
And so, you know, we do have some responsibility to that.
And if somebody steps on my toe,I may have a responsibility to
say Ouch. There's an intersection between
the individual psychological interpretations and the social
(10:56):
collective ones, which is it might be beneficial for
everybody. Let's say hypothetically it is
beneficial for everybody to showkindness to somebody even when
(11:17):
they have done some wrong. And when we show kindness to
somebody, what is the differencebetween that and forgiving them?
That's that's one question. And then the other is I'm glad
you brought up Ibn al Rabi because I was thinking about him
also and taking the the idea that no one can have a complete
(11:43):
idea of God. And so we shouldn't have any
judgement about any particular person's view of it or view of
things. And notwithstanding that there
there might be a hierarchy of those views, but we don't know
what the path is for someone to achieve greater awareness.
(12:08):
And our non judgement of their current condition might support
their achievement of a state of greater awareness.
And so it goes with forgiveness also that that when we forgive
somebody, we also give them an opportunity to be repentant
right there. There's like a chicken and an
(12:29):
egg there potentially. So, yeah, when so I guess the
the metaphysical question also is when we release somebody,
what are we releasing them from?Because when we just take the
individual view, releasing them is releasing our own grudge, our
(12:51):
own holding on, our own attachment, etcetera.
But for the social component, what?
What does that release really mean, and is it different from
showing them kindness? Right.
I think that this is one of the cases where traditionally we
(13:12):
have employed a judge. And the job of a judge, as we
have mentioned before, is to sort of bridge between this
ideal world we're having to do with our ideas about justice and
fairness and balance and all that, and to customize it and
fit it into this situation. And you know, it's interesting
(13:40):
because I've been reading, whichI trust we're going to is going
to come up more in our conversations.
Hannah Errant in her conversation on revolution, her
book on revolution. And one of the things that she
talks about there, which is veryinteresting to me, is the
difference between compassion and pity.
(14:02):
And that is that compassion. It has the word passion right in
it and it has this idea that it's a sort of an immediate
response to a specific situationwhere as pity she calls a
sentiment. And the idea of a sentiment is
(14:23):
it's an attitude, but it's a longer term sort of a thing.
It doesn't have quite the spontaneity implied, but for
her, the real important difference is that it's an
abstraction. We feel compassion for this
person plugging in a proper noun, but pity.
We feel for things we don't capitalize the masses, the poor,
(14:49):
the downtrodden, the huddled masses yearning to be free.
Right. And that one of the things that
she says she she attributes the in comparing the French
Revolution in the American Revolution, she contributes the
OR attributes rather the runningoff the rails of the French
(15:12):
Revolution to this idea of pity.And you know, she says it's
interesting. I was just looking at.
Let me see if it's still on here.
Abstraction and impersonality. Pity is felt for the quote
suffering masses as an abstract entity, not for particular
(15:35):
individuals. Errant argues that this
boundless generalized emotion isinsensitive to the reality of
concrete persons and collapses Adiverse plurality into a single
unified group. This created an intolerant
atmosphere that demanded unanimity and paved the way for
(15:57):
the terror. The demands of the poor are
limitless and insatiable, and they're rooted in the biological
necessities of life rather than political principles.
And as such, a revolution founded on the sentiment of pity
has no internal check and can justify any level of violence in
(16:17):
the name of the people. UN quote.
I just thought this was a reallyapropos thing to mention, but it
it it's exactly this point. Are we making general rules or
is the judge in this case someone who is going to have the
role? I would say of almost like a
(16:38):
father who does have some insight into the stages of
growth that a person goes through and can make a
distinction between a first timemistake that might warrant
forgiveness. And it may be when when
(16:59):
accompanied with signs of true regret and and a wish to to to
change. You can distinguish that from a
repetitive situation that's obviously caught in a rut and
obviously needs some sort of a stronger communication to
(17:19):
potentially alter the situation,in which case personal
forgiveness and societal forgiveness might be very
different topics. And that's where we really need
judges that are wise, judges that understand that difference
and that distinction. And don't mistake the 2.
(17:42):
And you know, I think we're talking about this in a very
generalized way, but there's these are very relevant
questions to us now today all across this country and I'm sure
others. Yeah.
I mean, it goes to kind of the the polarization that we
(18:03):
experience in this country politically, if, if we imagine
what healing that might look like, It's easy to prefer that
it look like a bunch of people changing their minds and coming
over to whatever side you want them to be on.
(18:24):
But the reality is it if if these kinds of social fractures
can be healed, it probably entails raising the level of
awareness like the Einstein quote, right?
Problems can't be solved at the level of awareness at which they
(18:44):
were created and. Both individual and collective.
Right, yeah. And I wonder if forgiveness or
kindness or the interrelationship between them
is part of what that next level of awareness looks like.
(19:05):
So, so kind of how do we transcend the differences and
have a meal together or, you know, whatever is meaningful.
Right. Well, there's a technology
there, I would think. Same.
More. Well, my suspicion is that
what's required in a case like that, at least once you get
(19:27):
beyond a certain point, is the intercession of intermediaries
that you know, and that's where,you know, our system, we have
different gradations of how to solve these.
That usually goes mediation, arbitration, litigation.
(19:50):
You get a mediator who's got a skill set at working out
difficult circumstances who who uses a protocol to go through
that, who's seen. In hopefully a non emotionally
charged up way by both parties so that they can actually go to
both parties and say, look, thisis the best you're going to get
(20:13):
and not think that they're getting fed bad information from
a, from a party with a, a contrary interest to their own
to arbitration, which is a little bit stricter and you
know, has certain different legal ramifications all the way
(20:37):
to litigation where you we put it in front of a judge.
We argue very contentiously bothsides, both sides often
employing experts for that purpose.
And then if a judge sits in the middle and says this is what
looks right. And so, so there is that
(20:59):
question of does the state have the right to grant forgiveness
on the behold, on the on the thebehalf of of injured parties who
may not feel that such forgiveness is appropriate.
So where does that power lie as the rabbi's tail, you know,
(21:21):
rightly questions. And then, you know, this idea of
a social contract sort of says, well, I'm going to give up my
rights to personal, you know, first hand justice to the system
for the all the benefits that I and my my kind and my family
will reap from such a system. I I think forgiveness, it's
(21:45):
interesting to pair that with justice, which we've talked
about a couple of times, becausethey're definitely can be
situations in which they're linked.
But I also see forgiveness as a way of doing an end around
justice when the circumstances permit.
So or, or to deal with transgressions where justice
(22:10):
isn't the, you know, a law doesn't have to be broken for
forgiveness to be, to be needed.So so yeah, I guess my I I.
I want to be clear, a law doesn't have to be broken for
(22:31):
there to be two different pictures of what was thought to
be a meeting of the minds, right?
And and therefore a judge needing to come in and call the
shots, just to be clear on that.Yeah, yeah.
So, so maybe let's drill down onthe individual piece a little
(22:54):
more and then we can come back to the collective piece.
So what do you think is happening when we forgive
somebody? What what's happening
internally? What is what?
What does that release really mean?
You know, I think that could mean a couple that could mean
different things to different people.
(23:17):
I think the people of a very religious background might think
that there's a future reward involved as opposed to an
instant karma kind of reward involved, which I which which I
mean to be by by an automatic mechanism of reality as opposed
to a creator in a future distantfuture.
(23:42):
So I mean, I think that what I trace it down to, if I was
sitting at a sitting across as atherapist from someone who is
having trouble forgiving someone, I would immediately
feel like there's likely to be athread that could be found or
picked up that went to some mechanism or dynamic that made
(24:11):
the injury. I almost want to say symbolic
that, you know, I saw I saw somebody was was referring to an
interpretation of of Job, the book of Job.
(24:32):
And they were saying that one ofthe realizations that Job had
was that the only real damages that we can suffer are damages
to the soul as opposed to pain suffered by the body or by loss
in the world or by any of those eight wins that none of those
(24:54):
really attribute to soul damage.So.
So what I would tend to think would be that often where
forgiveness is a hurdle, that probably one of these eight wins
is at work. There is some attachment,
there's some insecurity of the ego.
There's some feeling that I and,and I'm not, when I say that,
(25:19):
I'm not saying that that makes it necessarily inappropriate.
There might be times when one's personhood is actually
threatened and one needs to act in an unforgiving manner until 1
(25:41):
feels that that again, the justice is served.
And here's where it's sort of back.
It backs into the justice conversation.
I certainly am not going to going to forgive somebody on the
social level if it's going to bewriting a license for my
continued abuse. So, you know, so that's where I
(26:09):
see forgiveness in in on the relational aspect at least as a
reward to be given as a positivereinforcement for movement in
the right direction on the part of another.
For myself, I think it's very similar to the conversation we
had about anger. I don't want my grudge to
(26:35):
generate dysfunction for me. I certainly don't want to pay
any price larger than I've already paid from whatever for
whatever damage I feel I've experienced.
So you know, I personally have found that just like going into
(26:56):
my cognitive model of the world and just sort of Whiting out
that person have jokingly call this is writing them out of the
book of life. That's.
What it reminded me of. Yeah, which sort of means, you
know, I don't think you've come around.
(27:18):
I think if you had a chance to do the same thing, you do the
same damn thing again, maybe even quicker, maybe even worse.
So I feel a need to lay down theline and not have you
participating in my reality, butI'm not going to move against
(27:40):
you. And I think somebody's actions
would have to be pretty overt tomake me overtly move against
them. The times I can think of that
are very few and far between andthey're and they probably a
number of them would be cases like stopping someone from
physically assaulting a third person.
(28:02):
It's like, OK, this behavior, we're not going to discuss this.
I'm not it's not about I'm not going to.
There's no role for me to forgive you in beating this
other third party. So that means I'm going to have
to take on the, the younger roleof, you know, maybe laying on
the laying on of hands and see if, see what miracles can be
(28:27):
wrought thereby. And, and you know, like I say,
the times that I've had to do that, I've been very few and
very far between. And, and typically I was paid in
an environment that was pretty charged up to where they knew
something like this is likely tohappen.
So we're having to take steps toprevent it, you know, and, and
(28:49):
then it's like it's overt. There's no, there's no judge
needed to be consulted, right? These, these were self-evident
truths. Who was right and who was wrong
and who you know, But as far as getting to the forgiveness part
of that, you know, it's like, dodo, do I carry this around and,
(29:11):
and continue to pay an energeticprice or what's the popular
aphorism? Am I going to let this live rent
free in my head? And I try to be very
parsimonious about what I will let live rent free in my head.
It's all got to be paying some kind of rent as far as I'm
(29:33):
concerned. It's all got to be translating
to something positive or else I'm just running a negative
loop. It's just just like stabbing a
hole in my own life raft. Why would you?
You know, you, you instead you, you want to be doing the
opposite of that. So if you find yourself doing
that and it's not forgiveness that stops it, what is it?
(29:58):
Right. And that's the value of it.
I guess you got to chase this down.
What am I attached to? Was I insulted by this?
Does it, you know, like a Zen master was asked once, what
should you do if somebody spits in your face?
And I think one of the disciplesanswered, you know, just wipe it
(30:20):
off, don't worry about it. And the Zen master said, no,
just let it dry, which was apartfrom being a little gross, you
know, I'm a fan of a Kleenex at the right time myself,
personally speaking for myself. But this was a way to convey how
(30:42):
little he wanted the transgressions of others to tap
out of his energy balance, though it's not worth the
slightest bit of effort. That's what he's telling us
there. And, and I think on the personal
level, that's exactly right. The you that's getting insulted
(31:03):
or the you that's feeling challenged or the you that's
getting slighted and all that, you know, that shouldn't be
taken personally. That should, you should think
about the nobody really at home in the boat, you know, And so
it's OK to let that go. On the other hand, you don't
want to position yourself for continuous abuse.
(31:25):
There's no point in that either.And so, so that's where I've, I
have always felt there's a sort of a, you know, that it's like
the discussion of slaying demons.
There's a, there is a hard path,a middle path and an easy path.
And you kind of make your call based on the circumstances.
(31:46):
You got to call it when the coinis in the air.
There's a there's another version here.
I mean, they're all adjacent, but when it's not that someone
has wronged you directly, but they have, let's say, back to
the political fracturing. They have a view of the world
(32:10):
that if it's allowed to fully express itself, tramples on your
view of the world, which is surely a better one.
So, you know, they haven't wronged you directly.
They haven't directly put your life in jeopardy.
But, you know, let's say they really think taxes should be
(32:38):
raised on you and people like you or you know, so, but but
they think they're doing it for,you know, they think that's a
good idea for various reasons, whatever their reasons are.
Sure. And then, you know, you have to
sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with them or, or something like
that. So, so again, you know, you
(33:02):
could show them kindness at Thanksgiving dinner, but you
might not forgive them their ignorance about the the path
that they want to lead you down.I mean, the good thing is you
don't really have to forgive them for their ignorance because
(33:22):
reality has this way with ignorance that I consider to be
the biggest positive claim for philosophy.
And that is that you really do like that.
Like the saying about the inverse of this is if you're if
you're not smart, you better be tough.
And the inverse of that is that if you are smart and every
(33:46):
little bit, and I would translate change that maybe to
wise, to every little little nugget of wiseness that you can
get, you will suffer less. And, and so I, so this is almost
a, you know, a translation of that foolishness is its own
reward and its own punishment. I've heard that about arrogance
(34:08):
too. Yeah, but I mean, I think as far
as the people who are who are proclaiming a different
doctrine, well, that's where themarketplace of ideas in the 1st
Amendment and free speech and eloquence and and there are
still evil rhetoricians out there.
And that's what I would tell them.
(34:30):
Maybe get behind me, evil rhetorician, you know, But
really what it comes down to it is, you know, a friend of mine
when I was in college wrote thissong that I really liked called
Word Dance. And what the song talked about
was there the words, and then there's the dance behind them.
(34:51):
And that what's kind of what's really going on.
A lot of the communication is happening on the level of the
dance behind the words. And so how I'm going to react to
anything, particularly verbal, is going to depend on the dance
behind the words. You know, your friends can say
(35:16):
things to you that if other people said it to you, you'd
know they meant it a different way and they'd be fighting
words. And, you know, so just reading
the dialogue doesn't always translate the dance behind the
words. And so, so I would say that
forgiveness isn't just in the words, it's in part of the dance
(35:39):
too. If we're talking about it in
that relational aspect, you know, if we're talking about it
in its own personal aspect, thenyou should dance as if no one's
looking. That's the same goes.
But in its relational aspect, you have to dance with the
people that you're dancing. That brung you.
(36:02):
The dance with the people that brung you and you're going to
have to dance to the music that's playing.
And if you're a find yourself ina mosh pit, then keep your eyes
open your wits about you, you know, so, so so I mean, a lot of
that is, is, is sort of tangled up in there with the social
(36:23):
dance that's going on. And you know, often the words
don't really convey the energy. That's why I'm kind of I'm kind
of sad that we only get to dialogues of Plato and we never
got the videos. Apparently the videos were all
lost. And so so we don't get to read
(36:44):
any of those in between the lines kind.
Of. Apparently, yeah.
And so. And they're probably all on
floppy or something old anyway. So I I I started thinking about
what the Infinity in the other might say about forgiveness.
(37:13):
Like in order to experience the other and not totalize them, is
it something akin to forgivenessthat we have to be open to in
order to to really see the Infinity and others?
(37:33):
I, I, I think it's, it's just exactly the the same as that
question about Amour Fati. You have to have forgiven the
universe for putting you here and making you look like this to
whatever degree that's appropriate.
And that that part of that is what happens to you.
(37:59):
And, and it isn't that you're not involved.
You know, this is where we get into that, that we've, we've
backed our way into the conversation about free will, of
which we shall have a number more in the future.
And so it's like what people love to point out is that why
you never have free will, because there's every different
(38:22):
kind of thing wanking on you from every direction.
So that it's just a question of what's wanking on you.
Like, yeah, but you are also theone that's deciding which of
these things to react to and which not to which, which
wanking is working. And there might be some
implication that, well, the order of wankage is absolute.
(38:46):
And so there's a, there's a, a calculus of wankery that it
would, that, that, that just forces free will out of the
picture again, right? And, but I would say no, I would
say that, you know, there's thisidea that whirlwinds, this
they're, they're unpredictable, that a vortex has a certain
(39:08):
amount of unpredictableness. And I would say that the human
consciousness is never not in the center of a constant vortex.
And the predictability of which of these flying stimuli and
influences hits when and where and in which order, and what
(39:29):
final outcome comes out of the human soul and its interaction
with those things. I think there's absolutely
plenty of room for free will in there.
Not to say that those things don't have their influences, but
we obviously the you know what you, when you're playing pool,
you have the free will to choosebetween hitting the blue ball or
(39:50):
the red ball. Obviously you don't have the
free will to choose a ball that's not on the table, right.
So, so, so I do think that there, you know, there's
something involved with that and.
And you know, I mean the other humans and the human
(40:12):
forgiveness, they are free will systems also.
And that's part of that Infinity.
That's one of the elements of that Infinity is the is the
uncatchableness of that. And so while this is just
another face on the total uncatchableness of the total
Infinity of your existence, and it's just another thing going
(40:37):
can't totalize me, you know, neener, neener.
And that whether the universe isdeterministic or not, I don't
think it changes your hand that much.
I think that it's as good as indeterminate because of that
(41:01):
whirlwind function, because of the unpredictability of what's
going to happen when you step out the door tomorrow.
You know, you don't know. You're not going to be like our
hero Arthur Dent and find that in 24 hours everything is
different. But probably you'll go out and
(41:22):
you'll get the mail and come in and have your cup of coffee and
have breakfast. No intergalactic Hwy. being
built through your yard and alsoEarth.
Typically not, although the factthat we can't say that is a hard
and fast rule is what keeps the ball in the air.
Yeah. Fair to say.
(41:44):
Yeah. Yeah.
So, so, yeah, I mean, as far as forgiveness is concerned, I
think that that it it it happenswithin this big metaphysical
context of how you understand life.
And if you believe, as I do, that the purpose of life is the
evolution of consciousness, thenI one would hopefully use the
(42:04):
tool of forgiveness in the service of the ultimate
evolution of consciousness of yourself and everybody else,
including those to be forgiven or not forgiven.
That's the way I would plug it into the hierarchy.
Now, if you're you might be be inclined to forgive people just
(42:26):
because you don't like confrontation and you don't, you
know, and it could be you're forgiving them out of weakness
because you can't stand up for yourself.
And this is a lot, you know, another in a long line.
That's not actually, that's not actually forgiveness.
Yeah. No, I would say that, yeah,
yeah. But if that's what's
masquerading, you need to unmaskthat and you need to fix what's
(42:50):
broken. And that's really maybe the
deepest lesson is look into the situation and with doing with
what is within your power, fix what's broken.
And obviously, if we're in a condition where forgiveness is
necessary, something's broken. It's not always typically within
(43:14):
our power to fix it, but it might be within our power to use
our behavior to point to it so that in the etiology of the
problem, it gets closer to beingseen and correctly decoded and
solved. So.
Yeah, You mentioned that the eight wins earlier as a
(43:36):
diagnostic tool for what might be standing in the way of our
own letting go. And I Yeah, I had this funny
experience. I mean, it's funny in hindsight
20 years later, but you remembermy my dog was shot because she
(43:58):
ran over to your house and hid on your couch until I came and
got her. She survived, Right?
Right. I mean, I didn't know, I think
for a couple of years who had shot my dog and then that the
person who did it admitted it and was was really upset about
it. And in the moment I felt
(44:23):
forgiveness and told them I forgave them.
And then like 15 minutes later Iwas like, wait a minute.
I don't know if I want to let goof that so easy.
And I think that was your your comment earlier about this goes
to identity, I think is also at the bedrock of what forgiveness
(44:49):
really is. Right along the lines of if if
you ask yourself, who am I? You, you, you keep getting
deeper and deeper layers, much like peeling the onion of
forgiveness. And and I don't have a better
answer for why I wanted to hold on to it other than I had
(45:09):
identified with this wrong. And yeah.
And so. So I guess I'm curious about
what? Identified with is another word
for attachment. Yeah, just to point out.
Yeah, somehow it had become symbolic.
(45:32):
Right. Well, that's an interesting
definition of attachment. If if that's what that was that
that we make symbols of things as as we identify with them,
they're no longer just the thing, but when they become part
of us, they also become symbolic.
Well, that's a. Really interesting for our
(45:54):
mental loading up. Yeah, you might say.
Yeah. You know, that becomes important
to realize when that's happeningto the degree that we can.
You know, this is one of the things that pretty universally
(46:14):
it seems like all these great philosophers have been urging us
to do, to see things. For Spinoza, it was a subspecy
eternitatus for, you know, other.
I'm trying to think of specifics, but you know, this
idea of a 3030 without desire was Lautza, right?
(46:38):
Or the 30,000 foot view so that we don't get triggered or the
phenomenologist. We want to look using bracketing
so that our particularities are filtered out of it somehow or
were born with the foot nailed down.
We want to pull the nail up because somehow that broadens
our picture and our perspective.So right there are all these
(47:01):
different models of the evolution of consciousness.
It's better to think about it orsee it this way than this way,
or it's bigger to think about itthis way than this way.
And then on some level, you'll be better served by seeing it
bigger rather than seeing it smaller.
(47:23):
I mean, that's the implication there.
And I think this is parallel to the conversation that we had
with Steven Nadler in in places,which I just re listened to, to
do the show notes. And, and this is the on the
general topic of does philosophy, you know, get us
closer to what we want and farther from the things we don't
(47:43):
want and, and, and all the differences.
And this is another, as you know, one of my banjo songs, my
one string banjo songs, is that yes, we get hypnotized by all
the differences in philosophers,but the real big important
lessons they all seem to agree on or they agree on the big
(48:05):
pieces of or there's very similar feelings about the
pieces in the way they. And yeah, there's differences,
but we can generalize those and get some very good counsel out
of it. Like there's a rock'n'roll
reference in here somewhere. Rehumanize yourself.
(48:26):
If we go in the reggae direction, you know that that
there are higher levels of our humanity that we can't express.
And that would that's where we should be going.
That they did the perfect man ofhuman Ella Rabi, the the the
best partner of heaven and earthfor the Taoists, The the the
human capacity for the the creation in general to
(48:51):
experience itself at the highestlevel fulfilled.
You know, that's the urging thatall they have slightly different
pictures. They have slightly different
languages. Well, the world view that they
all tend to push us up towards all seem to have very similar
(49:11):
ideas about forgiveness and thatis that don't get sucked down
into the little particularities that will get you into sectarian
tangle UPS. But you know, move to the bigger
the universal, the this is actually the idea of the word
Catholic, right, Is the is this it's a universal trying to move
(49:33):
to to a universal idea. And that's what often it gets
misunderstood and turns into event evangelicalism and not
just in the part of Christianity, but in all
religions and a lot of differentfragments of religions.
It turns into we're right. And what it was originally or
the intent of it from way up on top is that everybody fulfill
(49:58):
their what it is to be them as intended by the universe.
And it seems to be that forgiveness is somewhere along
that ladder as the natural by product of that change of
perspective of that getting the big picture.
The particularities don't matteras much.
(50:20):
They get lost in our picture of the coastline of Norway as we as
we zoom out. And that were somehow in this
case better served by that because we're understanding the
source of life. To use Lautz's model, seeing
things without desire, without that particularity, because
(50:41):
remember the things that we're are typically the topic of
things that are to be forgiven are very much things that happen
to us in our seat at the at the record player that has its
particularities of this and thatback and forth.
(51:06):
And so it's tends to lock down in that lower dimension rather
than when we when we move up, wetend to lose the particularity
that caused the feeling of injury that caused the need for
forgiveness or punishment or justice.
That all kind of gets left down with those lower dimensions in
(51:28):
the in, in back and forth land as opposed to in the it's all
one big circle, higher dimensional perspective.
So that's why I say it isn't that forgiveness was the
purpose. It said forgiveness was the
result along with all the other results of this More more.
(51:51):
Illuminating. Consciousness.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's why, you know, in
times, even when I was younger, there were times when I had, you
know, very genuine gripes against people which I probably
could have even take taken legalaction on it had I been inclined
(52:11):
to things like that. And I very intentionally did
nothing because I knew they weregoing to reap the rewards of
that foolishness, particularly if there was nothing to instill
in them the instinct to pump thebrakes.
Like if I were to try to take mymaybe that would be a wake up
(52:33):
call. And I so wanted them to suffer
for their injustice. I thought, let them go on to
their inevitable demise and let them gather as much interest as
as they deserve, you know, and that's kind of like maybe the
little bit of emotional payback that we can take from that idea
(52:53):
that that punishment belongs to the Lord, as they like to say,
that foolishness brings its own fruit.
It, you know, it, it plants its own seeds, it grows its own
tree. And then that's why I've often
like, I've, I've literally had people come just seething for
(53:16):
revenge and told them, no, forget about it.
Turn your back, leave. Let that person's tentacles of
negativity fall on someone else who has the karma to be standing
there when it happens. But don't engage, don't engage,
don't engage. They ended up in jail for, you
(53:42):
know, longer than a year and then coming back telling me, oh,
I so wish that I had listened toyou.
And that's because black seeds grow, you know, evil.
What is it? There's a whole poetic illusion
there that I that's slipping my mind that it has to do with the,
(54:04):
you know, the, the black flowersof evil that come when you plant
these seeds of malice. And that there is a great that,
that that is the payback. If you, if you, if you're wise
enough to step back, to push back from the table, you will
save yourself the inevitable pains and costs of not doing so.
(54:28):
This is really great rewards to be reaped in the sense of not
having certain negative repercussions.
But that, and this is where thisidea of karma comes in.
Well, what pulled me into where I had to get payback.
I had to get revenge. Well, that was the thing I
carried inside of me. That didn't happen when the
(54:50):
person injured me. I had that inside of me.
And then when they come and theytrigger that, now I'm going to
be the one that experiences the fruits of that karma.
Maybe they will too, based on their input, but really they
become an excuse for me to plantmy own seeds and reap my own
(55:11):
harvest of whatever negativity Icarried and didn't purge until
it blossomed. You know, so, so forgiveness is
tangled up with that. In that sense, forgiveness can
be a purging ourself of these seeds of of malice that
ultimately spring into these, you know, black pumpkins.
(55:34):
Yeah, there's a little taxonomy there because the the
implication there or the simplistic implication is that
forgiveness is really an essential component of keeping
the psyche clear enough to for, for attainment to be possible.
(55:57):
And and then you know, the the subtlety to bring back some of
your earlier comments that you know, somebody who is actively
misbehaving and or is unrepentant may not merit
forgiveness. And in fact, forgiving them
might just be taken as permission to continue behaving
(56:20):
the way that they are. So be.
Irresponsible to encourage them.Yeah.
It really brings out the, the, the internal versus relational
differences here. And I I think forgiveness is
actually a few different things.I.
Wonder in our in our conversation about anger, I told
(56:42):
you about the guy who kind of had the anger for its effect,
but he wasn't somebody that wentaround flush dread who was about
to pop off an anger all the time.
And that's why, you know, literally nanoseconds after he
screamed at these kids, he looked at me cold as a cucumber
and said, if I don't do that, they won't listen.
Well, I think that's the kind ofrelationship that we might need
(57:05):
to have with the impulse to not forgive.
We might need to separate ourselves from that and say,
well, OK, I realized this was a boat without a rudder or without
a captain. But I also know that if I do
this right, maybe I can help alter the course or wake up the
(57:27):
captain who's asleep in the bottom of the boat or but if I'm
only if I'm doing this for the right reasons.
This is not because I'm going tomake him pay.
This is because I'm looking likea, a, a judge with a paternalist
instinct to say, Oh, my child has gone astray here and I want
to administer the curative to get things back on the true and,
(57:54):
you know, straight and narrow sothat everybody has the most
fulfillment and positive outcome.
That's very different than me operating out of the seed of
unforgiveness. Maybe that's more of a fruitful
topic than just forgiveness. As long as you're not harboring
the seeds of unforgiveness, thenwhether you forgive or not, it
(58:18):
might be free to serve a relational purpose for
educational purposes, you know? Yeah, I think that's a way in
it. I think that that's a
distinction I can take away fromthis conversation and and get
some wood on the ball with. That's interesting.
(58:38):
I'm, I'm, I'm captivated by the idea that came up a little while
ago about when we become identified with something or
attached to something, we're making a symbol of it.
And it, it just makes me, it, itputs symbols in a location on
(59:01):
the cognitive model map for me in a, in a little bit of a
different way than it had before.
Like I, I, I've thought of symbols as like a universe that
kind of exists as a layer on thephysical universe and on the I
guess on the physical universe really because it, it, it either
(59:23):
includes or intersects with the spiritual universe and the
emotional universe and all the non physical ways of, of
describing reality. But but I but that this makes
it, it gives me an image of symbols existing in the self in
(59:45):
a different way and in and thosesymbols in the self relating to
the symbols that are out there at large.
Like I have to, I have to believe that their cultural
reinforcements to the idea of identifying with something.
And so there's like a collectiveattachment to symbols that we
(01:00:12):
ride in on when we identify withwith symbols ourselves.
I'm just wondering if there's like that might just be a whole.
And. The emotional attachment to
those symbols sort of backs intothe conversation about social
contagions and and and Hannah Aaron's point about how things
(01:00:35):
run off the track when they get associated with these sort of
generic free floating. Totalizing.
Totalizing kind of behaviors andthat this is this is like
historical which we'll get into someday when we talk about
Hannah Aaron full on the one of the the it's very illuminating
(01:00:57):
to me about the psychological dynamics writ large that are
based on metaphysical assumptions about life and how
life should be and how other people should behave and what
expectations are appropriate forme to put on other people.
And we've touched on a lot of these different things, but it's
(01:01:18):
becoming very relevant now that we're seeing so much strife in
the, the body politic trying to resolve its own thoughts, not
that they're ever resolved, but that there's a collective
cooking metabolizing process that's never happened before.
(01:01:42):
Like it's happening now because of this technology.
That's that it's, it's, it's notjust a game changer.
It's like it redefines the way that the game happens somehow
because of this technological impact.
So, so it's a, it's an interesting thing.
(01:02:04):
And I feel like a lot of these topics, they've been with us
forever. I mean what we know because we
sometimes go back to quoting people from 350 BC in talking
about these topics, but we are now collectively processing them
in a different way. And and that's why I think it's
important now to understand the difference between compassion
(01:02:24):
and pity, because we need to seea lot more compassion and a lot
less pity. There's a there's a kind of
business meme, you know, the kind of thing you see on
LinkedIn all the time. If you spend spend any time
there, I trust you don't nor norshould you.
(01:02:45):
You trust well. But it, but it's like, you know,
for, for HR people, right, to, to remind the rest of us, what's
the difference between being nice and being kind?
And like, nice is basically thatthe way you described forgiving
out of weakness or which isn't real forgiveness, right?
(01:03:08):
But we, we go along to get along.
We, we violate our own boundaries or an organization's
boundaries in order to make space for bullies that that sort
of thing is nice, Whereas kind is holding boundaries and
holding people accountable and that kind of stuff.
And the distinction you're making reminds me of that pity
and compassion. It's somewhat analogous to nice
(01:03:31):
and kind. Yeah, you know, the original
meaning of the word nice. The original meaning.
Go ahead. Well now I was just going to
take a guess, so let's save. Time.
Go for it. Well, I was thinking of niceties
right where where it's more it'slike a convenience, but that was
(01:03:54):
my guess. Yeah, no.
And I'll check and I'll make sure.
And if I'm wrong, I'll put it inthe show notes, which on the few
occasions that has happened, I have done that.
So, so that's why people should always check the show notes,
because maybe I've, you know, put Antarctic up in the north or
quoted Marcus Aurelius or something when it was really
Epictetus. We don't want to let that kind
(01:04:16):
of thing slide, but I think the original association with NICE
was accurate. As in fine like a micrometer who
could be nice, but your aunt, Aunt Millie, not so much.
And of course, it's all completely changed, and I
suspect that Niceties has come post that change.
(01:04:38):
Aunt Millie, that bitch. Is that exactly I know Well, all
those pit bulls and everything, It's too much.
It's too much. All right, maybe we'll leave it
there for now. I think this symbols topic is
coming back but and we'll save that for another.
Time well, that's what I wanted to point out that's when I ever
thought about symbols that that made me think of it and that is
(01:05:00):
that it's this intimate part of meaning making.
It's like the basic mechanism ofmeaning making is translating
from specific events into this world of meaning and we we speak
about that glowingly. But, you know, one of the things
that that NLP drilled down on neurolinguistic programming was
(01:05:23):
how we make mistakes in that process of meaning making and of
symbolizing things to mean otherthings.
And that are the, the world we inhabit, that cognitive model
world gets, gets impoverished byif our meaning, if our, if our
symbology is sloppy or inaccurate or happens
(01:05:45):
unconsciously. You know, and, and of course it
always happens to some degree unconsciously, but we need to go
through this process of rooting it out to see that we're not
taking any, you know, wooden nickels.
And and that's I think largely, you know, part of the
phenomenologist great insight was that we have to look at how
we look. We need to have that meta self
(01:06:07):
reflexive thing because without that mere polishing, we're not
going to get anything but our own craziness back in our face.
And that and that's definitely valid, you know, so, so yeah, I
think that's my last two cents on on that Cool for today.
Yeah, yeah. To be continued.
To be continued. Thanks, Brian.
Good afternoon, Brian. How are you doing, Sir?
I'm doing pretty well, thanks. It's definitely feeling like
fall here in Philadelphia, briskin the mornings.
So yeah, I'm. I'm starting to imagine the
Gray, bleary winter, but enjoying fall while it's here.
(00:34):
Yeah, yeah. We're getting a bit of that
crispiness, too. You're just starting.
Yeah. And which is OK, when I kill
some of the flies and mosquitoes, I'm all for that
part. Yeah, and it's AI think you
mentioned in our last episode. It's a good time to get work
done for sure. It is, it is, and I have been,
which is nice cool little coolerand yeah.
(00:57):
Good. So we just finished the High
Holiday season in in Judeo Land in Judaica.
And throughout it, I there was atheme of belonging that we
talked about in our last episode.
But the other theme is forgiveness.
(01:17):
And I've been thinking a lot about it because there's some
nuance to it and some complexityto it.
So, so one thing I've been thinking about is what does
forgiveness really mean? Like when we when we forgive
somebody, we might be letting goof a grudge that we're holding,
(01:44):
but we might also be allowing them to participate in community
in some way that we weren't previously.
Or we might be, we might be forgiving them, but not their
actions. Or a friend of mine said once
(02:04):
that forgiveness is like peelingan onion.
Not like onion peelings, but like peeling an onion where you
might forgive somebody and then five years later you might
realize you were still holding on to some piece of that and you
need to let go of that also. And then interestingly, there's
this maybe metaphysical questionwhere, what involvement do we
(02:29):
need from the other person in order to forgive them?
And, and does that depend on circumstance?
So Ray and I were talking about this and she mentioned a rabbi
who was who who encountered a former Nazi on his deathbed.
(02:49):
And the Nazi asked him for forgiveness.
And he said he doesn't have the authority to do that because the
to to speak on behalf of others who were harmed is was out of
scope for him. And that seems quite different
from the Christian version of forgiveness, or at least the
(03:11):
Catholic version of forgiveness,where confession or atonement
and then and repentance does thejob.
And that seems to be the Case Nomatter the extent of the sin.
So I, I think in, in Judaism, there might be this expectation
that somebody has to seek forgiveness in order to get it.
(03:34):
And, and yeah, that might be different from from group to
group. So, so I guess there's a
psychological component where letting go seems to be good for
us, but then there's also this, I guess religious, spiritual
(03:55):
component that gets a little murky.
And I was wondering what your thoughts are about it and maybe
we could kick it around some? Yeah, I guess I think about this
from a couple different angles and I and it probably comes down
to a definitional issue, you know, the definition of terms.
(04:21):
If we're talking about forgiveness as a purely internal
state, then I have one set of thoughts about it.
If we, if our idea of forgiveness is this relational
thing, then maybe there are somecomponents where, where the, the
(04:46):
wronging party needs to participate on in some way that,
and then there's this question, well, what, what are we exactly
expecting out of this forgiveness?
You know, and, and I think the rabbi's probably correct when he
(05:08):
says, you know, I can't, I can'tgive you time off in hell if
you've earned it, you know, basically.
And, and I think that that at least points to the
psychological aspect of it. You know, the Buddha talks about
his example is you're, you're ina boat and another boat
(05:33):
basically runs you over. And as you're there in the
water, you're, you know, you're of course cursing whoever is
steering the other boat because they're obviously doing this
very irresponsibly and it's causing you suffering.
But then as the other boat goes by, you can you glance over and
you realize there's, there's nobody on the other boat.
(05:56):
The other boat is just operatingas a pure mechanism of nature,
the hand of Spinoza's God and noone else's, just physics, just
this here at this time. And you're there at that time.
And, you know, and I think that there's that forgiveness falls
(06:19):
naturally out of a certain metaphysical view if we're
thinking about it purely as a psychological state in the, in
the component of the forgiver. And I think that it's a
(06:40):
byproduct. It's not the, it's not the main
character, right? It's sort of realizing the
givenness of things. It's, it's it, it butts right up
against that concept that we've mentioned before, Amor Fatih,
which is the love of 1's fate, which comes, you know, which,
(07:05):
which is this, You know, I wouldhave to say a sort of a deep
psychological condition that's arrived at through a lengthy
process of coming to terms with one's own identity on some level
and coming to terms with with that one is and the ways in
(07:31):
which one is and the things thatseem to be stuck on us in a, in
a unique way and not stuck on anybody else per SE.
And so, so that that love of fate, you know, is, you know, I
when we talked about even Ella Robbie, there is this there is
(07:52):
this level of realization that he points to wherein even those
suffering punishment realize that even this punishment is
sweet because of the underlying sweetness of existence itself.
(08:15):
And so with that same idea, one can choose to be in the fate of
outrageous slings and arrows sort of out of that place, which
is different than forgiveness onthe part of the forgiven and the
(08:38):
social and relational implications.
You know that that that internalpsychological stuff I'm
suggesting pushes it past something to do with you and the
other person, the wrong or and having to do with you and the
conditions of existence. So it's like you and
metaphysics. But when we get into relational
(09:00):
stuff and forgiveness as a sociological dynamic, then I
think there's some questions again about what are we hoping
to achieve by this forgiveness. And some of the better arguments
say that if there is no genuine regret, no genuine seeking of
(09:26):
forgiveness, that no internal state change has occurred.
And if that internal state change hasn't occurred, then
some lesson has yet to be transmitted.
And then forgiveness in that case might be seen as, as, you
know, losing the social leveragethat could be motivating some
(09:49):
sort of awareness shift. And so I certainly would be
subject to, you know, to hear some of those arguments from
that side, as opposed to this idea that we're going to
socially release people of responsibility just for our own
internal behavior or, you know, our own internal condition.
(10:11):
And, and that to me seems kind of selfish and, and, and a
little, a little like main character syndrome because our
our relations are happen in this, in this whirlwind or this
(10:31):
cyclotron of other human behaviors.
And so, you know, we do have some responsibility to that.
And if somebody steps on my toe,I may have a responsibility to
say Ouch. There's an intersection between
the individual psychological interpretations and the social
(10:56):
collective ones, which is it might be beneficial for
everybody. Let's say hypothetically it is
beneficial for everybody to showkindness to somebody even when
(11:17):
they have done some wrong. And when we show kindness to
somebody, what is the differencebetween that and forgiving them?
That's that's one question. And then the other is I'm glad
you brought up Ibn al Rabi because I was thinking about him
also and taking the the idea that no one can have a complete
(11:43):
idea of God. And so we shouldn't have any
judgement about any particular person's view of it or view of
things. And notwithstanding that there
there might be a hierarchy of those views, but we don't know
what the path is for someone to achieve greater awareness.
(12:08):
And our non judgement of their current condition might support
their achievement of a state of greater awareness.
And so it goes with forgiveness also that that when we forgive
somebody, we also give them an opportunity to be repentant
right there. There's like a chicken and an
(12:29):
egg there potentially. So, yeah, when so I guess the
the metaphysical question also is when we release somebody,
what are we releasing them from?Because when we just take the
individual view, releasing them is releasing our own grudge, our
(12:51):
own holding on, our own attachment, etcetera.
But for the social component, what?
What does that release really mean, and is it different from
showing them kindness? Right.
I think that this is one of the cases where traditionally we
(13:12):
have employed a judge. And the job of a judge, as we
have mentioned before, is to sort of bridge between this
ideal world we're having to do with our ideas about justice and
fairness and balance and all that, and to customize it and
fit it into this situation. And you know, it's interesting
(13:40):
because I've been reading, whichI trust we're going to is going
to come up more in our conversations.
Hannah Errant in her conversation on revolution, her
book on revolution. And one of the things that she
talks about there, which is veryinteresting to me, is the
difference between compassion and pity.
(14:02):
And that is that compassion. It has the word passion right in
it and it has this idea that it's a sort of an immediate
response to a specific situationwhere as pity she calls a
sentiment. And the idea of a sentiment is
(14:23):
it's an attitude, but it's a longer term sort of a thing.
It doesn't have quite the spontaneity implied, but for
her, the real important difference is that it's an
abstraction. We feel compassion for this
person plugging in a proper noun, but pity.
We feel for things we don't capitalize the masses, the poor,
(14:49):
the downtrodden, the huddled masses yearning to be free.
Right. And that one of the things that
she says she she attributes the in comparing the French
Revolution in the American Revolution, she contributes the
OR attributes rather the runningoff the rails of the French
(15:12):
Revolution to this idea of pity.And you know, she says it's
interesting. I was just looking at.
Let me see if it's still on here.
Abstraction and impersonality. Pity is felt for the quote
suffering masses as an abstract entity, not for particular
(15:35):
individuals. Errant argues that this
boundless generalized emotion isinsensitive to the reality of
concrete persons and collapses Adiverse plurality into a single
unified group. This created an intolerant
atmosphere that demanded unanimity and paved the way for
(15:57):
the terror. The demands of the poor are
limitless and insatiable, and they're rooted in the biological
necessities of life rather than political principles.
And as such, a revolution founded on the sentiment of pity
has no internal check and can justify any level of violence in
(16:17):
the name of the people. UN quote.
I just thought this was a reallyapropos thing to mention, but it
it it's exactly this point. Are we making general rules or
is the judge in this case someone who is going to have the
role? I would say of almost like a
(16:38):
father who does have some insight into the stages of
growth that a person goes through and can make a
distinction between a first timemistake that might warrant
forgiveness. And it may be when when
(16:59):
accompanied with signs of true regret and and a wish to to to
change. You can distinguish that from a
repetitive situation that's obviously caught in a rut and
obviously needs some sort of a stronger communication to
(17:19):
potentially alter the situation,in which case personal
forgiveness and societal forgiveness might be very
different topics. And that's where we really need
judges that are wise, judges that understand that difference
and that distinction. And don't mistake the 2.
(17:42):
And you know, I think we're talking about this in a very
generalized way, but there's these are very relevant
questions to us now today all across this country and I'm sure
others. Yeah.
I mean, it goes to kind of the the polarization that we
(18:03):
experience in this country politically, if, if we imagine
what healing that might look like, It's easy to prefer that
it look like a bunch of people changing their minds and coming
over to whatever side you want them to be on.
(18:24):
But the reality is it if if these kinds of social fractures
can be healed, it probably entails raising the level of
awareness like the Einstein quote, right?
Problems can't be solved at the level of awareness at which they
(18:44):
were created and. Both individual and collective.
Right, yeah. And I wonder if forgiveness or
kindness or the interrelationship between them
is part of what that next level of awareness looks like.
(19:05):
So, so kind of how do we transcend the differences and
have a meal together or, you know, whatever is meaningful.
Right. Well, there's a technology
there, I would think. Same.
More. Well, my suspicion is that
what's required in a case like that, at least once you get
(19:27):
beyond a certain point, is the intercession of intermediaries
that you know, and that's where,you know, our system, we have
different gradations of how to solve these.
That usually goes mediation, arbitration, litigation.
(19:50):
You get a mediator who's got a skill set at working out
difficult circumstances who who uses a protocol to go through
that, who's seen. In hopefully a non emotionally
charged up way by both parties so that they can actually go to
both parties and say, look, thisis the best you're going to get
(20:13):
and not think that they're getting fed bad information from
a, from a party with a, a contrary interest to their own
to arbitration, which is a little bit stricter and you
know, has certain different legal ramifications all the way
(20:37):
to litigation where you we put it in front of a judge.
We argue very contentiously bothsides, both sides often
employing experts for that purpose.
And then if a judge sits in the middle and says this is what
looks right. And so, so there is that
(20:59):
question of does the state have the right to grant forgiveness
on the behold, on the on the thebehalf of of injured parties who
may not feel that such forgiveness is appropriate.
So where does that power lie as the rabbi's tail, you know,
(21:21):
rightly questions. And then, you know, this idea of
a social contract sort of says, well, I'm going to give up my
rights to personal, you know, first hand justice to the system
for the all the benefits that I and my my kind and my family
will reap from such a system. I I think forgiveness, it's
(21:45):
interesting to pair that with justice, which we've talked
about a couple of times, becausethey're definitely can be
situations in which they're linked.
But I also see forgiveness as a way of doing an end around
justice when the circumstances permit.
So or, or to deal with transgressions where justice
(22:10):
isn't the, you know, a law doesn't have to be broken for
forgiveness to be, to be needed.So so yeah, I guess my I I.
I want to be clear, a law doesn't have to be broken for
(22:31):
there to be two different pictures of what was thought to
be a meeting of the minds, right?
And and therefore a judge needing to come in and call the
shots, just to be clear on that.Yeah, yeah.
So, so maybe let's drill down onthe individual piece a little
(22:54):
more and then we can come back to the collective piece.
So what do you think is happening when we forgive
somebody? What what's happening
internally? What is what?
What does that release really mean?
You know, I think that could mean a couple that could mean
different things to different people.
(23:17):
I think the people of a very religious background might think
that there's a future reward involved as opposed to an
instant karma kind of reward involved, which I which which I
mean to be by by an automatic mechanism of reality as opposed
to a creator in a future distantfuture.
(23:42):
So I mean, I think that what I trace it down to, if I was
sitting at a sitting across as atherapist from someone who is
having trouble forgiving someone, I would immediately
feel like there's likely to be athread that could be found or
picked up that went to some mechanism or dynamic that made
(24:11):
the injury. I almost want to say symbolic
that, you know, I saw I saw somebody was was referring to an
interpretation of of Job, the book of Job.
(24:32):
And they were saying that one ofthe realizations that Job had
was that the only real damages that we can suffer are damages
to the soul as opposed to pain suffered by the body or by loss
in the world or by any of those eight wins that none of those
(24:54):
really attribute to soul damage.So.
So what I would tend to think would be that often where
forgiveness is a hurdle, that probably one of these eight wins
is at work. There is some attachment,
there's some insecurity of the ego.
There's some feeling that I and,and I'm not, when I say that,
(25:19):
I'm not saying that that makes it necessarily inappropriate.
There might be times when one's personhood is actually
threatened and one needs to act in an unforgiving manner until 1
(25:41):
feels that that again, the justice is served.
And here's where it's sort of back.
It backs into the justice conversation.
I certainly am not going to going to forgive somebody on the
social level if it's going to bewriting a license for my
continued abuse. So, you know, so that's where I
(26:09):
see forgiveness in in on the relational aspect at least as a
reward to be given as a positivereinforcement for movement in
the right direction on the part of another.
For myself, I think it's very similar to the conversation we
had about anger. I don't want my grudge to
(26:35):
generate dysfunction for me. I certainly don't want to pay
any price larger than I've already paid from whatever for
whatever damage I feel I've experienced.
So you know, I personally have found that just like going into
(26:56):
my cognitive model of the world and just sort of Whiting out
that person have jokingly call this is writing them out of the
book of life. That's.
What it reminded me of. Yeah, which sort of means, you
know, I don't think you've come around.
(27:18):
I think if you had a chance to do the same thing, you do the
same damn thing again, maybe even quicker, maybe even worse.
So I feel a need to lay down theline and not have you
participating in my reality, butI'm not going to move against
(27:40):
you. And I think somebody's actions
would have to be pretty overt tomake me overtly move against
them. The times I can think of that
are very few and far between andthey're and they probably a
number of them would be cases like stopping someone from
physically assaulting a third person.
(28:02):
It's like, OK, this behavior, we're not going to discuss this.
I'm not it's not about I'm not going to.
There's no role for me to forgive you in beating this
other third party. So that means I'm going to have
to take on the, the younger roleof, you know, maybe laying on
the laying on of hands and see if, see what miracles can be
(28:27):
wrought thereby. And, and you know, like I say,
the times that I've had to do that, I've been very few and
very far between. And, and typically I was paid in
an environment that was pretty charged up to where they knew
something like this is likely tohappen.
So we're having to take steps toprevent it, you know, and, and
(28:49):
then it's like it's overt. There's no, there's no judge
needed to be consulted, right? These, these were self-evident
truths. Who was right and who was wrong
and who you know, But as far as getting to the forgiveness part
of that, you know, it's like, dodo, do I carry this around and,
(29:11):
and continue to pay an energeticprice or what's the popular
aphorism? Am I going to let this live rent
free in my head? And I try to be very
parsimonious about what I will let live rent free in my head.
It's all got to be paying some kind of rent as far as I'm
(29:33):
concerned. It's all got to be translating
to something positive or else I'm just running a negative
loop. It's just just like stabbing a
hole in my own life raft. Why would you?
You know, you, you instead you, you want to be doing the
opposite of that. So if you find yourself doing
that and it's not forgiveness that stops it, what is it?
(29:58):
Right. And that's the value of it.
I guess you got to chase this down.
What am I attached to? Was I insulted by this?
Does it, you know, like a Zen master was asked once, what
should you do if somebody spits in your face?
And I think one of the disciplesanswered, you know, just wipe it
(30:20):
off, don't worry about it. And the Zen master said, no,
just let it dry, which was apartfrom being a little gross, you
know, I'm a fan of a Kleenex at the right time myself,
personally speaking for myself. But this was a way to convey how
(30:42):
little he wanted the transgressions of others to tap
out of his energy balance, though it's not worth the
slightest bit of effort. That's what he's telling us
there. And, and I think on the personal
level, that's exactly right. The you that's getting insulted
(31:03):
or the you that's feeling challenged or the you that's
getting slighted and all that, you know, that shouldn't be
taken personally. That should, you should think
about the nobody really at home in the boat, you know, And so
it's OK to let that go. On the other hand, you don't
want to position yourself for continuous abuse.
(31:25):
There's no point in that either.And so, so that's where I've, I
have always felt there's a sort of a, you know, that it's like
the discussion of slaying demons.
There's a, there is a hard path,a middle path and an easy path.
And you kind of make your call based on the circumstances.
(31:46):
You got to call it when the coinis in the air.
There's a there's another version here.
I mean, they're all adjacent, but when it's not that someone
has wronged you directly, but they have, let's say, back to
the political fracturing. They have a view of the world
(32:10):
that if it's allowed to fully express itself, tramples on your
view of the world, which is surely a better one.
So, you know, they haven't wronged you directly.
They haven't directly put your life in jeopardy.
But, you know, let's say they really think taxes should be
(32:38):
raised on you and people like you or you know, so, but but
they think they're doing it for,you know, they think that's a
good idea for various reasons, whatever their reasons are.
Sure. And then, you know, you have to
sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with them or, or something like
that. So, so again, you know, you
(33:02):
could show them kindness at Thanksgiving dinner, but you
might not forgive them their ignorance about the the path
that they want to lead you down.I mean, the good thing is you
don't really have to forgive them for their ignorance because
(33:22):
reality has this way with ignorance that I consider to be
the biggest positive claim for philosophy.
And that is that you really do like that.
Like the saying about the inverse of this is if you're if
you're not smart, you better be tough.
And the inverse of that is that if you are smart and every
(33:46):
little bit, and I would translate change that maybe to
wise, to every little little nugget of wiseness that you can
get, you will suffer less. And, and so I, so this is almost
a, you know, a translation of that foolishness is its own
reward and its own punishment. I've heard that about arrogance
(34:08):
too. Yeah, but I mean, I think as far
as the people who are who are proclaiming a different
doctrine, well, that's where themarketplace of ideas in the 1st
Amendment and free speech and eloquence and and there are
still evil rhetoricians out there.
And that's what I would tell them.
(34:30):
Maybe get behind me, evil rhetorician, you know, But
really what it comes down to it is, you know, a friend of mine
when I was in college wrote thissong that I really liked called
Word Dance. And what the song talked about
was there the words, and then there's the dance behind them.
(34:51):
And that what's kind of what's really going on.
A lot of the communication is happening on the level of the
dance behind the words. And so how I'm going to react to
anything, particularly verbal, is going to depend on the dance
behind the words. You know, your friends can say
(35:16):
things to you that if other people said it to you, you'd
know they meant it a different way and they'd be fighting
words. And, you know, so just reading
the dialogue doesn't always translate the dance behind the
words. And so, so I would say that
forgiveness isn't just in the words, it's in part of the dance
(35:39):
too. If we're talking about it in
that relational aspect, you know, if we're talking about it
in its own personal aspect, thenyou should dance as if no one's
looking. That's the same goes.
But in its relational aspect, you have to dance with the
people that you're dancing. That brung you.
(36:02):
The dance with the people that brung you and you're going to
have to dance to the music that's playing.
And if you're a find yourself ina mosh pit, then keep your eyes
open your wits about you, you know, so, so so I mean, a lot of
that is, is, is sort of tangled up in there with the social
(36:23):
dance that's going on. And you know, often the words
don't really convey the energy. That's why I'm kind of I'm kind
of sad that we only get to dialogues of Plato and we never
got the videos. Apparently the videos were all
lost. And so so we don't get to read
(36:44):
any of those in between the lines kind.
Of. Apparently, yeah.
And so. And they're probably all on
floppy or something old anyway. So I I I started thinking about
what the Infinity in the other might say about forgiveness.
(37:13):
Like in order to experience the other and not totalize them, is
it something akin to forgivenessthat we have to be open to in
order to to really see the Infinity and others?
(37:33):
I, I, I think it's, it's just exactly the the same as that
question about Amour Fati. You have to have forgiven the
universe for putting you here and making you look like this to
whatever degree that's appropriate.
And that that part of that is what happens to you.
(37:59):
And, and it isn't that you're not involved.
You know, this is where we get into that, that we've, we've
backed our way into the conversation about free will, of
which we shall have a number more in the future.
And so it's like what people love to point out is that why
you never have free will, because there's every different
(38:22):
kind of thing wanking on you from every direction.
So that it's just a question of what's wanking on you.
Like, yeah, but you are also theone that's deciding which of
these things to react to and which not to which, which
wanking is working. And there might be some
implication that, well, the order of wankage is absolute.
(38:46):
And so there's a, there's a, a calculus of wankery that it
would, that, that, that just forces free will out of the
picture again, right? And, but I would say no, I would
say that, you know, there's thisidea that whirlwinds, this
they're, they're unpredictable, that a vortex has a certain
(39:08):
amount of unpredictableness. And I would say that the human
consciousness is never not in the center of a constant vortex.
And the predictability of which of these flying stimuli and
influences hits when and where and in which order, and what
(39:29):
final outcome comes out of the human soul and its interaction
with those things. I think there's absolutely
plenty of room for free will in there.
Not to say that those things don't have their influences, but
we obviously the you know what you, when you're playing pool,
you have the free will to choosebetween hitting the blue ball or
(39:50):
the red ball. Obviously you don't have the
free will to choose a ball that's not on the table, right.
So, so, so I do think that there, you know, there's
something involved with that and.
And you know, I mean the other humans and the human
(40:12):
forgiveness, they are free will systems also.
And that's part of that Infinity.
That's one of the elements of that Infinity is the is the
uncatchableness of that. And so while this is just
another face on the total uncatchableness of the total
Infinity of your existence, and it's just another thing going
(40:37):
can't totalize me, you know, neener, neener.
And that whether the universe isdeterministic or not, I don't
think it changes your hand that much.
I think that it's as good as indeterminate because of that
(41:01):
whirlwind function, because of the unpredictability of what's
going to happen when you step out the door tomorrow.
You know, you don't know. You're not going to be like our
hero Arthur Dent and find that in 24 hours everything is
different. But probably you'll go out and
(41:22):
you'll get the mail and come in and have your cup of coffee and
have breakfast. No intergalactic Hwy. being
built through your yard and alsoEarth.
Typically not, although the factthat we can't say that is a hard
and fast rule is what keeps the ball in the air.
Yeah. Fair to say.
(41:44):
Yeah. Yeah.
So, so, yeah, I mean, as far as forgiveness is concerned, I
think that that it it it happenswithin this big metaphysical
context of how you understand life.
And if you believe, as I do, that the purpose of life is the
evolution of consciousness, thenI one would hopefully use the
(42:04):
tool of forgiveness in the service of the ultimate
evolution of consciousness of yourself and everybody else,
including those to be forgiven or not forgiven.
That's the way I would plug it into the hierarchy.
Now, if you're you might be be inclined to forgive people just
(42:26):
because you don't like confrontation and you don't, you
know, and it could be you're forgiving them out of weakness
because you can't stand up for yourself.
And this is a lot, you know, another in a long line.
That's not actually, that's not actually forgiveness.
Yeah. No, I would say that, yeah,
yeah. But if that's what's
masquerading, you need to unmaskthat and you need to fix what's
(42:50):
broken. And that's really maybe the
deepest lesson is look into the situation and with doing with
what is within your power, fix what's broken.
And obviously, if we're in a condition where forgiveness is
necessary, something's broken. It's not always typically within
(43:14):
our power to fix it, but it might be within our power to use
our behavior to point to it so that in the etiology of the
problem, it gets closer to beingseen and correctly decoded and
solved. So.
Yeah, You mentioned that the eight wins earlier as a
(43:36):
diagnostic tool for what might be standing in the way of our
own letting go. And I Yeah, I had this funny
experience. I mean, it's funny in hindsight
20 years later, but you remembermy my dog was shot because she
(43:58):
ran over to your house and hid on your couch until I came and
got her. She survived, Right?
Right. I mean, I didn't know, I think
for a couple of years who had shot my dog and then that the
person who did it admitted it and was was really upset about
it. And in the moment I felt
(44:23):
forgiveness and told them I forgave them.
And then like 15 minutes later Iwas like, wait a minute.
I don't know if I want to let goof that so easy.
And I think that was your your comment earlier about this goes
to identity, I think is also at the bedrock of what forgiveness
(44:49):
really is. Right along the lines of if if
you ask yourself, who am I? You, you, you keep getting
deeper and deeper layers, much like peeling the onion of
forgiveness. And and I don't have a better
answer for why I wanted to hold on to it other than I had
(45:09):
identified with this wrong. And yeah.
And so. So I guess I'm curious about
what? Identified with is another word
for attachment. Yeah, just to point out.
Yeah, somehow it had become symbolic.
(45:32):
Right. Well, that's an interesting
definition of attachment. If if that's what that was that
that we make symbols of things as as we identify with them,
they're no longer just the thing, but when they become part
of us, they also become symbolic.
Well, that's a. Really interesting for our
(45:54):
mental loading up. Yeah, you might say.
Yeah. You know, that becomes important
to realize when that's happeningto the degree that we can.
You know, this is one of the things that pretty universally
(46:14):
it seems like all these great philosophers have been urging us
to do, to see things. For Spinoza, it was a subspecy
eternitatus for, you know, other.
I'm trying to think of specifics, but you know, this
idea of a 3030 without desire was Lautza, right?
(46:38):
Or the 30,000 foot view so that we don't get triggered or the
phenomenologist. We want to look using bracketing
so that our particularities are filtered out of it somehow or
were born with the foot nailed down.
We want to pull the nail up because somehow that broadens
our picture and our perspective.So right there are all these
(47:01):
different models of the evolution of consciousness.
It's better to think about it orsee it this way than this way,
or it's bigger to think about itthis way than this way.
And then on some level, you'll be better served by seeing it
bigger rather than seeing it smaller.
(47:23):
I mean, that's the implication there.
And I think this is parallel to the conversation that we had
with Steven Nadler in in places,which I just re listened to, to
do the show notes. And, and this is the on the
general topic of does philosophy, you know, get us
closer to what we want and farther from the things we don't
(47:43):
want and, and, and all the differences.
And this is another, as you know, one of my banjo songs, my
one string banjo songs, is that yes, we get hypnotized by all
the differences in philosophers,but the real big important
lessons they all seem to agree on or they agree on the big
(48:05):
pieces of or there's very similar feelings about the
pieces in the way they. And yeah, there's differences,
but we can generalize those and get some very good counsel out
of it. Like there's a rock'n'roll
reference in here somewhere. Rehumanize yourself.
(48:26):
If we go in the reggae direction, you know that that
there are higher levels of our humanity that we can't express.
And that would that's where we should be going.
That they did the perfect man ofhuman Ella Rabi, the the the
best partner of heaven and earthfor the Taoists, The the the
human capacity for the the creation in general to
(48:51):
experience itself at the highestlevel fulfilled.
You know, that's the urging thatall they have slightly different
pictures. They have slightly different
languages. Well, the world view that they
all tend to push us up towards all seem to have very similar
(49:11):
ideas about forgiveness and thatis that don't get sucked down
into the little particularities that will get you into sectarian
tangle UPS. But you know, move to the bigger
the universal, the this is actually the idea of the word
Catholic, right, Is the is this it's a universal trying to move
(49:33):
to to a universal idea. And that's what often it gets
misunderstood and turns into event evangelicalism and not
just in the part of Christianity, but in all
religions and a lot of differentfragments of religions.
It turns into we're right. And what it was originally or
the intent of it from way up on top is that everybody fulfill
(49:58):
their what it is to be them as intended by the universe.
And it seems to be that forgiveness is somewhere along
that ladder as the natural by product of that change of
perspective of that getting the big picture.
The particularities don't matteras much.
(50:20):
They get lost in our picture of the coastline of Norway as we as
we zoom out. And that were somehow in this
case better served by that because we're understanding the
source of life. To use Lautz's model, seeing
things without desire, without that particularity, because
(50:41):
remember the things that we're are typically the topic of
things that are to be forgiven are very much things that happen
to us in our seat at the at the record player that has its
particularities of this and thatback and forth.
(51:06):
And so it's tends to lock down in that lower dimension rather
than when we when we move up, wetend to lose the particularity
that caused the feeling of injury that caused the need for
forgiveness or punishment or justice.
That all kind of gets left down with those lower dimensions in
(51:28):
the in, in back and forth land as opposed to in the it's all
one big circle, higher dimensional perspective.
So that's why I say it isn't that forgiveness was the
purpose. It said forgiveness was the
result along with all the other results of this More more.
(51:51):
Illuminating. Consciousness.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's why, you know, in
times, even when I was younger, there were times when I had, you
know, very genuine gripes against people which I probably
could have even take taken legalaction on it had I been inclined
(52:11):
to things like that. And I very intentionally did
nothing because I knew they weregoing to reap the rewards of
that foolishness, particularly if there was nothing to instill
in them the instinct to pump thebrakes.
Like if I were to try to take mymaybe that would be a wake up
(52:33):
call. And I so wanted them to suffer
for their injustice. I thought, let them go on to
their inevitable demise and let them gather as much interest as
as they deserve, you know, and that's kind of like maybe the
little bit of emotional payback that we can take from that idea
(52:53):
that that punishment belongs to the Lord, as they like to say,
that foolishness brings its own fruit.
It, you know, it, it plants its own seeds, it grows its own
tree. And then that's why I've often
like, I've, I've literally had people come just seething for
(53:16):
revenge and told them, no, forget about it.
Turn your back, leave. Let that person's tentacles of
negativity fall on someone else who has the karma to be standing
there when it happens. But don't engage, don't engage,
don't engage. They ended up in jail for, you
(53:42):
know, longer than a year and then coming back telling me, oh,
I so wish that I had listened toyou.
And that's because black seeds grow, you know, evil.
What is it? There's a whole poetic illusion
there that I that's slipping my mind that it has to do with the,
(54:04):
you know, the, the black flowersof evil that come when you plant
these seeds of malice. And that there is a great that,
that that is the payback. If you, if you, if you're wise
enough to step back, to push back from the table, you will
save yourself the inevitable pains and costs of not doing so.
(54:28):
This is really great rewards to be reaped in the sense of not
having certain negative repercussions.
But that, and this is where thisidea of karma comes in.
Well, what pulled me into where I had to get payback.
I had to get revenge. Well, that was the thing I
carried inside of me. That didn't happen when the
(54:50):
person injured me. I had that inside of me.
And then when they come and theytrigger that, now I'm going to
be the one that experiences the fruits of that karma.
Maybe they will too, based on their input, but really they
become an excuse for me to plantmy own seeds and reap my own
(55:11):
harvest of whatever negativity Icarried and didn't purge until
it blossomed. You know, so, so forgiveness is
tangled up with that. In that sense, forgiveness can
be a purging ourself of these seeds of of malice that
ultimately spring into these, you know, black pumpkins.
(55:34):
Yeah, there's a little taxonomy there because the the
implication there or the simplistic implication is that
forgiveness is really an essential component of keeping
the psyche clear enough to for, for attainment to be possible.
(55:57):
And and then you know, the the subtlety to bring back some of
your earlier comments that you know, somebody who is actively
misbehaving and or is unrepentant may not merit
forgiveness. And in fact, forgiving them
might just be taken as permission to continue behaving
(56:20):
the way that they are. So be.
Irresponsible to encourage them.Yeah.
It really brings out the, the, the internal versus relational
differences here. And I I think forgiveness is
actually a few different things.I.
Wonder in our in our conversation about anger, I told
(56:42):
you about the guy who kind of had the anger for its effect,
but he wasn't somebody that wentaround flush dread who was about
to pop off an anger all the time.
And that's why, you know, literally nanoseconds after he
screamed at these kids, he looked at me cold as a cucumber
and said, if I don't do that, they won't listen.
Well, I think that's the kind ofrelationship that we might need
(57:05):
to have with the impulse to not forgive.
We might need to separate ourselves from that and say,
well, OK, I realized this was a boat without a rudder or without
a captain. But I also know that if I do
this right, maybe I can help alter the course or wake up the
(57:27):
captain who's asleep in the bottom of the boat or but if I'm
only if I'm doing this for the right reasons.
This is not because I'm going tomake him pay.
This is because I'm looking likea, a, a judge with a paternalist
instinct to say, Oh, my child has gone astray here and I want
to administer the curative to get things back on the true and,
(57:54):
you know, straight and narrow sothat everybody has the most
fulfillment and positive outcome.
That's very different than me operating out of the seed of
unforgiveness. Maybe that's more of a fruitful
topic than just forgiveness. As long as you're not harboring
the seeds of unforgiveness, thenwhether you forgive or not, it
(58:18):
might be free to serve a relational purpose for
educational purposes, you know? Yeah, I think that's a way in
it. I think that that's a
distinction I can take away fromthis conversation and and get
some wood on the ball with. That's interesting.
(58:38):
I'm, I'm, I'm captivated by the idea that came up a little while
ago about when we become identified with something or
attached to something, we're making a symbol of it.
And it, it just makes me, it, itputs symbols in a location on
(59:01):
the cognitive model map for me in a, in a little bit of a
different way than it had before.
Like I, I, I've thought of symbols as like a universe that
kind of exists as a layer on thephysical universe and on the I
guess on the physical universe really because it, it, it either
(59:23):
includes or intersects with the spiritual universe and the
emotional universe and all the non physical ways of, of
describing reality. But but I but that this makes
it, it gives me an image of symbols existing in the self in
(59:45):
a different way and in and thosesymbols in the self relating to
the symbols that are out there at large.
Like I have to, I have to believe that their cultural
reinforcements to the idea of identifying with something.
And so there's like a collectiveattachment to symbols that we
(01:00:12):
ride in on when we identify withwith symbols ourselves.
I'm just wondering if there's like that might just be a whole.
And. The emotional attachment to
those symbols sort of backs intothe conversation about social
contagions and and and Hannah Aaron's point about how things
(01:00:35):
run off the track when they get associated with these sort of
generic free floating. Totalizing.
Totalizing kind of behaviors andthat this is this is like
historical which we'll get into someday when we talk about
Hannah Aaron full on the one of the the it's very illuminating
(01:00:57):
to me about the psychological dynamics writ large that are
based on metaphysical assumptions about life and how
life should be and how other people should behave and what
expectations are appropriate forme to put on other people.
And we've touched on a lot of these different things, but it's
(01:01:18):
becoming very relevant now that we're seeing so much strife in
the, the body politic trying to resolve its own thoughts, not
that they're ever resolved, but that there's a collective
cooking metabolizing process that's never happened before.
(01:01:42):
Like it's happening now because of this technology.
That's that it's, it's, it's notjust a game changer.
It's like it redefines the way that the game happens somehow
because of this technological impact.
So, so it's a, it's an interesting thing.
(01:02:04):
And I feel like a lot of these topics, they've been with us
forever. I mean what we know because we
sometimes go back to quoting people from 350 BC in talking
about these topics, but we are now collectively processing them
in a different way. And and that's why I think it's
important now to understand the difference between compassion
(01:02:24):
and pity, because we need to seea lot more compassion and a lot
less pity. There's a there's a kind of
business meme, you know, the kind of thing you see on
LinkedIn all the time. If you spend spend any time
there, I trust you don't nor norshould you.
(01:02:45):
You trust well. But it, but it's like, you know,
for, for HR people, right, to, to remind the rest of us, what's
the difference between being nice and being kind?
And like, nice is basically thatthe way you described forgiving
out of weakness or which isn't real forgiveness, right?
(01:03:08):
But we, we go along to get along.
We, we violate our own boundaries or an organization's
boundaries in order to make space for bullies that that sort
of thing is nice, Whereas kind is holding boundaries and
holding people accountable and that kind of stuff.
And the distinction you're making reminds me of that pity
and compassion. It's somewhat analogous to nice
(01:03:31):
and kind. Yeah, you know, the original
meaning of the word nice. The original meaning.
Go ahead. Well now I was just going to
take a guess, so let's save. Time.
Go for it. Well, I was thinking of niceties
right where where it's more it'slike a convenience, but that was
(01:03:54):
my guess. Yeah, no.
And I'll check and I'll make sure.
And if I'm wrong, I'll put it inthe show notes, which on the few
occasions that has happened, I have done that.
So, so that's why people should always check the show notes,
because maybe I've, you know, put Antarctic up in the north or
quoted Marcus Aurelius or something when it was really
Epictetus. We don't want to let that kind
(01:04:16):
of thing slide, but I think the original association with NICE
was accurate. As in fine like a micrometer who
could be nice, but your aunt, Aunt Millie, not so much.
And of course, it's all completely changed, and I
suspect that Niceties has come post that change.
(01:04:38):
Aunt Millie, that bitch. Is that exactly I know Well, all
those pit bulls and everything, It's too much.
It's too much. All right, maybe we'll leave it
there for now. I think this symbols topic is
coming back but and we'll save that for another.
Time well, that's what I wanted to point out that's when I ever
thought about symbols that that made me think of it and that is
(01:05:00):
that it's this intimate part of meaning making.
It's like the basic mechanism ofmeaning making is translating
from specific events into this world of meaning and we we speak
about that glowingly. But, you know, one of the things
that that NLP drilled down on neurolinguistic programming was
(01:05:23):
how we make mistakes in that process of meaning making and of
symbolizing things to mean otherthings.
And that are the, the world we inhabit, that cognitive model
world gets, gets impoverished byif our meaning, if our, if our
symbology is sloppy or inaccurate or happens
(01:05:45):
unconsciously. You know, and, and of course it
always happens to some degree unconsciously, but we need to go
through this process of rooting it out to see that we're not
taking any, you know, wooden nickels.
And and that's I think largely, you know, part of the
phenomenologist great insight was that we have to look at how
we look. We need to have that meta self
(01:06:07):
reflexive thing because without that mere polishing, we're not
going to get anything but our own craziness back in our face.
And that and that's definitely valid, you know, so, so yeah, I
think that's my last two cents on on that Cool for today.
Yeah, yeah. To be continued.
To be continued. Thanks, Brian.
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