I Believe Sometimes Silence Speaks Louder Than Words
I've observed since I was a young child that western culture has lost something important that sustained us for so long, forgiveness.
We live in cultures where the reaction is to cancel, silence, attack, and destroy. A teenage boy/girl can have their life ruined over a post made as a young child by fully grown adults. In the Covington kid incident politicians asked for their names on twitter and others called for violence, papers smeared and attacked them for a narrative that was found to be untrue. People young and old are driven to depression and are hounded and harrassed by strangers who want to have their kick in acting within the mob. If you aren't up to date on the terminology of the year you are "X", you are marked for attack and ridicule.
We discourage truth and honesty and instead punish it. An example of this was Liam Neeson telling a very uncomfortable story about actions he nearly took when intoxicated and in anger and dispair over the rape of a friend. The rapist was black so when drunk as a young man he walked around looking for a fight with a black person who matched the description. The point of the story was to tell how horrified he was about it decades later and that it can be easy to fall into an action like that. Instead of the reaction being one of understanding, people smeared and attacked him. He wasn't brave or honest, he wasn't human, he wasn't a warning to others (other than a warning to be silent), he was the monster of the week. If we cannot have uncomfortable adult discussions about things such as these then society is in trouble.
In punishing others for speaking out about uncomfortable truths and experiences, we keep people in their shadows and confine them to their corners. This keeps people from moving on and makes others more likely to stay in their groups. We do not care about solving and understanding the problems, we just want to attack them. Like the old priest who flaggelates others to save their souls when in reality he finds pleasure in the act. Its like the Catholocism of old, though at least even by their merits through pain their was a twisted form of forgiveness.
Forgiveness and honesty are virtues society is losing, society must offer a path forward for those who are brave and honest enough to admit their faults. In doing so we offer a way forward for others who might otherwise be too afraid of punishment and judgement, lest we rule by fear. The push for social and moral perfection is regressing people into a divided and repressed environment, that of which we moved away from in the distant past.
Perhaps it is just a symptom of a society full of people who cannot be honest, so they must participate in the vindication of ourselves by attacking the representation of they feel they are not. We've replaced forgiveness with wrath, and like a dog who tastes human blood one too many times we have lost the impulse to stop.
We live in cultures where the reaction is to cancel, silence, attack, and destroy. A teenage boy/girl can have their life ruined over a post made as a young child by fully grown adults. In the Covington kid incident politicians asked for their names on twitter and others called for violence, papers smeared and attacked them for a narrative that was found to be untrue. People young and old are driven to depression and are hounded and harrassed by strangers who want to have their kick in acting within the mob. If you aren't up to date on the terminology of the year you are "X", you are marked for attack and ridicule.
We discourage truth and honesty and instead punish it. An example of this was Liam Neeson telling a very uncomfortable story about actions he nearly took when intoxicated and in anger and dispair over the rape of a friend. The rapist was black so when drunk as a young man he walked around looking for a fight with a black person who matched the description. The point of the story was to tell how horrified he was about it decades later and that it can be easy to fall into an action like that. Instead of the reaction being one of understanding, people smeared and attacked him. He wasn't brave or honest, he wasn't human, he wasn't a warning to others (other than a warning to be silent), he was the monster of the week. If we cannot have uncomfortable adult discussions about things such as these then society is in trouble.
In punishing others for speaking out about uncomfortable truths and experiences, we keep people in their shadows and confine them to their corners. This keeps people from moving on and makes others more likely to stay in their groups. We do not care about solving and understanding the problems, we just want to attack them. Like the old priest who flaggelates others to save their souls when in reality he finds pleasure in the act. Its like the Catholocism of old, though at least even by their merits through pain their was a twisted form of forgiveness.
Forgiveness and honesty are virtues society is losing, society must offer a path forward for those who are brave and honest enough to admit their faults. In doing so we offer a way forward for others who might otherwise be too afraid of punishment and judgement, lest we rule by fear. The push for social and moral perfection is regressing people into a divided and repressed environment, that of which we moved away from in the distant past.
Perhaps it is just a symptom of a society full of people who cannot be honest, so they must participate in the vindication of ourselves by attacking the representation of they feel they are not. We've replaced forgiveness with wrath, and like a dog who tastes human blood one too many times we have lost the impulse to stop.
