How can you truly forgive a person who has murdered your loved one? Is complete forgiveness even possible in the human condition? Memory loss might be the only way to truly forgive people.
Religion sells forgiveness and tells us to forget. But is it not memory that makes us human? If we forget then how do we maintain our identity. When someone calls my name I respond immediately. There’s no hesitation. If a friend says “can you remember when we ran from the dogs that time?” You laugh because you can remember that moment. It is who you are. Your memory makes you. Memory is like the ocean keeping everything. It is the glue that ties us to our fellow humans. Without it we’d be forever lost in time.
So the big question is how can you truly forgive if you never forget what was done to you? I haven’t met the human who has convinced me that it’s possible. When you remember the transgressions committed against you there’s only rage and vengeance in your heart. You can’t help it. It’s the quintessential human reaction. We always feel the need to strike back at the oppressor and yet true forgiveness never really happens. We kill to remember not forget.
Maybe in a dystopia tech run amok future, religion will sell memory loss for those who wants to be saved. Come be baptized for a new memory. Wipe the old and be saved ye sinners. Choose a new memory and live. Memory is your enemy and your personal savior.
Disagree.
Forgetting is something completely different than forgiveness.
There is that saying "to err is human, to forgive divine", I am not sure true forgiveness is possible certainly for some things. I don't think forgetting is the same thing.
This needs way more upvotes. I have always felt this way and people never seem to agree. Forgiving a lot of the time is just forgetting.
Pretty much. But most people won't admit it.
Well we as people like to believe that all are actions are important and the everything we do or do not do is very important to the whole world.
I like your viewpoint! My philosophy is...Get your revenge, then forgive! Works for me. Upvoted!
Cool. Thanks :)
so much lost time for taking revenge
My ability to forgive is directly related to my perception of intent. If I believe that an action can have good intent, but poor execution, then I can appreciate those good intentions.
Given that we are finite beings facing the infinite. Forgiveness is the tool to overcome our own inherent ignorance of the totality.
Christ's words on the cross, "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do", is the succinct expression of that fact of existence. We don't have the capacity to completely understand our own existence. We are simply groping blindly through the dark, along a narrow tunnel of limited perception, that closes up behind us as we go. Can we really be held accountable for that state of ignorance?
My personal choice to allow people the space to be ignorant. I would hope they could afford the same charity towards me.
I think Dalai Lama said in a video that forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting the act.
Forgiveness means that you don't let the said act affect your emotions anymore. but you remember the act, so you could learn from the experience.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/forgive
forgive means NOT forget
You can forgive without to forget