Consumed by guilt
 

Apologies All Around

Today's tendency to make amends
for the crimes of history raises
the question: where do we stop?



By Gorman Beauchamp


Imagine that you attend a dinner party where you get roaring drunk, insult all the guests, break your hostess’s Tiffany lamp, throw up all over the bathroom, make crude sexual advances toward the family’s teenage daughter (or son, depending), and, in backing out of the driveway, run over a bougainvillea and the cat. Imagine further that, sincerely contrite, you write a heartfelt apology — for breaking the lamp. Imagine further still that it’s not you who pens the letter of apology, but, say, your great-grandchild; and not to your original hosts, long dead, but to their great-grandchildren, but still only for having broken the lamp.

Fifty years ago, New American Library published the Mentor Philosophers series, each with a title beginning The Age of . . . Belief, Ideology, Reason, and so on; the 20th-century selections bore the title The Age of Analysis. Had the series continued to the end of that century and into this, the volume should no doubt be The Age of Apology. Our postmodern ethos seems to hold that if anything can be proved to have happened, then surely someone needs to apologize for it.

We live amid a veritable tsunami of apology. The Catholic Church, which, of course, has much to apologize for, has, of late, offered mea culpas to Galileo, the Jews, the gypsies, Jan Hus, whom it burned at the stake in 1415, even to Constantinople (now Istanbul) for its sacking 800 years ago by the knights of the Fourth Crusade, an event for which the late John Paul II expressed “deep regret.” No wonder that a group in England, claiming descent from the medieval Knights Templars, is asking the Vatican to apologize for the violent suppression of the order and for torturing to death its Grand Master Jacques de Molay in 1314, an apology timed to commemorate the 700th anniversary of that fell deed. In America, the National Council of Churches apologized to Native Americans for Europeans’ discovering their continent and appropriating their land (but did not return any church’s specific holdings to any specific tribe). The United Church of Canada followed suit, officially apologizing to Canada’s native peoples for wrongs inflicted by the church; the native peoples, however, officially rejected the apology.

The current lieutenant governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, personally presented the leaders of the Mormon church with a copy of his state legislature’s House Resolution 793, expressing “official regret” for the 1844 murder of Joseph Smith and the expulsion of his followers, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The language asking for “pardon and forgiveness” was toned down when certain lawmakers protested that they could not ask for forgiveness for acts that they had not personally committed — a retrograde notion, apparently, of individual responsibility. Tony Blair, as British prime minister, apologized to the Irish for his nation’s insensitivity to the plight of the victims of the Potato Famine in the 1840s. A hundred years after the event, the U.S. Congress offered a formal apology to the Hawaiians for the overthrow of their monarchy in 1893. The French parlement unanimously adopted a law stating that “the trans-Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trade, perpetuated from the 15th century against Africans, Amerindians, Malagasies and Indians, constitutes a crime against humanity”: the centuries of slavery before the 15th and the slavery of other peoples do not, apparently, constitute such a crime, at least in France.

In 2005 the U.S. Senate formally apologized for something that it had not done: make lynching a federal crime. Such a record of inaction, claimed one of the resolution’s sponsors, constituted a “stain on the United States Senate.” True enough, no doubt, but one of how many? Imagine if the United States or any other government began apologizing not only for sins of commission but for those of omission: an infinite regress of culpability.

My favorite apology so far, however, appeared in a brief Reuters account. “Villagers of the tiny settlement of Nubutautau [Fiji] wept as they apologized to the descendants of a British missionary killed and eaten by their ancestors 136 years ago,” the news agency reported. “The villagers and the relatives of the missionary, the Rev. Thomas Baker, were taking part in a complex ritual intended to lift a curse the locals say has caused an extended run of bad luck.” A cow was slaughtered and kisses given to the 11 relatives of the missionary by the village chief, Ratu Filimoni Nawawabalavu, “a descendant of the chief who cooked the missionary.” No word on whether the curse lifted.

more:http://www.theamericanscholar.org/au07/apologies-beauchamp.html

Sorry!

"Sorry", according to American/Chinese foreign relations etiquette, does not account for an apology.

Yeah...

I'm sorry I read all of that...

MV

..."paying for the sins of our fathers"...I believe is the term.

My great-grandkids have a heap of atonement to deal with!!

Hm. I think it's pretty cool people can recognize wrongness done, even in the past.

Everyone is an over sensitive wuss. Back 700 years ago we were not fat and comfortable enough to have feelings. Sometimes you had to pike a few heads to get results.


I was born to late.

It rings nice and hollow to, because the people who are alive today were not involved in past events and have no business apologizing.

I'm waiting for some Eye-talian in Rome to apologize for murdering and enslaving my peasant ancestors in Britain. The bastards.

B

Maybe the British should apologize for making my ancestors leave and come to the new world. Oh wait that really benifited me...

I have one question. Do you serve red or white with missionary?

Depends on your position.

:D

Sincere apology and contrition can be a growth experience. Not good to wallow in it, I'll agree.

A lot of people with too much time and nothing to do....

Seriously, I think I understand why politicians like the apology stuff-----They cannot solve the REAL problems of today. That is hard work, so instead the apologize for somone's past sins. Its easy, costs very little, and feeds that "self-rightwuosness." All in all, for a politician, its all gain with no pain.
Solving REAL problems, like stopping runaway government spending is hard becasue it affects voters-the people who can put them out of their cushy jobs.

The thread title looks strange on my computer. It looks like, "Consumed by quilt", as though there's a handmade blanket out there eating children. I suspected that was a possibility when I was a kid.

Another conspiracy!

B

I've heard that some prefer a "nice Chianti"

Happy Motoring, Mark

Perhaps less apologizing and hand-wringing and more behavioral changes are the best course . . .

Perhaps so. however, that doesn't mean I have to atone for something someone else did nor am I responsible..

IMO, there's a difference between 'who pays for it' and 'how do we help those who were abused'.

Semantically, yes. However, how do you differentiate between the two? Comes out to the same thing in the end, doesn't it? You say "To May To" and I say "To Mah To". Still talking about the same thing except different way of saying it, aren't we?

Bingo.

This thread...:rolleyes:

Is it my imagination....Or you do guys?....have "no real sex life"?..:eek:

Aka...Just ...Spankers/Hoes...........eeeesh

I would guess most of us do. However, our sex life is not a 24X7 thing. IOW, we don't get laid, eat, get laid, bathroom, etc, etc.

I've heard numerous reports that the truth and reconcilliation process in South Africa has been a plus. Sincere apology can have power but there has to be some atonement that goes with it.

Lot of problems there still, of coure, but progress is being made.

Don't none of us have it as good as you, bro. :rolleyes:

I'll be willing to apologize for something I have done and try make amends. I don't want to have to apologize for something my father or grandfather did to your father or grandfather.

Psssst, I have it better. God told me that he was playing a joke on Matt SD300 but asked me not to tell him as he and Peter wanted to spring it on him at the pearly gates.

It all equals out. Everyone owes everyone an apology and so it is a wash. Who was the worst? Depends on when and where you look and who you ask. People who kept no records are in the clear. It is easier to go after the ones who kept better records.

I have been talking to several older Black Gentlemen recently here in south alabama. If you want an example of something to feel guilty about: Black US GIs fought in the Korean war and weren't allowed to vote when/if they came home. You back the government responsible for this?

Lets strip to the waist and go from city to city flogging ourselves in a frenzy of apology . . .

When did you change your mind, you told me the spanking was enough.

Explains a lot . . . . :cool5:

It's a tough one. I don't think massive reparations to Afro-Americans for slavery would be a good idea but there is some merit to the notion that we are living in mansions that our grandfathers built with slave labor -- not specifically you or I, but some of us, and the nation as a whole to some extent.

What my dad did then was legal. If today it is not legal, I will not do it. Way back when, cocaine was legal too. In Singapore, my wife's grandfather owned an opium bar. It was legal then. However, since the sentence for trafficking drugs today is death, would you say that my wife should be executed or at least locked up? After all, she could be said to reap the benefits of grandfather's opium bar. So she is by that definition a beneficiary of the opium bar.

Legal?! If you grew up in a country where it had been legal for me to enslave your family and have sexual access to any women in your family whenever it suited me, are you going to calmly accept that when you become an adult?

People are human, dude.

We talking about eons ago or yesterday? My dad didn't enslave you and screw your women. Even if he did, that wasn't me. And as I said, it was legal then. What do you want me to do about it? Dig up his corpse and scream at him?

BTW, you are talking about what my great, great, great grandfather did to your great, great, great grandfather.

To quote a reggae singer, Anthony B, "The damage already done". A sum of money would be insulting (but, we'll be able to apologize for it right away).


This is not a question of eons.
Nor is it really a question of you personally apologizing. The country in which you live, which allows you the pursuit of happiness, was built upon slavery. The economy which you enjoy today is built upon that economy. 70 year old black Americans today couldn't walk into just any store in their lifetimes. They own homes they purchased in the '50's that haven't appreciated. Many couldn't afford to create opportunity for wealth for their kids. Those kids are in their 50s right now. They are still affected by slavery and it's echoes because it wasn't that long ago.
So, you have a group of people who are screwed over and don't have a level playing field yet. You can shrug your shoulders and say, 'so what, wasn't me', or you can say, 'let's try and correct an injustice as quickly as we can'.

I'm shrugging my shoulders and saying "So what" :P. I'm not responsible for what happened generations before I was born. I'm sure everyone on this forum and every soul on Earth could claim some past injustice or persecution has affected their lives today in some negative way today.

The history of mankind and civilization is filled with injustices. How far back into history do you want to make amends? 100 years? 500 years? 2000 years?

We all are the byproducts of 10,000 years of history, good or bad. Money won't change what happened in past history. I'd rather focus on the present and future, that is what I'm responsible for.

So what, what happend, happend. I wasn't born yet so it wasn't my problem.

A lot of this country was built on slaves, so what? Go dig up some graves and scream at some bones if you want an apology. Who is alive today that was affected by slavery?


The past is best left that way, left to scholars who study it in dusty halls and write books and make TV shows. If you don't let go of the past you end up like the middle east and all those tribal nut jobs. "My great, great, great grandfather was enslaved by your family! So I'm going to pick up an Ak47 and light your car up."

Human nature. People in my partial ancestral lands (N. Ireland) hold grudges that go back almost as far as the Sunni/Shia rift.

Not saying it's the best way to go, but it's out there.

So in that case, present day Germans don't' owe anything to Israel and neither do the Japanese to anyone. After all it was their forefathers who did it.

Nope.........only certain specific ones.

Thats my take on it. Now since their forefathers are still alive, they still do of course.

Most of their forefathers are dead now, they don't anymore actually, they have paid enough.

The only thing we owe to the descendents of slaves or any "group" for that matter, is to remember, and not repeat.
The Nazis do not owe the jews anything except to remember how easy it was for an entire nation to follow the path of race hatred.

Everyone.



It isn't a question of owing. It's a question of humanity. And remembrance.

So lets throw them a few bucks and call it quits. :rolleyes: If they are going to be that way, you think an "I'm sorry" card and a few bucks will solve the problem? I'm probably the most unforgiving SOB you will find. Think you can apologize and do something that will clear the issue?

Horsefeathers.

My ancestors weren't even here yet during the time of slavery.

Find another scapegoat.

If their forefathers are alive let them do what they want. Other than that, what can the modern day Germans and Japs do? Can the Germans bring back the 6 million dead Jews? Or how about taking away the suffering the survivors went thru? Can the Japs bring back those who died and ease the suffering of those who survived their hospitality?

And YES. I agree with that statement above

That's about it.

BS thats just a crutch lossers use to explain there crappy situation.

X2. We owe it to them to fully understand and study history, and to never repeat their mistakes.