The perils of forgiveness

There's been a lot of forgiving going on lately. Serial killers, political and religious crooks, dictators and even pumped-up, steroid-assisted athletes have all been very publicly forgiven, usually with the cameras rolling.

Somehow, probably because of propaganda from feel good philosophers and clerics, forgiveness has become de rigeur after horrible betrayals and sinister acts. You can almost set your watch by it.

Much of the time, it's a bad idea.

When we first roamed the savannas with our clubs and spears, the idea of forgiveness would've seemed far fetched. If 'ol Murg was a bad dude who frequently hit people on the back of the head to steal their share of a mammoth haunch, the group just quietly (or noisily) did him in. Forgiveness and rehabilitation were luxuries that subsistence hunters could ill afford.

At some point homo sapiens, in his new found wisdom, invented war. Oh, it probably wasn't MUCH of a war back then. It was probably more akin to The Bloods and The Crips on the streets of L.A. This group of 157 people really didn't like this group of 124 people. So let's pound on each other for a while.

But when the dispute, whether territorial or otherwise, was settled, a peace of some sort must be made. Otherwise you condemn yourselves to perpetual war. And once the peace was made, some forgiving (if not forgetting) must be done so that simple trade and free passage can resume.

So forgiving -- both individual and collective -- was born. And, like other sensible behaviors that eventually made it into the holy books, like prohibitions on eating pork and incest, it had a very sensible and practical origin.

The problem with forgiving is that it is affirmative. In subtle ways, it states that a behavior is in some way condoned or allowed. Too much forgiving can gently steer a society toward a swamp where scary things howl in the night.

Of course, some evil is so horrendous and monumental that forgiveness is not only inappropriate, but it's deplorable. Think Hitler or Stalin.

So, what is my ethic on the subject? Pretty simple really:

• Private Forgiveness -- Always granted after a suitable period. This is necessary for mental health and is really a self-defense mechanism of sorts. There is no acid more corrosive than hatred and bitterness and it only consumes the hater, not the hated.


• Public Forgiveness -- This should be doled out much more sparingly, for the reasons stated above. When evil acts take place they should be noted as such, sometimes forever. Only children and the feeble-minded or insane get a free pass. And Hitler, by the way, was not insane. That particular free pass is WAY overused.


• Blanket Forgiveness -- So idiotic as to be beneath contempt for any thinking person.

To preserve and promote the good, there must be a bad.