[broadwaylamb]

> That is, forgiveness is how I see the other when I see them not as an enemy or friend, but as a tragic part of nature. I have moved on. Our ability to forgive has, perhaps, been distorted by the perception that it's an act of kindness. I think, rather, it's the most rutheless form of grief there is.

I don't see how forgiveness is ruthless. It takes great compassion to accept people and situations as they are without harboring bitterness, resentment, or judgment. Forgiveness is also a form of self-love.

The non-attachment that comes with forgiveness isn't the same as being cold or moving on by leaving someone else behind. That's still looking at things from an egoic "I have been wronged" narrative. Forgiveness is about dropping that story entirely.

> I think we've come to regard "forgiveness" as inevitably ending with reconsiliation. But perhaps, more often, it shouldnt.

I think in general reconciliation is a good thing, but it's not a given. And even if you do reconcile with someone, you don't have to restore full trust and involvement with them. You can clear the air and never talk to them ever again, or just on a need-to basis, or whatever. It all depends.

In general, our society's difficulty with forgiveness and the like is just another facet of not liking to confront truth. We struggle with truth in this era because the truth is often painful and demands a lot of change out of us that we feel unable or unwilling to give. The Twitter apology is an answer to the question "How do we pay lip service to the truth without having to actually engage with it?"

[mjburgess]

Well, from the pov of the person being "detached", to be treated as an object is rutheless.

What we are saying, after all, is that the other is "a mere product" of nature; a symptom, not an agent.

This, I think, is the most "anti-Western" notion 'inside' forgiveness, and why it seems so counter-intutive.

The thing we do not want to give up is that people are agents who bare responsibility for their actions, that people are our objects of concern, that people are special.

When we forgive we, ineffect, dehumanise -- at least, for the moment of that forgiveness. We step outside of a world in which they matter. And that seems a more ruthless and radical gesture than just hating them.

[trgn]

Extending forgiveness is ruthless indeed.

Thomas Hobbes makes the following observation in leviathan, that is thoroughly depressing and at first perhaps paradoxical. A person who wronged you will only ever be able to hate you afterwards: either because of fear for your vengeance, or because of distaste for your forgiveness.

The positive action of forgiveness only applies to those who extend it; those who are forgiven are rendered impotent. it's somewhat of a manipulative act if it's not accompanied by magnanimity and reconciliation.

[savryn]

>I don't see how forgiveness is ruthless

for that type of person, what it really means = you're dead to me

hence why they mention mourning as a key feeling. I think I'm like this too.