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A comment on The past is not true. Parent comment

Re:The past is not true by mrguyorama on Thursday July 20, 2023 @03:43PM (#36805718)
My stance says nothing about punishment. Punishment has nothing to do with lack of forgiveness. Forgiveness is also not a necessity to treat other people, including those who have harmed you, as inherently flawed humans that deserve basic things like dignity.

Forgiveness is a broken concept. Just because you can be a better person later in life should not absolve you of bad things you did before. This isn't a call for everyone to carry grudges, but a call that we should stop trying to play this dumb "just keep pretending everything is always and will always be 'okay' in some way" ideology. People sometimes do bad things because they are bad people or do not care about others, and it's okay to not forgive that. People sometimes do bad things through no real fault of their own and it's okay to still not forgive that.

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Re:The past is not true by femiagbabiaka on Thursday July 20, 2023 @05:03PM (#36806718)
It's an interesting idea. Law, justice systems, were all created in order to adjudicate that level of animosity and prevent it passing on to future generations. Holding on to a grudge, not even out of a sense of justice, but purely out of hate, seems like a path towards poor mental health. But I'm lucky enough to not have any hate that strong -- those I've chosen not to forgive I've instead chosen to forget, which is a privilege relative to the level of wrongs done.
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