Can't shake the devil's hand then say you're only kidding
Just something that's been kicking around in my head:
There are things you can't unsay. Time when "I'm sorry" doesn't cut it. Sometimes your mouth opens and you spew forth something so venomous and hateful that it is clearly your true feelings and saying "I didn't mean it" or "I'm sorry I said it" is just so much bullshit and rather than making things better it just makes you look superficial and false. Displaying the baseness of your character is bad enough. Making a pitiful see-through pretense and apology makes it that much worse.
The upside is that it allows the rest of us to know exactly what you are and to avoid any contact in the future. Forgiveness is granted to the repentant sinner but the repentance has to be believable.
I contemplated shutting this to comments, but decided that I have smart people on my f-list and some of you may have interesting thoughts on the nature of apology, repentance, forgiveness, etc. While this post was prompted by a Close Encounter of the Hateful Kind, it is really mostly generic and the subject is one that I've thought about a lot over recent years.
There are things you can't unsay. Time when "I'm sorry" doesn't cut it. Sometimes your mouth opens and you spew forth something so venomous and hateful that it is clearly your true feelings and saying "I didn't mean it" or "I'm sorry I said it" is just so much bullshit and rather than making things better it just makes you look superficial and false. Displaying the baseness of your character is bad enough. Making a pitiful see-through pretense and apology makes it that much worse.
The upside is that it allows the rest of us to know exactly what you are and to avoid any contact in the future. Forgiveness is granted to the repentant sinner but the repentance has to be believable.
I contemplated shutting this to comments, but decided that I have smart people on my f-list and some of you may have interesting thoughts on the nature of apology, repentance, forgiveness, etc. While this post was prompted by a Close Encounter of the Hateful Kind, it is really mostly generic and the subject is one that I've thought about a lot over recent years.