The Emptiness of Most Apologies

Years ago, I was on an email list and I did a lot of sincere public apologizing, in part because the internet was younger, so we didn't have a lot of stuff worked out. We were just stumbling our way forward as best we could.

That's me talking on some forum. I wrote a lot of sincere apologies in part because I have a medical condition and sometimes things don't come out the way I intended.

I wrote a lot of sincere apologies because the Internet was young and I was new to trying to deal with "the public" and used to talking to people I knew personally and typically quite well, so things often went unintentionally sideways.

I made stupid errors like saying "you" instead of something like "one" to make a general statement which inevitably got interpreted as a personal attack on the person to whom I was replying.

But mostly I wrote sincere heartfelt apologies to actually make amends and fix the harm I had done with my words in an environment where my relationship to these people was entirely via written word.

I once had someone who didn't like me say to me "I've never seen someone so thoroughly own their words." after I wrote an explanation of why I said whatever I had said, what I was trying to convey and how there was nothing ugly intended, either implicitly or explicitly, and please let go of whatever hurt you are feeling because of my words.

People were impressed with my ability to address their concerns sincerely and infer what was really bugging them which they often were erroneously projecting onto me.

It eventually became abusive. The next two paragraphs of that comment are:

And the end result was that I became everyone's bitch. People would intentionally pick on me and be ugly to me and when it went sideways, the group as a whole would go "There she goes again!" and blame the whole thing on me and expect me to apologize and kiss everyone's ass.

I am much less free with public apologies than I used to be, though I am still equally willing to own my actions (a la "I did x. That didn't turn out well.")

I suspect some portion of that outcome was people hoping I would fix all their problems without them having to ask and some portion was gratuitous hatred because some people are just like that.

I once wrote a piece in my teens and/or said something to my sister about not believing in apologies and she dismissed it out of hand with some remark about "diplomacy."

At the time, I was trying to express the idea that actions speak louder than words and if you are thoughtful and trying to do right by people, there shouldn't be too many offenses against people in your life and if you do hurt people, you should make AMENDS.

Merely saying "I'm sorry." almost never does anything for the injured party. It's almost always performative bullshit intended to save face for the person who harmed them.

If they were ACTUALLY sorry, they would try to fix it, which was always my actual goal in writing sincere heartfelt public apologies in a social setting where my words were my entire relationship to this online social group and sometimes those words didn't come across as intended.

It was also a social setting where I had been a moderator previously and I had helped shape the list into what it was. When I returned after some time away due to a health crisis, the list was a shadow of what it had been under me but I could still see echoes of the practices I had instilled.

So I felt a substantial degree of responsibility for the group as a whole though I was no longer moderator and not particularly liked by staff.

I still believe that if you are actually a good person, you are trying to comport yourself in life such that you aren't really hurting people[1] and if you do hurt them, you try to fix it.

I think many Catholics going to confession are not actually trying to live right. For narcissists with no ethics born into a Catholic family, going to confession can easily be an empty gesture that entirely serves their agenda of having a loophole that performatively makes their wrongdoing formally "forgiven" and "in the past, so it doesn't matter." [2]

I have trouble believing that formally telling intentionally badly behaved people to regularly check this box to get away with your shit was the intended goal of creating this practice.

If that WAS the actual goal by a church that has a track record of aiding and abetting child molester priests, then I remain baffled that planet Earth isn't burning Catholic churches to the ground.

I would LIKE to believe that it was intended to help people function in a world that was generally much harder than the one in which we currently live.

Historically, very bad things -- like war, famine and pestilence -- were the norm, not the exception. I think religion focused on helping people let go of experiences that were enormously difficult to live with for most people so those individuals could continue to function so society could continue to function.

That's my best understanding of history and religion, psychology, life, the universe and everything. Though perhaps I'm an overly idealistic idiot and aiding and abetting intentionally evil people was ALWAYS the actual goal.

If so, I think humanity SUCKS and the universe would be better off without us.

Footnotes

[1] I'm aware there are plenty of nutcases who will CLAIM you are hurting them because you are gay or a woman with an opinion or because you don't want to be their bitch or similar. I don't claim it's easy to figure out how to navigate social stuff effectively in a world where lots of people are intentionally bad or have stupid ideas about what constitutes "hurting them."

I'm not suggesting you take responsibility for the welfare of other people to a neurotic degree. But I do my best to take responsibility for MY actions and try to make sure they aren't harming people. And to edit out bad habits I inherited from elsewhere rather than make excuses for continuing it once I realize it's a problem.

[2] Please note that is a movie reference and the punchline is "But it still hurts." Which is the entire point of saying it.