Is the past sometimes best left in the past?

[Otta]

So on the Martin McGuinness thread (which I will not repeat here, go and read for yourself if interested) it was suggested that whilst it is good to know history and learn from it, there are times when we can be held back by it, and when it might be best all round if we let go of it in order to move forward.

Discuss.

[KidKruger]

An example might be where someone carries grudges, resentment, revenge fantasies or jealousy over something / someone that happened previously. Whether it be personal or collective.

You can do yourself damage hanging-on to those sentiments, I think it's a bit like self-harming but without realising.

Having said that, there are some wrongs that need righting and just trying to carry on the best you can while walking away doesn't obtain the righting.

[steveo]

Where do you stand on revenge porn?

[red devil]

That's all about control. Someone's been dumped and they see it as a way of getting revenge i.e. they are in control of the situation...

[Jules-and-Boo]

it's called forgiveness.

Forgiveness of ourselves for not knowing what we know now and doing something we regret

Forgiveness of others - which does not need them to have made any amendment for their ways or deeds done

and Foregiveness of our history - we have no influence over that - but we have a responsibility to understand it, learn from it and not repeat it.

Easy to say, harder to do.... but it is life-changing to let go of ill feelings

[JoeLeg]

"The past is another country, they do things differently there."

Broadly I agree. Learn from it, learn from history, but to relive it constantly or even intermittently is to forget that nothing can be done to change it.

Remembering the past is not the same as living in it.

[steveo]

Is it too early for Godwin's Law, oddly not invoked in the MM thread?

[JohnL]

Jules-and-Boo Wrote:

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> it's called forgiveness.

>

> Forgiveness of ourselves for not knowing what we

> know now and doing something we regret

> Forgiveness of others - which does not need them

> to have made any amendment for their ways or deeds

> done

> and Foregiveness of our history - we have no

> influence over that - but we have a responsibility

> to understand it, learn from it and not repeat

> it.

>

> Easy to say, harder to do.... but it is

> life-changing to let go of ill feelings

And you think you've forgiven but then that opportunity

for revenge presents itself, like a test.

[Alan Medic]

Re the OP. Isn't that what Martin McGuinness did?

[????]

I am just waiting for the "....doomed to repeat it" quote. I've a few likely candidates in mind.

[Seabag]

This forgiveness thing confuses me. At what point do you go "actually, I was right, you really are a cutn". How many goes at forgiving the past do we give?

I'm all for seeing people evolve, but sometimes they do carry on going the wrong direction. Hence, the past stays in the past, along with the immediate and distant future, for some people.

[Loz]

???? Wrote:

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> I am just waiting for the "....doomed to repeat

> it" quote. I've a few likely candidates in mind.

As in "Those who eat too much garlic bread are doomed to repeat it"?

[Robert Poste's Child]

Ideally you learn the lesson, take that forward with you and leave the experience in its historical context. Resilience, in other words. Easier said than done, though. Think of all the poor souls with PTSD whose minds won't let them leave a traumatic event behind.

[Robert Poste's Child]

Seabag, another way of looking at forgiveness is not so much 'you're not a cutn' but 'I'm letting go of how I feel about you because I don't want to keep poisoning my own life with this resentment'. Doing it for yourself rather than the other person. Maybe this is secular forgiveness as it doesn't sound like the 'I forgive because God says so' version.

[jaywalker]

The past is like the real, not accessible. There is no particular reason to believe it is linear or even single, or even that it flows as our experience does. This is true of the present too, of course, which is really the proof of the inaccessibility.

If this is true, then what we call the past is always-already interpretation.

Then the question is how that interpretation is composed.

I am reading the excellent Fredric Jameson at the moment (The Political Unconscious). He makes the Nietzsche-inspired argument that ressentiment is the master trope of remembering in our late-Christian-fragmented-by-capitalism world. Thus a past remembered as one containing (the trope is significant) good and evil. No shortage of that going on in our national newspapers or courts currently. This allows a vicious calling-to-account, and outpouring of moralic acid (as Nietzsche put it) that expresses the broken person in that world (their ressentiment).

If Jameson is right then we should think much more carefully about a kind of forgetting. But forgetting is itself a political act. Our question should be the purpose we would put that forgetting to.

[Otta]

Alan Medic Wrote:

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> Re the OP. Isn't that what Martin McGuinness did?

Behave Alan.

[rendelharris]

Seabag Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> This forgiveness thing confuses me. At what point

> do you go "actually, I was right, you really are a

> cutn". How many goes at forgiving the past do we

> give?

>

> I'm all for seeing people evolve, but sometimes

> they do carry on going the wrong direction. Hence,

> the past stays in the past, along with the

> immediate and distant future, for some people.

I think a good example is Antoine Leiris whose wife was killed in the Bataclan massacre and who said almost immediately afterwards, in an open letter to the terrorists:

"So no, I don't give you the gift of hating you. You are asking for it but responding to hatred with anger would be giving in to the same ignorance that made you what you are."

[TE44]

I think you can rationalise past experiences, when

you've been faced with experiences that has made

it difficult to cope with every day things. Over time you can believe and feel its been put in its

place, where it makes sense to let it go, even forget. As time goes by, sometimes years, the past may come back to you unexpectantly. It may hit you

hard especially if much time was taken to remove

bad feelings. Some times you've got to recover the

past to look again at recovering from it.

[womanofdulwich]

Haven't we all made mistakes?

I don't mean murder, but as we get older and worldlier don't we all realise we treated people badly/misinterpreted others actions?

I would not make the mistakes again-but I am guilty - the list is long...

[uncleglen]

'That which does not kill us, serves to make us stronger'- Nietzsche.....maybe the EU had a purpose after all

[TE44]

There's always room to learn from personal history. This thread came from the MM thread. Political history, has often been years of trying to find truths while the ordinary people whos lives have been destroyed wewe submerged as victims or casualties. Its important to know that the truth is often hidden, and its admirable people do not let

the past lie, for much would still be hidden.

[jaywalker]

womanofdulwich Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Haven't we all made mistakes?

> I don't mean murder, but as we get older and

> worldlier don't we all realise we treated people

> badly/misinterpreted others actions?

> I would not make the mistakes again-but I am

> guilty - the list is long...

The sentiment is admirable. But who have you installed in the tribunal of your own reason to find yourself guilty? Did you think that this phantasm was of your own devising?

[jaywalker]

TE44 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> There's always room to learn from personal

> history. This thread came from the MM thread.

> Political history, has often been years of trying

> to find truths while the ordinary people whos

> lives have been destroyed wewe submerged as

> victims or casualties. Its important to know that

> the truth is often hidden, and its admirable

> people do not let the past lie, for much would still be hidden.

but the empirical truth (who killed or tortured whom) is of no interest as such. Nor is the will to find completeness: uncovering the "hidden". It is precisely this truth that demands retribution, revenge (or its flip-side; tolerance, forgiveness), which counters the empirical on its own level - action to make right.

Such action is the nightmare of the soul.

[TE44]

Jaywalker When the truth is uncovered, it often isn't such a shock, whether you're directly involvdd or not, you may instinctively have a feel to expect it not to be as it appears. Where there has been a loss of a loved one and it is a political situation, no one will know that person lost, more

than you, there innocence, there beliefs. Mosul souls in a living nighmare, WHILE Amnesty international says US not protecting civilians.

US coalition, was RAF involved. Of course to suggest that you can understand the anger that

could come from the pain caused, is becoming almost like a crime in itself in this country especially for people who have moved from there.

[Seabag]

jaywalker Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> womanofdulwich Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > Haven't we all made mistakes?

> > I don't mean murder, but as we get older and

> > worldlier don't we all realise we treated

> people

> > badly/misinterpreted others actions?

> > I would not make the mistakes again-but I am

> > guilty - the list is long...

>

> The sentiment is admirable. But who have you

> installed in the tribunal of your own reason to

> find yourself guilty? Did you think that this

> phantasm was of your own devising?

You're single, right?