I think of how it used to be

[austin_dern]

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, let's review some basic rules of apologies:

1. It is not ``vindictive'' of the person you've attacked to demand an apology.
2. Neither is it the responsibility of the person you've wronged to request some consideration.
3. An apology is not an opportunity for you to play passive aggressive games: ``If you weren't so lame I wouldn't have had to find people who wanted to beat you up'' is the brighter-than-average excuse of the proto-fascist twits who assault the bookish, imaginative seventh grader.
4. Similarly ``I'm no longer angry at you so I'll allow you to receive my apology'' isn't an acceptable message.
5. An apology is not in the subjunctive: ``If I've got to apologize to talk to you again, then I'm sorry'' isn't an apology.
6. An apology is about your actions. Trying to whip up excuses in the actions of the person you've wronged is denying your responsibility, and therefore your apology.

Love can overcome most anything, but don't put extra obstacles in its way.

Trivia: Among books Euclid wrote that are now lost are Porisms (content uncertain); Fallacis, on detection of logical flaws; Conic Sections; and Loci On A Surface. Source: History of Mathematics, Florian Cajori.

Currently Reading: Living Dolls: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life, Gaby Wood.

Comments

[musewoozle.livejournal.com]

Very, very interesting reflection. Yeah, that's perfectly correct, though, and very elegantly stated. Looking for how people handle errors when there is a personal conflict is often an intuitive meter-stick that I use to get someone's measure.

It takes a superior person to not do any of the above.

-- Jacob

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I can't say I've avoided all those sins when I've tried to apologize but at least they're the set I try to live up to.

[musewoozle.livejournal.com]

Same here. I suppose it's necessary to angush over one's mistakes.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I suppose. It'd be nice to skip the anguish sometimes.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, what do you regard as the rules for accepting apologies (if any)? This is a matter of some dispute between me and Lucky. >:)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm not positive that I have rules, though I'll take a few days to think out the feeling I have. I imagine if I had to say right now I'd accept any apology which seems motivated by the desire to honestly admit a mistake and try to reestablish -- or strengthen -- a friendship.

It's when an apology seems motivated by the desire to tell me ``OK, whatever, you go ahead and be mad, I'm tired of it, bye bye, no tagbacks'' that I don't take it.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

1. Yes it is.
2. Um... yes it is.
3. Well, yes it is. Not that you *should* do that. Unless you're not really at fault and they're demanding an apology anyway.
4. It's honest. Honesty is good.
5. See 4.
6. An apology is *demanded* by people obsessed with status so that they can drain energy from you instead of forgiving you. It serves no legitimate purpose unless it's given unasked, and expecting a sincere one under those circumstances is entirely unreasonable.

Basically, I completely disagree with you on almost every point, and with the basic message you're trying to get across.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm eager to forgive people, particularly friends, and when the offense is minor I'll skip waiting for an apology at all. But there is a level in which one person acts so foolishly, so destructively, and with either such plain intent of hurting or an utter inability to forsee obvious consequences, that I can't trust they want to be friends any longer. If they want to put back together a friendship they consciously chose to smash, the apology can't be silently assumed.

More, a sincere apology can't be hidden behind a defensive wall of ``Well, if you're so foolish to be angry about something that happened a year ago and that you really deserved anyway then I guess I'll go ahead and tell you I'm sorry if that's what it takes to get you to speak to me again.''

There is such a thing as being angry with justification and without vindictiveness.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

An apology isn't ever 'silently assumed', but sometimes you have to forgive people who aren't sorry and would do it again (but be cautious around them so they can't do it to *you* again) and sometimes you have to accept that people don't think they did anything wrong, but are gracious enough to change their future behavior to avoid pissing you off (this is the 'well, gee, I'm sorry that you took offense, I'll be sure to walk on eggshells around you' type of passive-aggressive apology }:P), and sometimes an incident was much less important to them than it was to you, and they're going to be confused and insulted at you even bringing it up if it happened a long time ago (which is where the 'I *guess* I'll apologize, if you insist...' type of apology comes from, usually).

Those are all *sincere* apologies. They're telling you what the person really feels, in the way a traditional grovelling (but dishonest) apology would not.

SOMETIMES, you get lucky, and they realize that what they did was wrong on their own, and then you can get a sincere apology of they type you seem to want, but that's not going to happen very often. It's certainly not something that it's useful to try to *demand* from people. Unless you think it's useful to hurt them back.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I agree there are many cases in which pressing for an apology isn't helpful. And there are many cases when there are mitigating factors. In the case that provoked this post -- without going too much into my dirty laundry -- there's really no ambiguities: this person smashed our friendship, without provocation, without excuses, knew it at the time, and has been aware since then that, gentle and forgiving as I am, he went beyond my tolerance.

I don't demand a formally correct apology, but I do demand a sincere one, and all the signs I listed are diagnostic of insincerity. In the particular instance (I've checked this opinion with a less involved party) the offered ``apology'' amounted to an attempt to say it was my problem if I took things personally. If my former friend's not capable of the minimum empathy to realize how he hurt me, and to be honestly sorry about that, I'm not letting him back into my life; I need some justification to think I won't be attacked again.

Heck, I'd be willing to proceed as best as possible never speaking of the incident again -- but I need to know he wants to be friends for a reason deeper than ``I got off work early and there's nobody else to talk to.''

[chanspot.livejournal.com]

Speaking of being "curmudgeonly" (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?s=a400124c9060c06836a34c124aa117da&threadid=279193&perpage=30&pagenumber=1), and maybe to bring up another instance of manners...

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Sheesh ... I don't know that I'd have thrown the kid out of the store, but out of the game session is reasonable enough. I've had to do that more often than I like (that is, at all) and you'd never believe how whiny people can get ...

[chanspot.livejournal.com]

What gets me is the parents' response, in this case.

And yeah, I imagine. ':) Note they do later clarify what the kid did, exactly--but for me it's just a bizarre little tale. I think it's good that I'm always surprised when something like this happens, but perhaps not. Perhaps it's just something we never like to think about?

I was surprised at the number of responses who claimed "hey, it happens."

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, it does happen, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable or shouldn't draw a response.