# Behind the Apology: Forgiveness and blame



## David Baxter PhD (Jul 6, 2008)

Behind the Apology
By Ellen J. Langer
_Psychology Today Magazine_, Jan/Feb 2000

In order to forgive, we must first blame someone for an action we see as negative. Instead of thinking "I'm right and you're wrong," we should look at the situation from the other person's perspective. 

Ask 10 people if forgiveness is good. All will probably tell you that it is. According to most experts, forgiveness is something to which we should aspire. The more wronged we have been, the more divine it is to be able to forgive.

Now ask 10 people if blame is good or bad. All will probably tell you that blame is bad. And yet to forgive, we have to blame. If we do not blame in the first place, there is nothing to forgive.

But there is a step before blame and forgiveness that needs our consideration.

Before we blame, we have to experience the outcome as negative. If your behavior resulted in something positive for me, blame would hardly make sense. Those who see more negativity in the world are then those more likely to place blame.

Evaluations reside in the evaluator, not in outcomes. As we too often forget, outcomes are not good or bad but rather equally good and bad, depending on how we choose to view them. It is in this choice that our greatest control lies. But if we can't find the good, what then?

How do we deal with the slings and arrows that we feel have been aimed at us if we do not hold someone responsible? How can we deal with the hurt caused by others? I am speaking to the small ways we cause each other large hurts, not societal atrocities, murder, and the like, which for many of us are not daily realities. But what is often felt instead is what we view as the broken confidence, the unkept promise, the lack of support. In such instances we nurse our feelings and too often feel self-righteous. We have evaluated their behavior and judged that they have behaved badly.

We implicitly assume that our actions are right. We further assume that all sensible people would do the same thing. Therefore, if you behave differently from me then presumably you behave differently from all of us and you must then be wrong. This would be true if there were only one perspective from which to view behavior. We fail to consider that the other person's behavior made sense from a perspective other than the one from which we are evaluating it. This kind of evaluative false consensus?everyone would do what I did in that situation?leaves us blaming, blamed, forgiving or needing forgiveness, and then resting on a single-minded view of events: If I am right you must be wrong. If we recognize that multiple perspectives are valid, then we may both be right.

Behavior makes different sense depending on the perspective from which it is viewed. If we see the sense to the behavior we probably would find that if we framed the situation the same way, we would have behaved the same way. The same behavior makes many different senses. If we don't see that, then we will remain stuck in an evaluative mind-set. In this evaluative mind-set, we then will experience as negative outcomes that which could have been experienced as positive. If we experience negative outcomes then we will be tempted to find someone to blame. If we blame, at least we can try to forgive.

But if we ask what sense the action made to the actor in the first place, we can instead come to realize that "To err is human, to understand divine."


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## Lana (Jul 7, 2008)

David Baxter said:


> ....And yet to forgive, we have to blame. If we do not blame in the first place, there is nothing to forgive....



Initially I thought I read this article wrong and had to walk away, cool off, then read it again.   But there it was...

To say that in order to forgive we must first find someone to blame, otherwise there's nothing to forgive is just....well....obnoxious.  I don't know the person that wrote this but I am either missing the context here, or this woman has really warped sense of forgiveness.

Blame feeds anger, justifies it, it fuels the hurt and, at times, hatred.  Blame keeps the wounds open, pokes and picks them, cutting right to the bone.  Blame demands justice, fairness, or some form of compensation, be it monetary or not.  Blame does not lead to anything good, and it feeds on poor souls that indulge in it, consuming them with hurt and anger.

Forgiveness is acknowledging that something bad happened, that sometimes life is  not fair, that sometimes justice may not be carried out.  Forgiveness means letting go of expectations, hurt, and pain.  Forgiveness is loving yourself enough not to hold on to things that hurt self and others, and getting rid of the luggage that drags you down, and letting go of the hurt, anger, and frustration as if they were a burning amber in your bare hands...burning you, not those that wronged you.  It does NOT mean forgetting, approving, or justifying the wrong done and thus, it is not about laying blame or feeling righteous.  It's about draining the venom from the system and focusing on better things in life.

Personally, I think that blame and forgiveness are mutually exclusive.  Forgiving is not so much about understanding, and its everything about self love.  That's what makes it hard to achieve.  You put love for yourself and your well being first before any blame, justice, or any other desire that feeds on events that hurt you in the first place, to accept things as they are, just as they evolved.  It is what it is.


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## David Baxter PhD (Jul 7, 2008)

I think you're reading it wrong. To forgive implies there is some injury to be forgiven. To forgive a person means that you believe that person was in some way responsible for that injury. That is what the author means by the word "blame" here - the assigment of responsibility for some perceived injury.


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## braveheart (Jul 8, 2008)

> I'm hoping that this article doesn't apply in cases of abuse, because in which case I fail at this.
> 
> I certainly won't ever be able to forgive the girls who bullied me severely all my school life, nor the teachers who ignored it all. There is blame, and what they did was wrong and very damaging.
> 
> On the other hand, I can forgive my parents for the emotional abuse and emotional neglect. My first step towards this was acceptance of how it was. Understanding came next. Then forgiveness. Inbetween a huge amount of other feelings, which I'm continuing to untangle and unscramble.



Forgiveness for me is about letting it go so I can get on with my life. I don't think it will ever be fully or completely - but enough so I am not raging at the same people all the time.

About 6 months ago I noticed a shift in myself - it just happened, it wasn't pushed. I felt I had truely forgiven some of the people that hurt me. They are still to blame for what happened but forgiveness has helped me to take more control over my life. I am the adult now. I still live with the damage but I have done a ton of work and it payed off in a form of forgiveness, in a way that I didn't even notice happening. A by product


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## sister-ray (Jul 8, 2008)

To me it is saying that the person who did the wrong, didnt know what they was doing at the time, at the time for them it was the right thing for them so we shouldnt blame them, because they thought they where doing right, its like saying they made a mistake so we should forgive them, which is a load of rubbish in some cases,, now in my view Some things can be forgiven, but others are wrong and cant,, how can a man who hits a women be said to have made a mistake or he was right to do it at the time, hitting a women is wrong end of story and it cannot be forgiven, the woman can move on and maybe forget but thats all.  What my dad did to me was wrong, theres no way he could have made a mistake or thought it was right at the time, and its unforgiveable,  I get on with my life now but I wont ever forgive him, to me sometimes articles like these are almost letting the abuser off, and saying that the victim/surviour is wrong to blame the abuser, and should forgive and walk away, with that attitude the abuser will proberly do it again saying " I just made a mistake again!!

A therapist once said I should forgive the  IRA Bombers who killed my friend in the Birmingham pub bombings years ago, she said they didnt know what they where doing, she said the same thing as this article is saying ,  you cannot forgive something like that ever it almost like giving them permission to do it again and again only to be forgiven again and again.


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## lallieth (Jul 8, 2008)

I honestly do not feel the need to blame.Blaming someone for past mistakes takes alot of energy and interferes with my "here and now" I suppose I could blame alot of people for what has happened to me while growing up,but I have chosen instead to learn from it.

Forgiveness does require blame,blame requires energy,energy wasted on people that no longer matter in my life,to me it's pointless


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## ladylore (Jul 8, 2008)

Forgiveness for me is about letting it go so I can get on with my life. I don't think it will ever be fully or completely - but enough so I am not raging at the same people all the time.

About 6 months ago I noticed a shift in myself - it just happened, it wasn't pushed. I felt I had truely forgiven some of the people that hurt me. They are still to blame for what happened but forgiveness has helped me to take more control over my life. I am the adult now. I still live with the damage but I have done a ton of work and it payed off in a form of forgiveness, in a way that I didn't even notice happening. A by product


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## braveheart (Jul 8, 2008)

I think we all need to bear in mind that it's not a competition. We are all where we're at, and that's ok.


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## Cat Dancer (Jul 8, 2008)

Sometimes I think forgiveness is overrated. What if you can't get someone to forgive you? Then somehow you have to just let that go.


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## Gene53 (Jul 8, 2008)

> Forgiveness for me is about letting it go so I can get on with my life


How right you are... Can't change the past so we do have to forgive and move on.

Cheers,
Gene


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## Into The Light (Jul 8, 2008)

if you have done something that you want forgiveness for, then i would imagine you apologize to the person and you try to work it out together. if the person refuses to forgive, and yet you genuinely feel badly over it, then yes it's hard but at least you know you genuinely regret things and you know you tried. knowing in your heart that you didn't mean to cause the other person hurt i think would help you forgive yourself. in the end it is ourselves we truly need to live with in peace.


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## Gene53 (Jul 8, 2008)

> in the end it is ourselves we truly need to live with in peace


How true that is, can't wait for this to happen.


Gene


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## Into The Light (Jul 8, 2008)

same here.... :sigh:


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## Halo (Jul 9, 2008)

For me forgiveness doesn't mean that I will forget.  It just means that I will not longer harbor resentment and anger and will not let those emotions take over and run my life.  

It does not mean that I will forget what has been done or that once I forgive that it will automatically disappear from my past.  What is done is done and there is no changing the past but there is changing the future.

JMO


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