A couple of days ago I was conversing with a friend, and he asked me what I thought about the Northam Blackface controversy. Specifically, he asked me if I thought that Northam should be forgiven for a past "indiscretion." My immediate answer was, "No." For one thing, the way Northam has handled the situation seems to indicate that he doesn't truly understand that what he did was wrong, which further indicates that he has not substantially changed from those days. For another thing, he was in medical school at the time, and that seems to me to be old enough to have known better. Most importantly, one of my bedrock beliefs is that you are responsible for your acts, and I would put the age of responsibility at a pretty early point in your life. I'm not exactly sure what that age would be, but I'm thinking around 15-ish. At least, that's how I feel about myself and my own age of taking responsibility for stupid things that I did.
My friend pointed out that the brain doesn't stop developing until the mid-twenties, and wondered if that should be held into account. At which point, I got confused.
Philosophy to the rescue. -ish. In Frederick Copleston's A History of Philosophy Volume 11: Logical Positivism and Existentialism, he addresses this issue via the existentialist philosophy. On page 135, he says, "And man transcends himself in the sense (though not exclusively) that, as long as he lives, he cannot be identified with his past." I'm pretty sure that is b*******. (By the way, I am dictating this entry, and Google decided that I couldn't say bullshit. Fuckers.) For one thing, it takes us right back to that Good Thief on the cross bit which irritates me so much. I know that it is a very positive and altruistic philosophy, but I think it just ignores some essential elements of human nature. I'm thinking here of Dr Phil, who said, "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior." That has certainly been true for most if not all of the people I've known in my life. In fact, the only exceptions I can think of were very young people who turned themselves around. And even there, I'm not sure that they actually turned themselves around, because I didn't stay in contact with them long enough to ascertain whether the changes they made were permanent.
I'm also reminded of that old saying, something along the lines of the Catholic Church suggesting that if they were given a child at a young age that they would be a Catholic for life.
All of this seems to come around to the idea that if you are a person who thinks it is okay to put on Blackface, or to claim that you are Native American when you are not, or to drink heavily and assault women, then that is who you are. And that is who you will remain to be.
That's pretty depressing, though. It also seems to make us prisoners in a cage made of our DNA and societal limitations.
Maybe that is the true beauty of Christianity and the concept of redemption. The underlying assumption there seems to be that we will continue to fuck up for our entire lives, but as long as we recognize this and regret it, we grow spiritually and are forgiven. In that respect, we don't really change, but we do progress. On the other hand, as a parent I have certainly resorted to the line, "You're NOT sorry if you keep on doing The Bad Thing."
I think that I am now more confused than when I started this. In some ways, that's what philosophy is for. In other ways, it's just a big pain in the ass. It would be so much easier to just stick with a knee-jerk reaction, and cease to toil and spin.
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