Forgiveness

I wrote about religion and interest rates earlier this year. My theory was closer to Muslim financing keeping interest rates rational.

There is another trait that I wanted to talk about from a perspective of a liberal Catholic. It is forgiveness.

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All my psychology models are based on the book of The Emotion Machine from Marvin Minsky. Our brain stores accurate information like a tape recording many things from our experiences. Emotions are attached to each experience, if unresolved.

All these experiences and emotions need to be sorted at night to build consistency. Emotions remain attached to unresolved issues. Emotions force us to revisit and learn more.

Emotions are nothing else but an internal feedback for us to act on unresolved issues. Their purpose is resolution and learning.

Forgiveness is what we experience, when an emotion is resolved. We are social species. Cultural advancement gave us certain amount of individual independence in liberal societies. Bad things happen.

The emotions attached to these bad things will be with us for a long time. Forgiveness helps us resolve our emotions. This relieves focus, and we continue learning things that we want to learn.

Learning people forgive. This helps us give good to our family and friends instead of dealing with the past. Forgiveness was introduced in the New Testament, it was a consequence of the learning individual, who can analyze and teach the others.

This is why we need to be apologetic and forgive. The emotion is resolved regarding the unwanted input. It releases emotions to learn what we want.

My most important finding is that people learn and not societies. All feedback to a society is from the individuals.

Societies do not forgive. You may forgive to a thief, but the cops may still arrest them. Why? You may not see the thief anymore, but they may steal elsewhere. Society proactively gives a feedback to them. This is the difference between civil and criminal cases.

Individuals are better at thinking. Sometimes societies are inefficient. A country may use reciprocity to introduce visas if another country introduces them. Sometimes it is not the rational rule but the size that matters at scale.

Reciprocity as an old age diplomatic thinking leads to wars. Such societies never learn as a result. Prioritizing the group over the individual instead of rules is the core of gang violence.

States enforce the law. Sometimes they miss it, if victims do not report issues treating them as a benign offense. States still may enforce criminal cases themselves.

These states learn and improve. States clarify in a case analysis publicly if there was no precedent. They deter future cases knowing a single victim will be followed by many. States exist because of voters, so they have to save the voters. Someone who stresses, poisons, or kills prevents them to vote later or vote with free will.

Individuals forgive more to learn. States do not forgive as a result, to save others. This is how states teach and learn.