Atonement needed

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Atonement would be needed, rather than punishment. There have been in these decades public acts of atonement. Atonement for slavery, some rather tepid and hypocrite atonement for colonialism (while the former colonies where abandoned to those band of thugs which are the African states). There has been a great act of atonement for the most horrible genocide of modern times, that conducted by the Nazis; but no atonement for the Armenians or the Gypsies, or the Congolese. No act of atonement for the horrible, horrible destruction of lives in WW1; European cities have still in their squares monuments to those generals who conducted that atrocious war. And now there should be atonement (atonement not criticism) for the hundreds of thousand of lives lost in a senseless war.

Hear, hear dear chap ! !

I've wanted to write a novel regarding the Gypsy plight during the war. Who even mentions it these days?? I have friends in the Czech Republic who are Christian Missionaries to the Gypsies. So few people have any idea what they have had to deal with...
The teaching that children get in school these days is rubbish. No details whatsoever ....

So what do you propose for atonement?

An apology? From whom?
Money?
Real Estate?

Just as one example... should the U.S. government atone for the slavery of Africans 200-300 yrs ago?
What does the current government have in common with the government of the 1700's and 1800's?
How legitimate is atonement when done by people who have no connection with the actual events?
Is it enough for those who ancestors were wronged to hear an apology from those whose ancestors did the wrong?

What exactly do you think atonement will do and for whom?

How far should the world carry atonement?
Should it be forced?
Perhaps the U.N. should get involved and sanction countries that do not offer atonement for all wrongs done to anyone throughout history.

I'm not trying to make light of this.
I'm just trying to understand what all this is really about?
When all the parties have been deceased for years, decades, centuries, what good does atonement do?
How can an apology from people who were not involved but have some remote connection, really mean anything at all?

Are you sure there is nothing in common between between present day racism and slavery?
As for time elapsed, isn't there a state who lives on the atonement of the West at the expense of tremendous suffering and humiliation of millions of innocent people? There has been, and there still is atonement for what the nazi did more that 60 years ago. But is this the right kind of atonement?
And will there be any atonement for what is being done now in the Middle East.
When I talk of atonement I don't mean trials, finding of culprits, financial indemnities. What I mean is that there should be less patriotic rethorics, monuments, distorted history for schoolchildren, but a deep soul searching and self criticism about what has permitted WW1, WW2, Vietnam, the present condition of Africa and so on. I don't want anything to be done, only an effort towards consciousness of our general complicity.

Write that book Professor, it's only through efforts like yours that atonement is ever accomplished. If Pasternak hadn't persevered then Dr Zhivago's story would never have been told, Feltrinelli would not have blown himself up and Renato Curcio would not have procured the seed money for his great experiment. You Sir, are a visionary.

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Is that a resumé of Italian history?. Anyway I don't know what this has to do with atonement. Curcio, who was in prison 20 years, never made any atonement for having been one of the leaders of the "Red brigades" a fullfledged terrorist organization, similar to the German "Rote Armee".
I don't think that Prof_Pretorious is advocating violent uprising writing a book about the Gypsies.

Seems, though, that punishment (infliction of suffering, in order to harm/damage) is what gets more people more intensely activated, vehement. The notions of community involvement in supportive rather than punitive role & inevitable re-entry of those who have been excluded (for whichever reasons)-those get people less excited or driven to make noise, instead viewed as waste of resources. People have appetite for retribution & revenge, and it's not easy (possible, but hard) to get those diverted into productive channels.

Also, can one force another person to grapple with real genuine pain & issues-of individuals & of groups, one's own as well as whomever has been wronged ? How does one measure "self-examination" & authentic emotional work/effort, of someone (or group) that is considered to require "rehabilitation" or reflective insight ? Punishment is assumed to be easy to measure, in units of time or severity of conditions/environment. Atonement-how does one "wrap one's head around" whatever that is ?

Am not saying how things ought to be-merely mentioning these tendencies within human nature (IMHO), with which one needs to contend & require our attention.

More like a joke in bad taste that came to me in the early morning hours after working an OT nightshift Paolo. I'll leave this thread so you can have a serious discussion.

This is an article, on the Guardian on the racial divide prsisting in the US.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/ma ... ctions2008

Okay Paolo, I've read what you and others have posted and wsmac has nailed it pretty good. I would add that to have things happen as you would like them too would require 1 0f 2 things to happen. First would be if there was a mass epiphany to the effect that what you suggest should happen. Secondly we could maybe appoint some International Dictatorial bureaucrat to force atonement, and, as noted above, how sincere would the atonement be? As far as I can tell only White Christian cultures in the world seem to be obsessed with how bad their ancestors were and how bad their culture is. A lot of very violent power struggles are going on between Jews and Palestineans, Tamils and Sinhalese, Tutsi and Hutu, Muslim and Hindu, Muslim Arabs and Black Christians and many others whose leaders are not looking at this point like they are anywhere near the point of being willing to set aside their differences, much less to make any apologies or atonements to each other. As far as Race relations in America go I am white and do not believe that I owe any apology to any blacks over issues from pre 1865. I have ancestors from both sides of the Civil War. I just do not see much chance of a general rapprochement happening.

I do not propose any political project. What I would like to offer is only a perspective. I think I am not even a pessimist (except about my life, but this cannot interest anybody). So I don't want dictators, political battles, or even taking sides, except in some way that I would call aesthetic, or philosophic, or perhaps religious. What I would advocate is only to abstain, to reject, to distance oneself from any form of complicity in the process of destruction. I look at these models in the past (very far) and would like, at least, to study them and to see what meaning or consolation thay can bring to me and to anyone interested. There are some: the Cynics, Lao Tse (6 or 4 hundreds yesr BC).

Moreover, rejecting any form of anthropocentrism, the times I think one should take into account are those of evolution, that is not thousands of years, but millions of years, and what is behind it (we don't know, but certainly not an "intelligent" watchmaker).

I enjoy very much reading the Book of Job.

Some more to atone:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/mu ... index.html