Nouslife: Retelling Atonement Forgiveness centred (5)

26 March 2013

Retelling Atonement Forgiveness centred (5)

Reverse polarity mimesis.

More on being hurt and reacting to it.

From the prior post we have understood that when we are hurt, we react with anger. That anger is, at its best, a driver towards in some way righting a wrong. (At its worst it's simply vengeance and prejudice). Part of the reaction is about transferring our anger to the other by hurting back. The reaction to a wrong is a kind of reverse mimesis kicked off by a detriment. In 'regular' mimesis we take into ourselves and reproduce within ourselves something from outside of our inner world. Usually it is something that we encounter in people in our acquaintance circles. Usually desire drives and fastens the imitation.

Now this is my take, I've not found this particular theory or way of looking at either mimesis or reacting to wrong. So consider the the next bit 'experimental' and your reaction to its plausibility is part of testing it out. Also let me know if you've come across the like before. However, recall that it is an attempt to theorise something that happens, so if I've got it wrong, then then there still remains something to be explained -it would simply be that my way of explaining it would be misconceived.

I'm proposing that our mimetic drive is thrown into reverse in the case of our being personally harmed (that is taking a detriment which is transmitted through personal agency and with person-generated intentionality and meaning). Rather than desiring to add the mimetic target to ourselves, the fact that it hurts means we defend against it and we do so by trying to reproduce something of the hurt in the perpetrator/s. This probably relates to our sense of fairness (which seems to be deeply embedded in humans) which trades hurt for hurt.

So whatever forgiveness is, it involves dealing with this reverse-mimetic reaction to personal detriments which are felt to be unmerited or under-merited. Somehow or other, forgiveness undertakes to remove it, nullify it or take it out of play between us.

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