Veronica’s Reviews > Age of Empyre > Status Update

Surely letting go of the anger for someone doing a bad thing to you is more meaningful if you know that the thing WAS bad, versus having a realization that you didn’t have the right to be upset in the first place (which I think is actually categorically false in the example that brin is contemplating while climbing). Also, while my personal goal/philosophy is to always work toward forgiveness no matter what it’s simply NOT that clearcut in reality and I am often sympathetic to people who choose not to forgive when they have been horrifically and deeply wronged

It’s giving me the same vibes as when a fictional work goes to great lengths to establish that revenge =/= justice, but then instead of putting any effort into parsing out what justice IS or providing any meaningful commentary on what it MEANS/what should be done once you let go of blind revenge and rage, it just drops any kind of consequences for the wrongdoing in the first place and pats itself on the back for moral superiority

I don’t even necessarily expect any individual work to provide an answer because it’s one of those things that humans have been philosophizing over for hundreds and probably thousands of years, but literally any meaningful contemplation of the conundrum is often too much to ask, and I’m concerned we are heading in that direction with the concept of forgiveness here. I don’t expect an ironclad case for why forgiveness is always the answer (it’s too hard to accept irl) but I was expecting something more convincing/inspiring than what we’ve gotten so far

Maybe I’m just too Catholic to get past my prejudices on the subject or whatever but I simply can’t accept advocating for moving on from a deep crime without consequences. The consequences are the first stage to redemption and without it the “redemption” is meaningless and implying that the original crime doesn’t matter

I don’t necessarily agree with her judgment, but it IS valid if brin decides it’s not her place to judge. However, that just doesn’t have anything to do with forgiveness to me. She is deciding that she is not in a place to either forgive or resent, if anything she’s decided that SHE was in the wrong for holding [the thing] against [X] and therefore strictly between the two of them she’s the one who did something “wrong” therefore what is SHE forgiving ??