Our Survival Depends on Authentic Forgiveness
We are writing this book about contact, withdrawal, and forgiveness because we believe that the ability to be in honest contact with others, and the capacity to forgive ourselves and others, is key to resolving a major crisis concerning our very survival as human beings. Facing and solving problems with improved quality of connection is not only critical to our wellbeing, but our very survival as a species also depends on it.
By this point, we hope to convince you that the way things are going now, with how we attempt to care for each other worldwide, isn’t working. The world’s fucked up and we’re on the brink of extinction. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we don’t have a solution to humanity’s problem of our likely self-annihilation through confusion about distinguishing between experiential facts and belief. Instead of a solution, we are proposing a process to lead to a solution.
A process differs from a solution because it puts in motion an approach to ongoing solutions to problems, including some that are not yet known. This is very handy, given that our ability to predict the future is as imperfect as our ability to know what’s going on in the present or recall what went on in the past.
Remembering is unreliable because we regularly modify our memories to put on some pretense about how good or bad we are, or were, or will be.
As we said, we don’t have answers, but here are a few good ideas about how to proceed with a process that can help provide answers.
Let’s modify things and think in the direction of the descriptive truth about what we notice and what we think with a little less “management” of how we present what we think and notice. Let’s quit lying and pretending, and acknowledge that shit goes bad all the time; it keeps happening all the time for us and our friends and partners and will never get permanently fixed, but could just get repaired a lot by us paying attention and sharing honestly over and over again.
Conflict never goes away because it comes with being human. It comes from being a being that has a mind and being around other poor, fucking, crippled, mind-stunned people like ourselves. Bless our hearts, we do help each other along the best we can, but we are not very good at it. Resolving conflicts is a great, great way to learn about love.
Let’s suppose, at least for the moment, that changing the way we relate to each other could save us. Not permanently, of course. We will have to rely on each other to save ourselves repeatedly and ongoingly, now and in the future. Once we get the hang of communicating better, however, the fixes will take less time and be less stressful. (I know that doesn’t sound terribly compelling but it’s better than the damned alternative).
Let’s learn more about how we can relate and love better and get over shit, over and over again. Again, what we’re offering is a repetitive quandary-resolution game, which we can all get better at only with practice. We just have to keep on playing this game over and over and over and over…
