I would add to this an attempt to make things right. Some things can’t be made right, ever, but if a favorite dish is in stock, then buying a replacement is in order. However, one can’t replace Great Grandma’s favorite teacup which was passed down, because any replacement would not have been used by Great Grandma, and to me, that’s part of the value. In fact, it might be the only value an item has for me.
I consider these apologies to be “I’m sorry I got caught” or “I’m sorry I got in trouble” apologies. Meaningless except for the public humiliation.
I think apologies had real meaning at one point and have some vague meaning now.
In the past if you seriously offended someone in many cultures rules of honor or decorum demanded that something happen. An apology or some form of mea culpa that in itself made you lose some degree of “face” or “prestige” would often times satisfy the aggrieved party. However if you weren’t willing to do that, or the aggrieved party wasn’t satisfied, you could have things like duels to the death, family feuds, even wars between minor feudal rulers and such break out over things like this. So at least having some mechanism by which you can resolve a conflict other than a fight to the death is very important for society.
In that context, the self-defacing apology is historically very important.
In the modern world, a personal apology isn’t as important because we don’t have a dueling culture like Europeans of the Renaissance/Enlightenment nor do we have even more serious codes of behavior like the Corsican vendetta system. So apologies typically aren’t a matter of life and death. (Although even in the 21st century if you make someone mad enough they may murder you, and sometimes an apology can defuse that issue.)
However, where apologies are still somewhat important in interpersonal relationships is certain offenses or actions (variable depending on the parties involved) offend someone so much that some “resolution” is often required to end the “issue.” I’ve known many friendships to end because one party was unwilling to offer an apology.
Without getting into specifics, I knew two life long friends who did not speak for 8 years over a relatively minor but undeniably rude thing said at a dinner party by one of the friends to the other. Eight years later, the offender called and offered an apology and they’ve been best friends for over a decade since that time.
I won’t necessarily say I’m in the camp who feels that is logical, I typically don’t hold grudges like that and wouldn’t care nearly as much about either the apology or the initial offense as the actual participants did. However, interpersonal relationships are not governed by rules of logic and predictability. For a large portion of society it is important if you’ve given offense to be self-defacing and offer some sort of mea culpa. It’s not so much about undoing what was done, but basically lots of people feel a need to hear that “yeah, I was a stupid prick and I shouldn’t have been.” I’ve never had a need for that or felt a genuine need to offer it, but those are the sort of social niceties you need to learn to keep interpersonal relationships working.
A “public” apology between a public figure and some other person (perhaps another public figure) is different still from an interpersonal apology. If Rush apologized, and I doubt he will, it would mainly just be a mea culpa to society itself and sort of an act of “taking your just deserved lumps” for some ill deed. Given what I’ve seen of Rush Limbaugh I doubt this will happen. However, Rush and this college student don’t have an interpersonal relationship, so any apology would not really be about Rush or the law student, but just about Rush satisfying some demand of society in order to avoid more serious injury to his reputation. The reason I suspect Rush will not apologize is this has only seriously injured his reputation among the portions of society that already hold him in contempt, and the mouth-breathers who enjoy shock-jock idiot political commentators of Rush’s political persuasion would probably be disappointed if he apologized and gave in to the “enemy.”
Ok*,erislover, I understand you to be arguing that you dislike apologies when they are for hurtful actions taken with full knowledge of the hurt they would cause. I can see that: it adds insult to injury to apologize to someone after you’ve cheated on them, or stolen their money, or something like that. If you really didn’t want to hurt them, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place. It’s even manipulative because it places pressure on the wronged party to forgive and forget right this minute, or look like a dick. And you seem to be saying that apologies for totally accidental things are really more expressions of sympathy, and are a good idea.
I agree with all that, but there is a lot of gray in the middle–for example:
What if you break someone’s dish because you were being more careless than you should have been? You picked it up in one hand because you didn’t want to make two trips from the kitchen, or you put it too close to the edge of the table?
Or what if you don’t fully understand that something is harmful, like when you think you are gently teasing a friend only to accidently hit a sore spot and really hurt their feelings?
Or what if you snap at someone because you are frustrated with a third party and hurt their feelings?
I guess I just see a lot of circumstances where someone might cause pain that can’t really be called total accidents, but that aren’t a matter of deliberately disregarding someone’s feelings.
Apologies are only meaningful if they are attached to a promise (with the attendant follow-through) that the bullshit in question won’t happen again. After three apologies for the same bullshit behavior, the apologizer is either incorrigible or mentally-deficient, and should be relieved of their status as boyfriend/girlfriend/friend/employee/etc.
Rush Limbaugh is on his 122nd chance, or something like that. Just dump the bastard and move on.
Of course apologies are meanigful. An apology is a semantic construct. The more interesting questions, perhaps, are: WHy do people demand them? What do they mean? And in what circumstances are they acceptable/compelling or otherwise deemed “worthy” enough by a recipient to alleviate the initial offense.
Answers will vary according to circumstances, of course. For myself:
[ul]
[li]I ask for an apology when I believ someone has caused offense but lacks the ethical or social motiviation to admit it AND I think there is some benefit to be gained by having them admit to teh wrong. I think this is generally teh case when public expressions are involved (as in the OP). For instance, those who believe it is harmful for women to be demeaned for expressing opinions on natural sexual behavior might see a benefit to haing a very public figure admit to wrong after publicly labeling a woman “slut” and “prostitute” for advocating that contraceptives be covered through insurance plans.[/li][li]As to what an apology means - it means whatever it is intended to accomplish in a social or verbal exchange. Sometimes it means “I realize my mitake ad am committed to making whatever ammends are in my power.” Sometimes it means "I want to avoid further criticism so I will admit to some potential that I caused unintential harm and accept no obligation to correct said harm, etc.[/li][li]And for me, an apology is worthy if it gives me comfort that the offense is unlikely to be repeated and that the offender recgnizes their fault and will make appropriate ammends.[/li][/ul]
Apologies under pressure from an outsider are generally meaningless.
If an apology is offered without pressure from anyone else, then I usually accept it as legitmate. For me that means not beating up someone repeatedly for having done the offending deed. That would be a little like putting someone in debtors’ prison. How can they ever make it right?
My first husband once trumped my ace in a game of bridge. He was my partner. He immediately said, “Sorry. I f**cked up.” That took away all the fun of my indignance. He was imperfect; he apologized. What is accomplished by continuing to bring it up?
If the apology is only partial and seemingly insincere and given under pressure, then I think it’s fair to point these qualities out.
Besides, being a forgiving person is supposedly good for one’s mental health.
Yay, I’m not the only one.
I’ve said this kind of thing before on the SDMB and no one seemed to understand what I meant, much less agree with me.
I find apologies to be practically meaningless. I don’t get them. I never want them to be given to me. I’m dumbfounded at the idea that anyone would take mine seriously were I to offer one.
Why do you never regret that something you did caused someone else pain? For me not to accept any apology from you, that’s what I’d have to think. People make mistakes, and people feel bad when they hurt others by those mistakes.
I can understand not finding apologies meaningful to yourself, perhaps because you’ll forgive someone (or not forgive someone) the same either way. But I don’t get thinking that people would suspect you were lying if you apologized. Perhaps you meant to say that you don’t know why someone would accept your apology, no matter how much you meant it?
I am. But it does not satisfy people’s desire for an apology if I inform them that I regret something I did caused them pain. So neither the regret–nor the communication of it–is the same thing as an apology.
While I don’t typically put it this way because it kind of sounds like I’m trying to make myself look like some kind of moral saint–what you’ve said nevertheless basically the truth. Not that I’ll forgive them either way, though–I’ll forgive them or not based on various facts none of which have anything to do with whether they’ve apologized. People will typically apologize whether they’re sincere or not, so the fact that the apology was offered has nothing to do with how I should treat them concerning whatever they did.
Because there is nothing about the act of apologizing which in any way makes the sincerity of the apology probable. Just because I’ve said “I’m sorry” you do not have any reason at all to think I’m actually sorry–because I could easily have said it whether I were really sorry or not.
As you can see, this is part of a more general disease (and lack of comprehension) concerning pro forma speech acts in general.
What do you say or do when you step on someone’s foot?
“Sorry about that.” I don’t think this is really the kind of “apology” being discussed in the thread, but also, to be clear, I don’t mean to say I never apologize, rather, I’m complaining that the whole idea of it seems silly.
In my world, “Sorry about that” is an apology. A simple one, but nevertheless it is definitely one. This example shows that there are legitimate places for sincere apologies to be said and to be accepted.
We use the same words in all kinds of different places and they have different functions in those contexts. Why would “sorry” be exempt from this?
Sooo apologies are meaningless except when they’re not?
A private apology–or lack of one–is meaningful mainly as a way to gauge a person’s contrition or remorse regarding an act. The usefulness is that these things indicate how likely it is a person will create a similar situation in the future–I tend to avoid people who don’t show remorse when they’ve harmed me.
If there is sufficient reason to doubt that the words of an apology primarily reflect contrition or regret, then I agree the apology is worthless (except in cases like sarcasm, where the apology is actually expressing a lack of regret). However, even perfunctory apologies like “Sorry about that” serve a secondary purpose as a social lubricant. In 99.9% of cases I’ll likely think your stepping on my foot is inadvertent, so I don’t really need an apology. But that 1 in 1000 possibility is still out there, and given that it is a pretty well-established custom I’m going to start wondering if you don’t apologize.
Public apologies, of course, are more exercises in shame than true expressions of regret. That doesn’t really bother me, but it’s clear they aren’t in the same category as private apologies. They are meaningful only to the extent they change social prestige between two persons/groups (the offender and offendee), and as such are only relevant to and can only be judged by outside parties. In issuing his apology, Rush is only assessing it’s social effects, i.e. what’s the “sweet spot” for apologizing by which I can minimize the loss to my social prestige. He may even be thinking a move or two ahead by designing his apology in a way that seems generally acceptable but which (for esoteric reasons) would be unacceptable to the offended parties that demanded it. This might tempt them to “overplay their hand” and demand more, making Rush appear persecuted and thus reversing the effect on his prestige relative to them. I only include this detail to show the extent to which social calculations affect public apologies, far more so than any true, underlying sense of regret. To me, public and private apologies are two different animals.
Why are you offended by personal apologies? Do you not believe they can ever be sincere?