If you look at the political as personal the question becomes, “Why do people insist on clinging to emotions which may cause them life-long unhappiness and damaged physical/mental health?” Seems counter-intuitive and puts them at a disadvantage to whomever they believe has harmed them. But to hold on to uncomfortable emotions for any length of time requires some perception of benefit or humans wouldn’t do it.
The answer to that question will lend insight, I believe to the larger picture. There are a lot of people who seem to have learned that adopting a victim’s stance is a way to force change in others.
A victim is justified in his feelings, his hurt, his anger. This period of his awareness may last for a long time. But living life as a victim will only hurt him in the end. At some point a choice has to be made to rise above the expectations that all will be made well by others and to start making things well for one’s self.
This represents a change of attitude and self-perception and not a matter of earthly renumerations. This is sound victim’s healing theory. Couldn’t it also apply to groups of people?
On the other hand one could be tempted to say that it’s simply a political stance for material gain and has little to do with a peoples’ personal indignation.
I imagine it’s a little of both. Nonetheless it is healing at the personal level that heals at the political level. I don’t think you can pay it off or legislate it on either side of the breach.
One has to move on. There were many grave abuses in the 1930’s and 1940’s that are more-or-less forgiven by now, as they should be with the perpetrators dead.
Or if malicious leaders propagandize to encourage evil thoughts to fester. (I’m thinking specifically of a people who bitterly want to “return to their homes” even though the grandparents who lived in those homes are now too senile to remember them.)
Jackmannii, I agree the statute of limitations must be self-determined to a large degree. We can’t force the one-eyed man to turn his hand away from vengeance. That having been said, there are two things we could do which would make it easier to effect peaceful change in this world. The larger community can and should support those who choose turning away from retribution.
Firstly, we, as in the rest of the world, need to take more interest in peaceful protest and be sure to turn our ear towards the grievances expressed through such channels, instead of only paying attention once people start killing or dying. The last thing we should do is put barriers in place to punish people like Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela. For the most part they were the wronged party simply standing up for themselves, not demanding retribution, simply an end to ongoing injustice.
Secondly, we need to make it clear that violence and intolerance in the name of vengeance is unacceptable. If you are an Alawite in Syria you know the majority of the country, whom Alawites have oppressed for years, are coming for your blood. If the Alawites in power could step aside without being slaughtered in a vengeance-fueled bloodbath they may be more willing to do so. But, as things are, they fear if they take their boots off the neck of the people they oppress that they’ll find a boot on their neck the next day. If it were clear to the non-Alawite population of Syria that the rest of the world will not tolerate a wave of retribution after, or as part of, a revolution then it may reduce bloodshed by giving the Alawites a way out.
Of these two steps, we’re really only somewhat good at the first one. All of the leaders listed served jail time and had to struggle to be heard in their time. As for being willing to live alongside our former oppressors without taking retribution, we’re a long way from that I’m afraid.
I think you have it backwards. The statute of limitations is when it *starts *being funny.
Absent any good reason for a rule of thumb, I’d say the upper bound should be when the last person who was alive when it happened is dead, so figure 100 years give or take. So we’re damn near there for Archduke Ferdinand, a ways to go for Nagasaki, and a long, long time for 9/11.
Eh, plenty of people express personal pride in the accomplishments of ancestors or forbearers that are long dead. I guess if your going to do that, it makes sense for people to hold the wrong-doings of those same ancestors against you as well.
That said, a lot of the time anger or arguments about issues in the far distant past aren’t really emotional because people are really worked up about Alex the Great or The Field of Crows or whatever, they’re proxy arguments for much more recent and salient events.
Those recent events are often echoes of the things people are claiming to be worked up about, though. Like, the way anti-black racism works in the U.S. nowadays can be pretty straightforwardly traced back to slavery. So the statute of limitations hasn’t run on that; it hasn’t even started. Saying “well, slavery is in the past, we should forget about it” is fine except that it makes it impossible to discuss, much less confront, racism today.