Tony White : The apology transaction

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

« The contradiction of the treatment contract | HomePage | Sleepy and the pull to nonlife »

Sunday, 30 December 2007

The apology transaction

There is a big hullaballoo in Australia at the moment. A man called David Hicks has just been released from prison and there is an outcry for him to apologise for being involved with terrorist groups. A number of years ago he was caught fighting with al-Qaida in Afghanistan against us (the good guys). He did a fairly long stretch in Guantanamo Bay prison and then a year back here in an Australian prison. His first comment to the media did not contain an apology and there are some who are saying that this is very bad of him.

So should David Hicks apologise?

Lets first sort the wheat from the chaff. The politicians calling for an apology of course also get the gain of looking good to the voters. The media calling for his apology also get the gain of getting a good story and thus making themselves more money. Indeed behind the scenes they would be hoping like heck that he does not apologise. There is much more profit made by a headlines which says David Hicks refuses to apologise than one saying David Hicks apologises.

Should the Ninjas apologise?

However, I am an Australian and I don’t get money or political points if David Hicks apologises or not. So do I think he should apologise? To me it is a non-question. I wouldn’t have even thought of asking it had I not heard someone mention it on the radio yesterday. To me if he wants to apologise then good on him and if he doesn’t then such is life. It really does not mean a lot to me one way or the other.

Him apologising for being involved with a terrorist group?. Well it really is all just a matter of perception isn’t it?. To the bad guys in Afghanistan I am the terrorist. I am sure there is someone over in Afghanistan just like me who sees him self as one of the good guys and me as one of the bad guys, and he could produce a list of all the bad things that me and my guys have done to him and his guys.

In war sooner or later everyone ends up being the bad guys

Did you know that because I think like this I have a high level of moral development. Holley molley, maybe I don’t have so many narcissistic personality traits as I claim to!!! Me with a good moral development!!!! If I think this way I am at the level of “Principled Conscience”. Below are Kohlberg’s six levels of moral development

Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)
1. Obedience and punishment orientation
(How can I avoid punishment?)
2. Self-interest orientation
(What's in it for me?)
Level 2 (Conventional)
3. Interpersonal accord and conformity
(The good boy/good girl attitude)
4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation
(Law and order morality)
Level 3 (Post-Conventional)
5. Social contract orientation
6. Universal ethical principles
(Principled conscience)

Those pollies calling for D. Hicks’ blood for not apologising are at the Pre-conventional level - punishment orientation. They have retarded moral development. They have the moral development of a 4 year old child. Oh well, such is life.

However, when the Bali Bomb killed those young Australians I wanted blood from the bad guys. I thought Abu Bakar Bashir was someone who engaged in far to much onanism and hoped he died a slow and painful death. So I had retarded moral development then, but that was 5 or 6 years ago now and life goes on and it seems best to me to move on in my own head so I suppose that allows me to have a morality of principled conscience now.

Abu Bakar Bashir's christmas present

If Mr Hicks did apologise what does that actually mean?

So what is the apology transaction?. He could just apologise and not mean it, but if he did mean it what does that mean in psychological terms. Perhaps the apology transaction could be as such

Obviously there has to be the Adult to Adult transaction of the apology and then for the transaction to be complete the other party must accept the apology. In psychological terms there would be more to it than just words. The person apologising must also feel something about what he is saying. The classic body language of the apologiser is the hanging of his head which would seem to reflect some sense of shame in self and bad feelings about what they have done.

The person being apologised to would then have some feeling reaction to that and I suppose it would be a sense of feeling good and of course that other thing called revenge. The person feels avenged. So in this way the apology transaction is a bit of a sicko transaction. If David Hicks apologises to me then I feel good because I can see he feels bad. I don’t particularly want to do that. I don’t want to feel good in myself because someone else is feeling ashamed and bad. Indeed one could define that as a type of neuroses. So in this way the apology transaction is reflective of a neurotic condition.

I have mentioned this before in other posts on revenge or which those with rose coloured glasses like to call justice. You are actually left worse off. If someone apologises to me and I see their shame then I have to deal with that in my self. If they did not apologise in the first place then I would not have to deal with it.

Such is life

Some will say that if you get the apology then you are more able to move on. I would agree that there is some truth to this. Seeing a person who assaulted you get imprisoned can be used by you to psychologically move on. However that is by no means guaranteed at all and it takes some hard psychological work to achieve the ‘move on’ if you get the revenge or not. In my view the situation just gets more psychologically complicated so most would be left worse off psychologically than if they had not got avenged in the first place.

That may not seem just and right, but hey, no one ever said life was fair.

Graffiti

11:25 Permalink | Comments (34) | Email this

Comments

Hi Graffiti

Saying sorry looks easy according to that diagram. I feel sorry for Hicks beacause he is being set up as an object for australians to hate. (Blame Transaction) He hasn't got an easy road ahead however I am sure he has an interesting perspective of life these days; perhaps he could get speaking dates?

kenoath

Posted by: kenoath | Sunday, 30 December 2007

Hmmm,
I am with you Graffiti, I wouldn't be looking for an apology from Hicks either; it would be a meaningless.

You say
"... thought Abu Bakar Bashir was someone who engaged in far to much onanism and hoped he died a slow and painful death. So I had retarded moral development then, but that was 5 or 6 years ago now and life goes on and it seems best to me to move on in my own head so I suppose that allows me to have a morality of principled conscience now."

Do you think part of this move on is that we are, as a society, starting to get a little bit desensitised to terrorism? That our outrage is lessening the more we hear on the news? Until of course a bad attack close to home happens again.

Apology is a strange one. I don’t know, there are cases when I think apologies are appropriate and can be sincere and good to both parties. I need to have a think a bit more on that one and come back!

Cheers

Kahless.

Posted by: kahless | Monday, 31 December 2007

Hi kenoath,

The government and the press are certainly pushing the lets hate Hicks line but interestingly he has a supporter base as well. But as you say his life is changed for ever. Having Guantanamo Bay as your place of residence for 6 years courtesy of the US government makes you somewhat unique and people will react differently to. Also apparently he is not the sharpest tool in the shed. To me he is really not here nor there, somewhat inconsequential.

Cheers

Graffiti

Posted by: Graffiti | Monday, 31 December 2007

In this country kahless I am not sure if we are desensitizing to terrorism.

Regarding the Bali Bombing that was as I say 5 years ago.

"Time cures all". Whilst this is certainly a generalization there is some truth to it in my view.

Bad things happen in life and when we have strong emotional reactions to them we are then left in a difficult psychological situation.

If we don't resolve it in our own head then we get emotionally stuck at that point and that interferes in how we live in the here and now. From a healthy psychological point of view over time the Bali Bombing is meant to become a memory in our minds that has a small but not major emotional reaction for us. If you can achieve this point then you have 'gotten over it' and moved on.

However with things like terrorism there are powerful forces in society like the press and the government that don't want people to get over it because they make other gains from people remaining traumatized by it.

Most people will naturally work through their 'trauma' reactions about such matters and the event looses it emotional significance over time. I would see this as different to desensitization. But I could write another thing on desensitization as well!

Apology transaction
My take on it

Most people when they receive an apology feel good or better. What is it about the apoligizer that would allow me to feel better. Maybe a number of things and one is that I see the apologizer feels apologetic, ashamed and basically bad. The person is feeling unpleasant emotions.

So I feel good because I see the other person feeling bad. Firstly I don't want that for myself because a person who feels good because another person feels bad could hardly be defined as being a happy and content person. Secondly, due to this state of affairs just mentioned one could mount an argument that the apology transaction is really just a set of neurotic behaviours.

Tony

Posted by: Tony | Monday, 31 December 2007

I think you're missing a bit in the apology transaction.

For an apology to be genuine, the Parent has to have a moral belief that was I have done is actually wrong. That I'm not apologising becoz you think I should or to avoid punishment.

I can't do the drawings to illustrate my point, but both Parent ego states would believe that what was done was actually wrong. The Adult would agree. My Child would feel shame initially, the other person's Child possibly anger, disappointment whatever. After the apology, both Child ego states would then have a positive feeling, mine possibly relief, the other person's, possibly justification.

However, I think both Parent ego states have to have the identical belief that what I did was wrong.

In this way, the apology transaction is no longer a "sicko" transaction but possibly a cathartic transaction.

Posted by: Madeleine | Monday, 31 December 2007

Yes I agree with you Graffiti. The news had the usual suspects in this case to speak out for Australians. The head of RSL made rather weak and patriotic comments about Hicks being a traitor and the high court judge recently made a statement that Hicks act of treason still warrants close scrutiny etc.

They sure give him some power considering he is not "the sharpest tool in the shed"

I think Australians are quite forgiving and that we as a nation tend not to hold complicated grievences towards it own kind.

I see the remarks of the RSL chief and the high court judge to be very 'American'. Americans take a more fanatical approach to traitors and seem to set up these psychological 'obects' of hate for some reason.

kenoath

Posted by: kenoath | Monday, 31 December 2007

Madeleine made the point I was trying to figure out.

Apology can in some instance bring healing, though granted these are probably rarer when so many factors have to be in place.

Feeling better after an apology isnt always about knowing the other person feels bad, but rather in some cases a sincere acknowledgement that they didnt want to hurt you.

Posted by: kahless | Monday, 31 December 2007

Happy New Year my friends!

Posted by: kahless | Tuesday, 01 January 2008

Madeleine and kahless,
thanks for your comments and I still think there is some part of an apology that is neurotic.

A person can say,

"I am sorry I did that bad thing to you"

this can be said purely from Adult and thus it would be just words with no feeling or meaning. Most would feel this is a fake apology.

If whilst saying it the person did feel self dislike, bad, contrite and so forth then the person being apologised to would feel that it is a sincere apology and then feel better in them self. If the apologiser does not feel self dislike then the apology is insincere. It is seeing the self dislike that allows the person being apologised to see a sincere apology and thus feel better. To me that is neurotic.

I may also feel good that they sincerely did not want to hurt me as you say kahless, but without me seeing the other person disliking self then the apology is seen as insincere by me and thus the apology does not "work".

Tony

Posted by: Tony | Tuesday, 01 January 2008

I concur Kenoath that most Australians are a forgiving bunch and are prepared to give people a second chance.

Of course there are some who are always on the outlook for an opportunity to vent their vitriol and anger at someone else. So I suppose David Hicks in 10 years time when he is shopping at the local supermarket will have some jerk come up to him and give him an angry spray.

I suppose he will have to learn to live with that.

Graffiti

Posted by: Tony | Tuesday, 01 January 2008

Tony, I still disagree that there is some part of every apology that is neurotic.

For instance, last night a friend threw the ball to the dog and accidentally hit me in the head. She apologised. I don't see anything neurotic in that. I also didn't see her as disliking herself, it was an accident.

Posted by: Madeleine | Tuesday, 01 January 2008

Hi Madeleine,
I hope you have not got a sore head now!

Lets look at another kind of apology, the confessional. That is about saying sorry and apologising. And of course when you apologize you have to pay penance. If you don't then you are making a meaningless apology or confession.

The point here being that if you do something wrong to some one then you have to pay some form of penance or price or the apology is baseless. If someone says sorry to you and then feels perfectly fine as soon as they have said it, would you take that as a meaningful apology?

Tony

Posted by: Tony | Tuesday, 01 January 2008

Yes, I would if I felt the apology was genuine. I don't really need any "penance" as you call it. To me the donfessional is not about apologising, it's about proving how bad you are. That, to me, is neurotic. A genuine apology is something that comes from the heart.

I agree that many apologies are neurotic and people apologise for all sorts of things they supposedly do "wrong". Hence the confessional.

But I believe that there are times when I (and everyone else) does something that is totally against our own personal moral beliefs, and we need to do something either internally or externally to resolve the cognitive dissonance between our behaviour and our beliefs.

That is why I see the Parent being involved.

Posted by: Madeleine | Tuesday, 01 January 2008

Dear Graffiti, I apologise for a couple of tough and controversial comments that I have made on your blog in the past year. I regret some of my actions including reaming some of your ideas for my own blogs. I have been competitive in some regards and feel embarassed about stepping over the dual blog-line occasionaly. I am a "live and learn" kind of guy.

I am aware of my actions mostly and I am doing the best to rectify my approach because I respect you as a person.

Hmm, that sort of feels good so far Graffiti.

I am being genuine in a kind of experiencial way. Apologising feels like taking a risk of sorts because I am not sure about what your response might be. You could ignore me, dismiss me or not accept my apology. I might feel bad in that case.

I could also be enabling myself into neurotic type of guilt by thinking that saying sorry will solve my problems. That I should be always sorry and therfore still accepted in the group albeit dependant like. (lucky I do not feel low on self esteem)

Now I may have put you on the spot Graffiti, by almost cornering you into saying what I need to hear next and what others would naturally think would be your response. For that I am sorry too.

jeez, it can be complicated saying sorry.

sorry

kenoath

Posted by: kenoath | Tuesday, 01 January 2008

The confessional is definately neurotic lol !!

I remember as I kid I used to have to go to confession every week so I was 'pure' before taking holy communion.

I remember some weeks not thinking of anything to say, so I made sins up so I had things to say. Pretended I had stolen something, stuff like that!
:-)

!!!

Yes confessional is neurotic!!!

Though I dont remember ever confessing that I had made up sins to confess, so I mustnt of confessed all!!!

However Tony, I am still with Madeleine, though I havent offered an example, so I will pop back later.

Cheers.