I suppose it makes sense to apologise for something in the future which we might actually cause. than for something that happened a few centuries ago. How I laughed when I read this! I actually had to create a new tag for this post. How stupid can someone get when they accept responsibility for something that one hasn’t even witnessed; even the people whom this Mayor represents have not witnessed it? No one living has witnessed it let alone participated in it. What are they apologising for? Why on earth did we have a whole drama of tears and the “two pauses”? And to think that people actually fell for it and consider it a noble act. How stupid can people get?
It is like the whole caste based politics that happen in India. A person who wants to study medicine/engineering should be first capable of doing so. The govt. can pay their fees or help prepare them through specially designed classes/tuitions, but allowing people of lower calibre to enroll is stupid and defeats the purpose of education. Why not directly give them a degree? Why should the present generation pay for something that a few people did in the previous generations? Why should the present generation apologise for anything that the previous generations did? If we are going to use the argument of building our worth and edge based on the advantages that our previous generations have accrued for themselves and hence, for us, then we can keep extending it back to our caveman days and resolve matters with brilliant stupidity.
Every generation has its grabbers and losers. What we need to learn from history is how not to continue with any form of exploitation or any act of depriving another human being or living entity (animals and plants included) of the right to their space on this earth (well, weeds are exempt). Foolish indulgence in self-aggrandisation or self-pity is just that: foolish. If people can’t move on and live their life anew, then they really need psychiatric help and not Hallmark cards and apologies. Probably they should approach the govt. to provide the means (time, money, guidance, etc.) to accomplish what they want to do. How will an apology and the related drama help if nothing changes after the speech? How on earth, pray tell me, will having an Annual National Slavery Memorial Day help? So we all gather around in a park and talk about what happened 200+ years ago and then? What? What do we plan to do?
Stupid human beings!
Like A Feather... 
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Interesting. Such thoughts deserve an exhaustive handling surely, while this teaser does its job very well – it teases! – it begs for many more hundreds of words dedicated to it.# I agree with all that you say here of course, and the world is a haven of silence when all agree to agree :-).# To repeat myself, write write and write. It does you and the readers of your posts too, a lot of good.
But we cannot deny the fact that there is an identity in us besides the one with our own individuality – with our family, our ancestors, our country, our continent, our earth – not to speak of the massive atavism brought down into us in the form of curses and blessings from our forefathers as diseases and glories of the body , mind, life and soul. Thus we feel pride in all that we identify with, besides our own little 25 year old or 75 year old self, even our own earth if there is a contention with other planet dwellers.Whether you label it as stupidity or not , the identification exists – we take pride when India wins the world cup, we take pride that Indias invented zero, we are ashamed of the caste system, whether I practise it or not, the German youth feels guilty about what its older generation perpetrated regarding Jews, the layman American who doesn’t know the first thing about Physics is proud when an American wins the Nobel Prize, as is the other American who is ashamed of the Iraq injustice.I feel ashamed, when my son speaks bad English or my husband shouts aggressively at a cripple. As you too would feel pride when your child goes to Harvard, writes beautifully like Nabokov ;-), and wins the Nobel Prize for Literature eventually 😀 (Your heart will sing , “After all, whose child he is!!” 😀 )Facts irrefutable but with a label of stupidity surely? Much of reality and life is quite stupid to the outer eye, but maybe we should delve a little and see the point of it all, which I think is to get out of our little teensyweensy selves and have a universal consciousness. Maybe.There is a truth behind each identification that a human being lives – in his own self, in the country, in the universe, in the past, you name it. All is a way to get out of our little personality and have some larger entertainment maybe. My point is that this tendency to identify with others than ourselves, cannot be stopped with a mental decision of “I won’t stupidly identify with the guilt or greatness of anyone else other than my own self”. It simply is not intended to go.
But I would question with the basic notion of identifying with something. If one can and must identify with a country or a race, why not extrapolate it to the world? It is this identification that I find ridiculous. If someone can identify with a race and people whom he hasn’t met or even heard about beyond some reports, why shouldn’t I identify with my children and issue a billion apologies for all that they might do? Feeling ashamed or proud is equally silly, but even if we grant it its place, do you see a point in my claiming to be the reason behind my son’s Nobel Prize unless I actually sat with him through his drafts and actually mercilessly edited him to death? A universal consciousness doesn’t make sense in the way you put it. To be conscious is a very personal and immediate matter. One cannot be represent another’s consciousness nor be empathetically conscious. There is no truth but just another fragment of illusion that man creates for himself and we exalt it and fortify lest some silly Eroteme walks by and pricks it all with the pointed tip of his pen!!Of course things aren’t a mental decision but it is important to recognise the stupidity of such demonstration as the Mayor’s.BTW, I take no pride when India wins the World Cup! They are a bunch of 11-15 players who are being paid for enjoying a game and also winning it.
You are caught in an iron trap of your own only individuality and hence fail to experience what is an every minute experience for almost the rest of us – identity beyond ourselves with family, friends, country, earth so on and so forth. That doesnt mean that experiencing this universal identity doesnt exist or can be easily pricked by your logic that lacks the strength of experience. So nothing more to say but that unless you know it you cannot speak about it, except to say that it is stupid and unless I or others who live it easily enough are able to transfer our experience to you, we too cannot speak anything that would influence you. So we will rest as ourselves in our own selves as and how it flowers or stagnates. A sensible idea this, isn’t it? 🙂