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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3341931" data-attributes="member: 4937">It's amazing where clear thinking takes you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I like. (Naturally) Continue.No, but I would say that the two are well correlated, but to support that I'd have to get into a definition of love which is always tricky, so, continue.Aha.  But is any actual forgiveness going on in the example?  I consider it a given that before you can forgive someone, that someone must owe you some thing.  They must have become in some sense indebted to you, either literally because of a promise of repayment or figuratively because they have perpetrated some injustice against you (real or perceived).  Hense, if some one say hits you in the face, I cannot forgive him for it (and it would be the height of hubris for me to do so).  Only you can offer him forgiveness because his debt is to you (there are complexities here that have to do with relationships, but lets ignore them for the sake of clarity).  So, imagine that you hold that compassion is weakness, mercy is folly, justice is perverse, humility is mere affectation, there is no truth, love is explotation, loyalty is stupidity, joy is illusionary and epemeral, life is pain, honor is a sham, or whatever it is that we agree is essentially non-virtuous and further you are the embodiment of these things.  The existence of people who hold otherwise is I think offensive to you, and any of thier protests otherwise in the face of your 'honest' appraisal of reality is insulting.  You see through thier shams, why can't they treat you with at least the respect that deserves?  You see that everyone is basically the same, only these 'stuck up snobs' maintain the pretense that they are better than you solely to confuse the week minded fools.  Do you forgive thier prior insults so easily when they final admit to you that you've been right along.  I don't think so.  If when fallen, you prove yourself strong, they might fear you - but by definition, they will never love you.  They will always hold resentment for your former slights, and no matter how strong you act it will only remind them of when you were weak, or foolish, or thought yourself better than them.  They will by definition, always hate you for what you did.  The first impulse will always be to punish and avenge, and 'forgiveness' will never be forthcoming - only a grudging willingness to overlook your past 'sins' in order to exploit you.  Which of course, as far as they are concerned, is the best anyone can (and should) expect.That any one would actually claim to be forgiving is to them something insulting and the thought must be squashed.   I'm reminded of the Orc behavior, who are told, and tell themselves that the elves are far more cruel and unforgiving than they are.I think that as soon as you start dealing with someone whose behavior is by definition bad, you see that this can't be the case.The way around this argument is to claim that good is by definition unforgiving, but I think if you do that you quickly reach internal contridictions where good is acting in a distinctly non-good way and you no longer have a meaningful distinction between good and evil.  Of course, if this is your goal...</blockquote>

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