Our imaginal forgiveness can change the world
Posted on March 20, 2018 by menata
What if we could go back in time and change things – anything – with no bad repercussions, what would you choose? When you put this to people, a common reaction is one of violence. They say, I would go back and kill Hitler, shoot Stalin, eliminate Pol Pot. The justification for this violence is – of course – the greater good. But where did we ever get the idea that you could stop violence by an act of violence? What puts people off the idea of doing this – if it were possible – is not this notion of “those who kill with the sword will die by the sword”, but that such an act would change history in unpredictable ways that couldn’t be controlled.
But why not think of going back in time and instead of committing an act of violence against those that have perpetrated atrocities, you could sit down with them and have a cup of tea, hear what happened to them, try and understand instead of projecting our ideas of “pure evil” that needs to be eliminated onto them, which is of course our own unmitigated darkness that wants to be banished.
I think of Hitler as a child, chained to a table in the kitchen by his violent and alcoholic father, terrified and devastated. Alice Miller, a Polish-Swiss psychologist, psychoanalyst and philosopher who died in 2010, maintained that there is one difference between a traumatized child that goes on to become a “monster” (Hitler), and one who goes on to be an artist (Proust), is the presence of a “witness” that helps the child overcome and transform their cruel past.
https://www.naturalchild.org/articles/alice_miller/adolf_hitler.html
