Forgiveness

Because physical reality is a “complex adaptive system of complex adaptive systems,” the behaviors of any one agent influence the choices other agents have either by widening the range of alternatives or clarifying the current set available.

Agents may choose according to physical and natural laws, instinct and reflex, or in a uniquely human sense, by reason and rationale tempered by emotion. But choose they must.

This responsibility to choose foisted upon us puts each of us in a double bind of epic proportions: 1) we are forced to respond to situations created in part through the choices made by other agents in the system we may or may not know, and 2) the behaviors we exhibit through the choices we make will shape the situations facing other agents we may or may not know.

This suggests that others we do not know will make decisions that have a negative impact on our choices for which they are unaware AND there will be consequences of our thoughts, words, and actions which place others we do not know in unpleasantness or peril.

These binds are the seeds of true forgiveness in that we ask for it from those we do not know that we have harmed and grant it to those who have harmed us but do not know.