An Internet search of the words, “forgiveness,” “reconciliation” and “revenge” provided interesting results. The sites for “forgiveness” were ones that dealt with physical, mental and spiritual health. The results for “reconciliation” were sites that dealt with spirituality, peace movements and coalitions, and heartwarming stories. The results for “revenge” focused on medium such as an apparently popular TV series named “Revenge,” videos, concerts and music. It was interesting to note that medium with “revenge” in their names seemed not to need to be related to the definition of revenge; just having it as a title seemed to attract attention.
An Internet search provided the most results for revenge at 277,000,000, with 55,900,000 results for forgiveness and reconciliation coming in third with 52,500,000 results. I believe this is because people tend to prefer sensationalism to warm and fuzzy. Pick up a newsletter or listen to the news online, on TV or on the radio and the topics discussed are generally bad news, not good news. Bad news sells. Good news doesn’t. Forgiveness and reconciliation are good for people; revenge is not.
The authors of our book write, “The best way to stop the cycle (of violence) is to switch to forgiveness and perhaps initiate reconciliation. It may be the best way; however, according to a comparison of the number of websites related to forgiveness, reconciliation and revenge, people apparently are more interested in revenge than either forgiveness or reconciliation.
You are right about revenge that people are more interested in watching revenge movies, and soaps which display violence, sex, betrayal and abuse that constitute action thrillers and emotional drama on screen. Although, Revenge stands as one of the best themes to make movies and TV serials on, in reality to gain personal and interpersonal peace, forgiveness and reconciliation is what we need the most. Love is the only way to break the revenge that is carried on for generations to cultivate hatred in young minds. Only Forgiveness has the power to break the cycle of revenge for a prospective future.
ReplyDeleteIt does seem that people are more interested in revenge than forgiveness and reconciliation. I wonder how much of that has to do with the later two being so strongly associated with religion? Many people in America have had some sort of upbringing in a Christian type indoctrination, and found that it fell woefully short of providing how to actually go about forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness has made it passed the realms of religion and become a “a cognitive process” with “steps” that can be followed but is still not widely taught. Reconciliation is still entrenched, for the most part, in religious meaning. In fact, what used to be called confession in Catholicism is now called reconciliation. Perhaps now that the scholarly community has decided to usurp the word reconciliation as a title for a definable process, it may become more popular?
ReplyDelete