Regrets, Apologies and Do-overs.

[Renal Shutdown]

A post that was made in my stupid "Slag off SSH" thread started me thinking of a subject I've pondered on in the past, more than once.

You topic is bad and you should feel bad.

Now, I'm not sure if Akumayo was being serious or not, that's beside the point.Ã,  However, I did start wondering.Ã,  Is there anything I regret?Ã,  If I had to chance to go back, and put right what once went wrong, would I take that leap?

After giving the idea a fresh barrage of brain cells, I came to the same conclusion I always do:

"No".Ã, 

I'm not being egotistical and thinking I'm always right, and have always acted accordingly.Ã,  However, I don't actually regret anything I've done.Ã,  You see, the way I view the world, regret and remorse are for the most part pointless emotions.Ã, 

So, you feel bad for something you did.Ã,  Boo hoo.Ã,  Does feeling bad about something make you feel better in some way?Ã,  No.Ã,  You just end up feeling more and more guilty, and to what end?Ã,  At some point, you just have to move on and forget about the whole incident in the first place.Ã,  So why not just skip the whole mid-section and take things in your stride to begin with?

There's a whole ethical set of reasons to begin with, that's been indoctrinated into us from birth.Ã,  Animals don't feel remorse.Ã,  They do stuff on instinct alone.Ã,  Mankind, on the other hand, has to by a set of morals that with given ourselves.

For example, in courts, people get harsher sentences if they don't show remorse.Ã,  So you murder someone, and at the trial you show that you feel sorry for your actions.Ã,  You get life inprisonment.Ã,  You show no remorse, and they push for the death penalty.Ã,  Now, if the first person knew what they were doing was wrong, and feel bad now, why did they commit the crime in the first place?Ã,  That doesn't mean that if they get let out, they won't kill again.Ã,  As for the second person?Ã,  What makes them think that because he isn't showing remorse, that automatically means if he gets out he'll go on a killing spree?

So far, regrets are there for what?Ã,  To depress you, and to get you out of jail quicker.Ã,  Pointless and unjust.Ã,  Useful emotion, eh?Ã,  Personally, I can't think of another reason for the emotion existing.Ã,  This is the first of my points I'd like to open up to the rest of your opinions.

Now, don't get me wrong.Ã,  I'm not saying I don't learn anything from the situations in the past.Ã,  I go into similar situations with the experiences of the past, and use those to act in the future.Ã,  Learning from your faults is NOT regret.

Apologies.Ã,  Now there's another thing..

I apologise for certain things.Ã,  Accidents, over which we have no real control (IE, bumping into someone that you didn't see).Ã,  That sort of apology is just common courtesy.Ã,  Also, I'll apologise if there if someone has misunderstood me.Ã,  (for example, recently on IRC, someone thought I was being overly hostile towards them, which I wasn't.Ã,  The next time we spoke, I apologised for the confusion and we moved on.Ã,  We had really spoke before that, and he didn't really get me all that well).Ã,  Again, that kind of apology is there for politeness.

Now, if I walk up to someone, and punched them in the face as hard as I could, for absolutely no reason, how would I apologise?Ã,  It's obviously not going to be a genuine apology.Ã,  It was pre-meditated, and has no reason for an apology.Ã,  It can't be genuine, since you wouldn't have done it in the first place if you knew you were in the wrong.Ã,  An extreme example, I know, but it's just there as a point.

Onto my third and final subject.Ã,  If you had the opportunity to go back to a past event, and relive it with your current mindset, would you take it?Ã,  Now, I'm not interested in the whole Butterfly Effect scenario, nor chaos theory, nor cause and effect.Ã,  This comes mostly what from a close friend of mine has brought up in conversation on several occassions.

If given the opportunity, he'd want to go back to his school days and restart his life from there.Ã,  He'd pay more attention in class, get better grades, maybe go on to higher education.Ã,  He'd also live a more full life in the social areas of school, making more friends, standing up to bullies, helping the less fortunate, and generally being more mature and confident than he was the first time around.

Now, when I look at our two situations in school and now, I'm confused why he wants this.Ã,  In school, I was the one who was doing well, getting better grades and such whilst he was distracted and left with few qualifications.Ã,  Nowadays, he's almost a manager in a office, with his life in order.Ã,  I lift boxes for a rubbish wages, and am usually too drunk to pay bills.Ã,  He's looking to get a mortgage, whilst I'm close to eviction.Ã,  He's got a long-term girlfriend, whilst I'm terminally single.Ã,  He's got his life together, whilst mine is falling apart around me.

Yet, he's the one that wants to go back and improve his life, and I'm the one who wants to live each day like it's my last.Ã,  I can't for the life of me figure out why.Ã,  Is it upbringing?Ã,  Friends and family?Ã,  (He moved away shortly after school, so we only see each other every few months, we're still very close).Ã,  Does greed beget greed?Ã,  Is it that he just wants more?Ã,  Is there something that's genetic?Ã,  What makes our views so drastically different on this topic, when most other stuff is so similar?

For myself, I can only say that I wouldn't want to go back and change my life, because then it wouldn't be me anymore, assuming the things I change would after my memory of past experiences.Ã,  But wait, that's cause and effect again.Ã,  If I kept the original memories, and then gained new ones, then surely that's just prolonging life, something which I'm not a fan of.

So, to iterate the main points:

Regrets -Ã,  Do we need them?
Apologies - What are they worth?
Do-overs - Open subject.





Also, Akumayo and anyone who concurred with his sentiment:
The SSH thread was not in the least bit serious, and people who know better knew that.Ã,  I like SSH, and I'm certain he knows it.Ã,  Even for people who don't know me very well, it was blatantly obvious from reading the whole of my post that there was no animosity meant towards SSH.Ã,  He's done a lot for the engine and the community, and everyone knows that.

[Akumayo]

You topic is bad and you should feel bad.

Now, I'm not sure if Akumayo was being serious or not

I wasn't ^_^
It's a line similar to something Zoidberg says on Futurama.Ã,  After Fry announces that he cannot play the holophone anymore, Zoidberg says "Don't feel bad, the music was in your heart!"
As Fry begins to play, and to suck at playing, Zoidberg says "Your music is bad and you should feel bad!"

I wasn't sure anyone would make the connection... it was kind of vague.

[MrColossal]

"So, you feel bad for something you did. Ã, Boo hoo. Ã, Does feeling bad about something make you feel better in some way? Ã, No. Ã, You just end up feeling more and more guilty, and to what end? Ã, At some point, you just have to move on and forget about the whole incident in the first place. Ã, So why not just skip the whole mid-section and take things in your stride to begin with?"

"Now, don't get me wrong. Ã, I'm not saying I don't learn anything from the situations in the past. Ã, I go into similar situations with the experiences of the past, and use those to act in the future. Ã, Learning from your faults is NOT regret"

These are 2 conflicting views on the idea of regretting something. You do something that makes you feel bad or makes you regret doing it and you try not to do it again. You don't just go into a spiral of feeling more and more depressed. Regret is feeling bad about a situation that came to pass and wishing one could change it. Wishing one could change an event in the past doesn't mean you obsess over it and it rules your life and you do nothing but think about it. I regret things in the past and this is how I think about them "Oh, I could have handled that better..." and then I learn from that. Even if it does weigh on my mind for a few days I eventually get over it or overcome it or clear the air with the person that I feel regret over. I don't just "forget about the whole incident in the first place."

"So far, regrets are there for what? Ã, To depress you, and to get you out of jail quicker. Ã, Pointless and unjust. Ã, Useful emotion, eh? Ã, Personally, I can't think of another reason for the emotion existing. Ã, This is the first of my points I'd like to open up to the rest of your opinions."

And that is an extremely simplified take on the judicial process... It isn't as easy as "Woops! Sorry!"

So like I said, regret isn't this emotion that consumes you and changes your life. Sure it does to some people but some people also can't leave the house without touching a certain part of the door in the correct fashion. Regret is a learning emotion. The same as anger, pain, happiness and love. "I regret how I yelled at that person, I will take steps to not act like that again." "I was happy when I ate that apple, I will eat another apple some day." I've just learned 2 things about myself, 1) How I would like to act in a situation should it arise again 2) That I like apples.

Eric

[Renal Shutdown]

This is the definition of regret, from Answers.com (for which I'll be using as my original reference point when thinking of regret):

Verb-
1. To feel sorry, disappointed, or distressed about.
2. To remember with a feeling of loss or sorrow; mourn.

Noun-
1. A sense of loss and longing for someone or something gone.
2. A feeling of disappointment or distress about something that one wishes could be different.
3. (regrets) A courteous expression of regret, especially at having to decline an invitation.



Now, none of those say for definite that it is or isn't a learning emotion, although I do understand what you mean.  Personally, I consider the learning side of it to be seperate from the emotion itself, much the same as the Apples reference.  (I don't agree with pain being an emotion, but that's not what's relevant to this topic, so that can wait).  That said, your "feeling bad for yelling" point will cause me to ponder some more, at great lengths.

It's regret being the whole "wishing it could be different" idea is what really bothers me about the emotion.  I still don't know why it irks me so, which is in part the reason for this thread's existence.



I know it's extremely simplified, and I know it's not as easy as "Whoops, Sorry".  Showing remorse does often get a more lenient punishment, though.  Something I don't personally agree with.  Crimes should be punished for facts, not emotions.

[MrColossal]

Would you not agree that there is a physical pain and an emotional pain? I can feel pain and not have a spike in my eye, but hopefully that's not just me.

How can you serperate the learning from the emotion? The only way to learn from a regretful circumstance would then be to look at how the other person reacted and say "I think they are upset therefore I will not do that again because it would upset them again and people generally do not like to be upset, I have no preference one way or the other." You FEEL the regret which makes you want to LEARN from it. In my opinion.

Wishing something was different is maybe a part of the brain realizing that you are better than the way you acted. If I get pissed at someone for no reason and yell at them I will regret it because I freaked out for no reason and I should know better not to. Thinking back on how stupid I acted makes me feel stupid because I acted stupid. I don't want to be stupid so I wish I could go back and remember to be smart. If that makes sense.

"Crimes should be punished for facts, not emotions."

Well I don't understand how people get speeding tickets reduced to a non-moving violation but that's another story all together...

[The Inquisitive Stranger]

Regrets -Ã,  Do we need them?
Do I really have a right to tell people what they need and don't need?

Apologies - What are they worth?
When they're expected of people by default, they're worth practically nothing. Same goes with all other pleasantries.

Do-overs - Open subject.
I don't find it useful to think of regret in terms of doing something in your life over again; it's impossible, and therefore unproductive. Instead, I'd rather try and see how I can make my current situation better.

[Erenan]

Now, if I walk up to someone, and punched them in the face as hard as I could, for absolutely no reason, how would I apologise?  It's obviously not going to be a genuine apology.  It was pre-meditated, and has no reason for an apology.  It can't be genuine, since you wouldn't have done it in the first place if you knew you were in the wrong.  An extreme example, I know, but it's just there as a point.

What you think and how you feel are not always consistent. If you punch someone in the face in a fit of rage, it's very likely that later on you'll feel differently about whether or not you really should have done that. Things are never so simple as, "I want to punch him. *punch* I have punched him." The human brain is a bit more sophisticated than that.

When people apologize, it's usually because their focus has been shifted off of their own feelings and onto the other's.

[Helm]

"I want to punch him. *punch* I have punched him."

In fact, there is no "I" in the "want" neither when you punch, or when you feel bad about it an apologize later! Isn't that great?

Eric covered be about regret and apologizing. It's your system learning out of a predicament, and putting a commitment forth that you'll probably act differently next time. It's a matter of faith and dependability.

But there is no choice in any of these matters. In doing bad, in learning to not do it again. It doing it all over again... You only turn out to do the one thing you turn out to do. Regardless of the words you speak, your mechanism learns what it is to learn and acts accordingly under stress. The concept of 'choice' is hard, solidified regret ("if only I had done differently!").

That being said, to tear that concept down I think is rude, socially, and people do right to apologize to each other and try to be dependable.

[Gord10]

There are lots of things that I would never do again. The things that both made my life worse, and the evil intentioned acts (for example, I had shown a 'screamer' Flash animation (you know, that damn 'Find the 7 differences between these same photos' thing where a demon jumps out) to my elder sister [who is 8 years elder than me] just for the vengeance of something she didn't do with bad intention, she was really freaked out when she saw that demon and she started crying like mad. I really would never do it again.)

But I must confess that I really don't feel any regret for doing the bad things in the past. Because I think they had to be done. Because I know that I have done them with a really ruined mood (like breaking a mirror in my old school's WC with madness), or I was unaware of somethings.

I don't know if I should feel bad for not feeling any regret. I wouldn't do them again, but also the memories of them doesn't give me pain; I only feel sad for the things that happened to me as not the result of my acts (I always feel mad when I remember some past school exams that I got low mark just because they were too hard [which actually I get 'high mark' for such hard exams], and the scolds of my parents. Damn.) I don't feel sad for the past events that were on my control.

[SSH]

Regrets

I've a few, but they are probably too few or too small to mention. Sometimes, I did what I had to do and then you have to see it through, always. If you can, plan your course, and carefully take each step along the "road of life". But most important is to remember that what you do is part of what defines you and so what you did was your destiny, so to speak.

Yes, sometimes there will be times, as you may know, when one bites off more than one can chew, but through it all, when there is doubt, you've just got to eat it up and, where necessary,  spit it out. Face it all. Stand tall.

Spoiler

and do it myyyyyyyyy waaaaaaaaay......!

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