{as an aside I want to point out that what I publish on this site are the articles before they go through the editing process at the paper - it is possible that some things have changed in the print version...}
There is a phrase I never heard until I moved to New
Brunswick. I am not sure if it was made up here, or if other people just
believe it and do not say it out loud, “It is better to ask forgiveness than to
get permission.”
I do not know where people got the idea that this is true,
but it clearly is not. In no moral universe is it okay to do whatever you think
is best and then hope everyone will forgive you.
In fact, quite the opposite is true; one should be doing
almost everything out in the open, and for the good of the community, not for
your own ends.
I guess this is part of what bothers me about Lance
Armstrong. I don’t care if he is sorry. I don’t care if he is contrite. I don’t
care if he confesses. I care that he cheated and lied.
See, when I was growing up we had a thing called
consequences. I know it is out of vogue now, what with the millennial
generation and generation Y thinking they are the most important on the planet;
what with the era of self-entitlement we live in; what with the impunity we see
everyone from politicians to movie stars act with, but once upon a time you did
the right thing, or else.
And you did not need religious or moral reasons; you
actually were afraid of letting people down. It actually meant something when
your parents said they were disappointed in you. When someone punished you,
taking away privileges, or god forbid, taking you out back to get a switch, you
pretty much figured you deserved it.
So what happened to us? Did we get stupid? Bill Clinton has
an affair and says he is sorry. Stephen Harper changes his mind on most
election promises and says he is sorry. Lance Armstrong rigs athletics for
decades and says he is sorry. And we say, well, people will be people; and we
back them up.
Oprah Winfrey thinks Lance Armstrong is still a hero. That
is an actual headline. Why? What is heroic about using drugs to compete and
then lying about it?
I know even the Roman Catholics have slacked off the rules
of confession, sin, and the whole nine yards; but once upon a time it seemed to
me they had a pretty good system worked out that made a lot of sense. You could
sin, you could do bad things, up to a point, and be forgiven if you were
honestly sorry. Of course, that meant admitting you were wrong to a priest and
then doing penance, or paying the consequences for your sins.
The catch was you had to be truly sorry, you had to be truly
honest, and you had to pay for it. On top of that, in the good old days, there
were deadly sins; which is to say there were things you could do that there was
no way to say you were sorry for, that you had to work really hard to overcome:
these so called Capitol Sins: Lust, Greed, Gluttony Envy, Pride, Sloth and
Wrath were seen to be the root of all other sins, and so, soul destroying.
As an aside I would wager Lance is guilty of at least three
of these.
So no, going on Oprah and saying you are sorry does not cut
it.
But more to the point, for the rest of us as well, doing
what we want to do and then saying we are sorry does not cut it either. There
is no possible time when it is better to ask forgiveness than to never have
done anything wrong at all.
In fact, there is something really wrong with a culture that
thinks act first and think of the consequences later is a good way to go. We
need to really look at what we are doing to ourselves and the values we are
engendering in the kids we are bringing up. We need to start saying that there
are serious consequences for making the wrong choice.
And if Lance is guilty of anything, he is guilty of proving
me wrong and showing to the world that almost anything is all right if we say
we are sorry. I am afraid of where all this leads.
