Summary: As I read your comments to last week’s post—in which I contended that forgiveness is never necessary because people’s behavior has no meaning—I could hear many of you thinking, “If events have no meaning, what’s the point of life? Why do anything? Why care about anything? In fact, how can you possibly care about anything if nothing has meaning?” These are thoughtful questions that I will answer in today’s post. (Please also take a look at my responses to last week’s comments at http://www.mortylefkoe.com/dont-forgive/# ( http://www.mortylefkoe.com/dont-forgive/#).) (http://www.mortylefkoe.com/wp-content/uploads/bigstock-Monopoly-300x225.jpg) The difference between consequences and meaning Events, including people’s behavior, usually have consequences. In my case, for example, my mom had to work two jobs when I was young and I had to work full time while going to graduate business school as a result of my dad not providing financial support. But his not giving us financial support had no meaning, by which I mean, I can’t draw any conclusion for sure from his behavior. I don’t know anything I didn’t know before, from his behavior. We have had clients who had been sexually abused earlier in life. The meaning they gave the abuse (the beliefs they formed) was that they were damaged goods, that men couldn’t be trusted, that life was dangerous, etc. When they realized the event had horrific consequences but it had no inherent meaning, and when the beliefs had all disappeared, they experienced a freedom they couldn’t have imagined possible. The event hadn’t been running their life; the meanings they had given the event had been. The role of values A belief is a statement about reality that feels true, but exists only in our mind. It is the meaning we gave to a series of meaningless events. We have beliefs about ourselves (e.g., I’m not good enough), people (e.g., people can’t be trusted), and life (e.g., life is difficult). These are meanings we gave to events in our lives. A value is a belief about what we think is right and wrong, good and bad. Examples include parents should (or shouldn’t) …, the function of government should be …, people should …, it is wrong to …. These and any other value statements are beliefs. You can’t “see” in the world that they are true. Many people would disagree with any value statement you make. They exist only in your mind. If value statements are always a type of belief and beliefs are always meaning we make up to explain meaningless events, then value statements are arbitrary and cannot be absolute truth. I’m not saying this is easy to accept, or that it doesn’t feel “wrong,” or that it seems to create many insolvable problems. Maybe it does. Wanting values to be objective and wanting your values to be the “right” values don’t make them so. Ken Wilber has summarized the conclusions of many people who study the development of consciousness. They have demonstrated that society and individuals go through stages of consciousness, with each stage having its own unique worldview. The three stages that exist in most third world counties today are Traditional (ethnocentric, family values, accepting religious dogma as absolute truth), Modern (world-centric, the Industrial Revolution, science, rationality) and Post Modern (pluralistic, civil rights for all, a concern for the well-being of all people and for the environment). People in each stage of development think that their worldview is correct and the others are wrong. If you have any question about this, look at how conservatives (largely at the Traditional stage) and liberals (largely at the Post Modern stage) view each other. (See almost any of Wilber’s many books for more information on stages of development.) You forgot your life is a game When you play a game, be it a sport like golf or tennis, or a card game like poker, or a board game like Clue or Monopoly,
