If you look at yourself as an wronged individual (without reference to what has happened to other people) you may see forgiveness of the wrong-doer as your responsibility within your ethical system. (Jesus taught that we should forgive people 7 x 70 times.) If you have been taught that forgiveness is good for yourself, and good for the wrong-doer, then it makes sense.

Whatever you believe about forgiveness, you describe a situation where wrong has been done to you, to others, and will likely continue to be done. You describe an issue of systematic wrongdoing that demands not forgiveness, but correction. It's a matter of obtaining justice. (And in organizations, The problems are usually stacked up several layers deep.)

Should you hate? I don't know. It depends how well hate works for you, I guess. If it serves as a motivator what sustains you through a long and difficult campaign to gain justice, it might be useful. Usually, though, hate eats people up and ends up undermining their capacity, rather than increasing it. Hate leads us astray quite often.

A burning desire for justice is better than hate from a psycho-social POV. Burning desire helps one maintain a head of steam without destroying one's self.

Myself -- I don't care that much about what the great philosophers would say. You say that it's about
a) self respect b) accountability and c) moral obligation to others. I'd say you are on the right track.

Now a question: Did the situation you describe really happen to you? (such things do happen. Lots of people get fucked over in organizations that harbor malevolent agents (which is many of them).

I don't know...

From a Buddhist perspective, one must trust in Karma and good and bad experiences can be explained in terms of merit and sin of previous lives. As you can see, explanation given, there's no place for hate or even gratitude. Everything that happens does so for good reason.

From a Christian perspective too, forgiveness is very important. Hate and revenge just don't figure in Christianity. Perhaps, here too it doesn't make sense. Lacking the Karma principle, it becomes difficult to explain suffering or wrong but I've heard many say that trials and tribulations are a test of faith in God.

So, from a religious perspective, hate is the wrong thig to do.

From a philosophical perspective, I believe in what some say ''No one is knowingly bad.'' There's always some deficiency in a sinner - ignorance of morality, lack of empathy, lust for power, greed, etc. So, sinners or evildoers need sympathy, rather than hate.

There seems to be a conflation of tolerance with forgiveness here.

An incident from Educating Greater Manchester: A white van is delivering to the school, and some kids are inspired to draw rude things in the dust on the back. The head tells us it's the sort of thing he might have done himself as a kid, but the reputation of the school is at stake, so he comes down quite hard on the kids, all the time trying to hide his smile.

It does not require hatred to prevent wrong-doing; love can be quite as vigorous.

Plato argues in his "Gorgias" that it is better to suffer wrongs than it is to cause them, that a person who causes harm is to be pitied, because the spiritual harm which an evil person does hurts themselves more than the harm they do to the others.

In reading your example I kept thinking about Sheriff Joe Arpairo of Arizona, who was recently convicted of criminal contempt of court. He was scheduled to begin a 6 month prison term in October but he was just pardoned by President Trump.

If I were one of the people who had been wronged by Sheriff Arpaio, whose racial profiling was inordinately anti-Mexican I would be very upset that he escaped justice, by the President's right of pardon. Plato's suggestion is that Arpaio does not escape justice, rather that his injustice, which was not punished, festers in his spirit, that he cannot forgive himself and he ought to be pitied as an evil, mean spirited person.

-- Wow, great answer. I just finished reading "Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration" by Charles Griswold. Amazing that someone could write a book of nearly 300 pages on the simple topic of forgiveness - and, though he does discuss political apologies, he really did a lousy job of covering forgiveness in the political arena.

But it was interesting to learn in his book that the ancient Greek philosophers had little to say about forgiveness. As I understand, they kind of modeled themselves after the gods. They considered themselves "virtuous," and therefore in no need of being forgiven. At the same time, there was no need to forgive ordinary people, who were beneath their contempt and really couldn't hurt them, anyway.

So I'm going to have to find some more recent philosophers to study. But, as you suggest, the great philosophers may not have the answer here. I've just begun studying the literature, but I feel like I'm kind of exploring new territory.

The person in my question is a composite of many people I met while I was a teacher. I was tyrannized to an extraordinary extent before I opened my eyes and began scrutinizing the school district. I quickly discovered that the corruption was and remains unbelievable. I became a whistle-blower and a political activist. Eventually, I got laid off.

I absolutely agree that it's important for people to have "a burning desire for justice." However, I think hate may be a valid part of the equation, too.

My hate has gone through several stages. I know from experience that hate can be a miserable and largely unproductive experience. After I got laid off, my hate evaporated as I focused on survival. Long story, but I went through several really painful things that had me thinking my life was over.

After i began recovering, my hate suddenly came flooding back - but it was very different. Think about a person like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, who obviously weren't happy about being endless victims of racism, but who were calm and collected and very eloquent.

I want to learn more about another of my heroes, Che Guevara. Rather than spend his whole life philosophizing about injustice, he picked up a gun and waged war against the bad guys. After the war, he executed more bad guys.

Yet he never came across as "hateful." Was he driven solely by a burning sense of justice? I think he must felt a measure of hate, or something similar (contempt?), for the scum he was fighting. How can one love one's children without hating those who abuse them?

What does this statement mean?: "Jesus taught that we should forgive people 7 x 70 times." Is there some significance to the numbers 7 X 70, or was it just his way of saying we should ALWAYS forgive?

I'm not really religious, so my philosophical belief system is more secular.

- Thanks for your thoughts. I'm not religious, so I don't give much thought to things like Christianity, karma, etc. I do have some admiration for "Eastern religions," though I've never really studied them. But if I give up the good fight and just wait for karma to punish the bad guys, then I'm essentially abandoning my children (the students still trapped in our derelict schools).

I'm essentially a naturalist; my first love in life was animals. I see mother animals of many different species fighting to the death to protect their young, and my instincts are the same.

- Good story. Unfortunately, there are many kinds of wrongdoing that love can't even begin to stop. All the loving in the world won't stop the U.S. government from waging eternal war or exploiting other countries, for example.

- Thanks for the comment. I'm very skeptical of the claim that evil people "stew in their own juices." I've dealt with many corrupt public officials, and I don't think I've ever seen any of them display the slightest hint of guilt or remorse. They ACT guilty - they hold secret meetings, they're very evasive, and I've seen them literally sneaking out the back door in the middle of the night. So they KNOW they're doing wrong. Yet they continue doing wrong until the day they die, and the number of wrongdoers who break the silence and admit their guilt or blow the whistle on their colleagues is virtually nil.

P.S. I'm working on a book about politix (a word I coined to described the broad spectrum of politics, including the workplace, political philosophy, etc.), and I want to include a chapter on ethics, focusing largely on this topic. You have all given me a lot of interesting things to think about.

What does this statement mean?: "Jesus taught that we should forgive people 7 x 70 times." Is there some significance to the numbers 7 X 70, or was it just his way of saying we should ALWAYS forgive? — David Blomstrom

Jesus had just been asked something along the lines of "Isn't the standard 7 enough times to forgive somebody?" Yes, the up shot is that one should be very forgiving - 490 is a lot more than 7. "7" is one of several numbers that have sort of 'magical' or traditional narrative value in the Bible. 3 and 12 also. (Lots of fairy tales involve 3, like 3 wishes, 3 little pigs, 3 bears, Billy Goats Gruff (3 of them) and so on. Weren't there 3 witches in Macbeth? Two witches or four witches just isn't done!

Che Guevara was sort of my hero back in the late 60s. I didn't know much about him, (still don't) but I liked the button with his likeness on it (so much for radical philosophy). Castro, Guevara, et al were fighting the good fight. They took a much higher road than the Cuban dictator Batista.

I don't think hate is necessarily a bad thing. I have hated the petty administrators and supervisors in school districts, nonprofits, state offices, and so forth quite heartily. I think hate is reasonable IF there is a reasonable foundation of just cause and thinking behind the hate, it's externalized (not turned inward), and doesn't include arson, rape, and bloody murder as a solution.

Hate is different than free-floating hostility which feels like justified hatred, and can lead to one going overboard. Been there a couple of times.

Sin and forgiveness doesn't figure largely into secular values, but it does figure into secular psychotherapy. It is beneficial to "dismiss the charges we hold against others" in order to get beyond the rut of perseverating about wrongs done to us, especially if we won't or can't do anything about them. It's also essential that we be able to forgive our own deficiencies, rather than dwelling on our shortcomings.

There are many people who are very admirable in their actions, and it is very worthwhile to learn about them. Ralph Nader, Cezar Chavez (United Farm Workers), Eugene Debs, Che Guevara, Karen Silkwood, and a few thousand others.

- Eugene Debs is another of my heroes, though I've never thought of whims a "hater." I haven't studied him in detail, but he seems like a person who simply had a sense of justice and who persevered. But if there was a revolution, and Debs wound up in charge, I suspect he wouldn't have executed anyone. ;)

Debs + Guevara = you must be a socialist?

I haven't read that much about Debs, though I do have a couple of books about him that are on my list (along with a few dozen others). I've read some Marx, and DeLeon (Socialist Labor Party). I belonged to a group of DeLeonist socialists who split off from the SLP--they found it just too stuck in its own bureaucracy. We met and published a paper for... 25 years?--give or take a few, and had weekly discussion groups for that long, too. It was a revolving door group -- people came and went, a few stayed. People read the little monthly paper and said they liked it. Eventually the group got too old and literally started to die off. But I always thought the principles of the group were sound.

DeLeon believed that workers within a democracy had a real opportunity to try to gain power through labor organizing coupled with political organizing. I think that is true. It's also true that capital is quite capable of using the same system to suppress labor, which it has done. ("The labor movement didn't fade out; it was murdered.")

I like the flavor of the IWW too, though it is not much of a force these days.

All the loving in the world won't stop the U.S. government from waging eternal war or exploiting other countries, for example. — David Blomstrom

True, but all the hating doesn't seem to do much either. On such a grand historical scale, it is impossible to analyse what effective action would consist of; still I would suggest that a reduction in hate all round is the way to go, rather than the opposite.

One might say that the US is somewhat of a loud-mouthed bully and littler lout in our big round playground. We need to deal with that and restrain their bad behaviour, and eventually persuade them to put their considerable talents to better use. Unfortunately, it does not seem that we can rely on the Good Headmaster to do it for us.

Well, your POV makes sense too. Why rely on the promises of religion - they could be empty and false - and let an injustice continue? Why not act, if you can, and right the wrong?

However, you must be absolutely certain about your course of action; that you haven't overlooked every relevant aspect of the issue.

Is the principal really bad? Are his victims really good?

To answer these questions you'd need to be a clairvoyant - a God. Only someone who knows everything - in this case the true nature of the perp and victims and perfect knowledge of morality - may don the robes of a judge (in my opinion).

- The victims include both adults and children. I will always side with children over adults. As for the adults tyrannized by principals, they're all over the map, of course. But most are ordinary folks just doing their jobs. I've studied enough "derelict principals" to know what I'm talking about. Or Google "Clint Webb," who kidnapped and murdered his disabled landlord BEFORE he was hired by his brother in law and put in charge of a girls' locker room, after which he continued to receive paychecks while he was in prison on other various charges, until he was eventually nailed for raping a fourteen-year-old-student. He no longer works for the school district, but he now has nearly four dozen felony convictions, and I don't think he's even in prison. I compiled a list of over two dozen principals who were guilty of everything from stealing from the student fund to having sex with students. There's no gray area here.

- I'm a big fan of socialism in the broad sense of the term. I don't know if I'd want to live in a communist country, though I think other countries ought to have the right to choose whatever system works for them. I'm really attracted to what some call a "mixed economy," combining capitalism and socialism. Some say we'll have no choice but turn to capitalism as the global population increases and natural resources decrease. The sad thing is, socialism hasn't been much kinder to the environment than capitalism. ;)

- "True, but all the hating doesn't seem to do much either."

How can we tell? U.S. citizens have been so brainwashed into civility, they scarcely know what hate is - except when they're hating Muslims, communists or some other bogeyman. I've run for public office several times, and I ran hard-hitting campaigns that hit below the belt, and the local chamber of commerce clearly didn't like it. If other candidates grew a pair of you-know-what and began speaking out, we might be able to change things. The meek clearly aren't going to inherit the earth.

"We need to deal with that and restrain their bad behaviour, and eventually persuade them to put their considerable talents to better use. Unfortunately, it does not seem that we can rely on the Good Headmaster to do it for us."

Bingo. The people running the show are hard core criminals. If Gandhi could come back from the dead and hit them with his tactics, they'd just have him assassinated or "disappeared."

I'm not clear on what it is you want to say.

1. The guilt of the principal is clearly established beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law. In other words should we, given this knowledge, act upon it?

Or

2. The principal's guilt is suspected and should we act on this suspicion based on our own moral standards?

If it's 1, then the best action is one that's decreed by a cour of law. Taking personal action amounts to vigilante justice and we all know two wrongs don't make a right

If it's 2, then we're at risk of making an error. Are we jumping to conclusions derived off of our prejudices and emotions?

The people running the show are hard core criminals. — David Blomstrom

It's odd how criminals always have a hard core, whereas we have a soft core - presumably. And yet you run a hard hitting below the belt campaign - I thought hitting below the belt was what criminals with hard cores did to people with soft cores?

I think this is an unproductive way of looking at humanity, to divide us into the righteous and the criminal, and ask how the righteous can defeat the criminals, because you will inevitably find that the righteous must become criminals to win. Which defeats the purpose.

Instead, let us oppose criminality in ourselves and others; let us support hitting above the belt; let us vote for honest politicians, and those who do not provoke us to hatred to gain our support. Let us oppose criminality, but support criminals to become more honest, and haters to become more loving.