Since the question keeps coming up, I realize that I hadn’t yet fully stated why having the alien entity in “The Path of Sorrows” going around forgiving everyone doesn’t work for me, and effectively breaks the story for me, like I’d promised to.
Hopefully this takes care of that.
In Show #236, a listener feedback episode, Tim reads an email from Adam in Idaho questioning why Summer has a problem with the scenario of a stranger granting forgiveness. He ends up going all oranges and apples, making illogical comparisons between forgiveness, acts of kindness and acts of evil intent, but overall had a decent question:
Now, for someone to do something nice for you, they have to make the effort. Even if they say they forgive you, they go out of their way to say it. Is it not possible then, that the simple fact that the creature told the crew in turn, I forgive you, enough? Didn’t it put their minds at ease? They needed to be told by someone else they were forgiven, because it wasn’t in their own power to forgive themselves. After all, isn’t it the thought that counts?
Also, isn’t it simply Summer is thinking too deeply into the matter? Would she have accepted it better if he had damned them for what they had done? By Summer’s line of reasoning, a killer can’t kill someone who is a stranger to them, because, why would he kill someone he doesn’t know? Now, don’t get me wrong, I like Summer, but, I guess I can’t understand why the creature forgiving them is such a problem for her.
Apples and Oranges, Adam.
Random Acts of Kindness have nothing to do with forgiveness, guilt, absolution and redemption, unless someone is performing those acts out of guilt for bad deeds they’ve committed in the past and are working to atone for (the premise of the show “My Name is Earl”, I’m told).
I’m not going to address Adam’s ludicrous premise of how my “line of reasoning” would also have to apply to killing, because that is so far out beyond left field that it’s roadkill on the highway running beside the parking lot of the ballpark. And it’s so intellectually dishonest as an argumentative statement in this discussion that I have no idea what point he was trying to make by saying it.
Anyway.
Granting forgiveness for hurtful actions typically falls to the injured parties to bestow.
The ability, the power to forgive what was done to them is the power that allows the injured to choose, in that one shining moment, to transform themselves from thinking of themselves as a victim, to choose to stop blaming someone else for the “bad things” that were done to them, to acknowledge that what happened in the past did happen yet does not define them or limit them in any way. Surviving what happened and choosing to move on is the core of what gives them the strength to forgive those who had hurt them for what they did.
Forgiving them doesn’t absolve them of having to atone for their wrongdoings, either spiritually, morally or legally, and it certainly doesn’t mean anyone condones their actions, even if the justice system never catches up to them, or isn’t in a position to get involved. [1]*
That’s why for me, forgiveness is something very different from, and personally more powerful and empowering than absolution from guilt and/or shame, and why — for me — having a telepathic alien say that they “forgive you” in some flippant blanket statement does not open the door to the path that can take Gideon, Matheson and Galen to a place of self-forgiveness, where they can let go and move on.
It may be just semantics to many of you, but it’s the elephant in the room that takes me completely out of the story.
To me, the word “absolution” implies relieving someone of their guilt, while the word “forgiveness” implies bestowing a pardon on or dissolving a grudge against someone for an injurious act or series of acts towards yourself.
Forgiveness does also apply to forgiving yourself, and releasing the pain of an injurious act done against you that you may harbor the blame for, for thinking that it was your own fault for “letting” that bad thing happen to you, but again, that isn’t something a third party can give you, not even by telling you that it’s okay to forgive yourself.
You have to get there for yourself, or you’re just faking it.
That is the huge difference in my book, and while it’s possible that I’m just using a narrower scope for “I forgive you” than JMS initially had in mind when writing “Path of Sorrows”, this is one of those rare instances where the writer in me cringes that the better word wasn’t used.
For me, that was the key in failing to get across a more specific intention that was so very critical to the story.
[1] Additionally, Karma is a vengeful bitch, and she tends to balance out the scales eventually, whether forgiveness has been bestowed or not. She usually just punches them in the mouth or the balls when they least expect it, and most deserve it.
For the record, something dawned on me while I was writing this last night.
In a moment of clarity, I realized that this forgiveness boondoggle is exactly the same for me as the space-time handwaving in “Day of the Dead” is for Tim.
Finally understanding how deeply he feels about it, how much of a sticking point it is for him, was the hi-larious part.
I forgive you, Summer.
I think I agree with nearly everything you have to say here Summer…in the context of the real world in which we live. However, in the context of this episode I didn’t have a problem with what happened. I mean, you find a dude inside a bubble in the back of a dark cave that you have to cry to get into behind a door marked “Beware of the leopard”, and the first thing he does when he talks to you is tap into your deepest and most secret pain and guilt without prompting. I call this a keen indicator that something is going on above and beyond the words the guy says to you. I consider this just one of the (albeit rare) examples of the metaphysical (or paranormal if you will) cropping up in B5 which you all have discussed on occasion. And I’m ok with that. I can accept that this being we clearly know nothing about has the ability to affect a person’s mind in ways we don’t understand and can’t see. Call it a form of telepathy or what have you, and I don’t see a problem with it fitting nicely into the B5 universe.
I wish there was a more overt indication of paranormal going on!
If there was some projective empathy going on, where the alien was pinpointing their deepest pain, and using that empathy to help them heal themselves, I could go with that. I’m familiar enough with how those abilities are supposed to work (in a handful of different worlds) that I have no problem with that.
I would wonder why a gift like that did work on a telepath and didn’t work on a technomage would be my one sticking point with that scenario. If anything, a telepath might be more aware of what was being done to them than a technomage (I say “might” because we saw differently in “Soul Mates”, but there’s room for debate), and might possibly balk a little bit, but that’s speculation on my part.
In your scenario, it should have been more apparent that there was more going on that just telepathically dredging up the source of the pain he was sensing if the alien had said “You can forgive yourself now” after making them confront their pain. To me, that would have been more of a direct link with his ability to zero in on their pain so quickly, and why he was doing it. It would tie into why beings in pain would find their way there, because in some scenarios, empaths are drawn to people in pain, almost compelled to help them because of their gift
So yeah, I see what you’re saying, but that’s not gonna change my mind just yet 🙂
So it sounds like you almost have a problem with the wording more than anything else. I dunno, the way he stared right into their souls and said “I forgive you” so pointedly, that just instantly makes me go “Ok, he’s doing something to them.” Like forgiveness is not just an intangible sentiment for this particular species but a “power” they possess, in the same way that a soul hunter has innate abilities regarding souls that the rest of us can only speculate about. That’s how it always came across to me, so I never had the problem with this you do, despite having (so it seems) the same general ideas about forgiveness and religion and whatnot as you.
Icehawk, you’re not the only one for whom this episode conjured up memories of Star Trek V, but I am loathe to bring that particular “film” up even in trek circles, let alone here… 🙂
Oh yeah one other thing I wanted to mention. The fact that it didn’t work on Galen could be explained away by his technomage implants. They are shadow technology, they are probably designed to withstand certain forms of telepathy. Of course all of this is only discussed in the novels, and the last part is speculation on my part, but there you go.
I disagree. The fact that it didn’t “work” on Galen is a result of his inability to let go of his guilt regarding Isabelle’s death.
Why Gideon and Matheson are more willing to accept the alien’s offer of forgiveness, I think, might come to the circumstances surrounding the nature of the events underlying their sense of guilt. Gideon must know, on some level, that he was in no way responsible for the destruction of the Cerberus. Likewise, Matheson might take some small measure of solace knowing that his growing awareness of the dark nature of the PsiCorps supports his decision not to administer the sleepers to the rebel telepath (which led to the ultimate destruction of the Corps).
Galen, on the other hand, made decisions that directly led to Isabelle’s death. Granted, the two young technomages were not sufficiently experienced to carry out the mission assigned to them (and, indeed, they were basically sent out as bait). However, from Galen’s point of view, how he chose to engage with the Shadow-influenced Elizar makes him responsible for Isabelle’s death. That guilt runs deeper, carries more pain.
Yeah. Galen’s situation was different enough. There’s that love factor plus him being stubborn as hell. Just look at what he did to get to the well to spread her ashes.
That message at the end didn’t help. To accept it would have required him to accept what he finds unacceptable: that someone had decided she deserved to die.
Though… The order of episodes. What happened first: Path of Sorrows or The Well of Forever? Wiki says this one came first. Lurkers I think says Well came first. I could see this episode opening the door for Well. It reopens the wound and pushes him to do certain things he might not normally have done. I can’t see Galen getting over her death until after Well.
“The Well of Forever” was written before “The Path of Sorrows” and they were produced and aired on TNT in that order. There are viable orders where the two are reversed, though.
You know. The reason I like this episode was the look into Galen’s past. On a whole, it reminds me of Star Trek V. The whole Sybok making people face their innermost pain. Then the last bit with Galen wouldn’t have made sense given it’s more paranormal.
I do agree that as a writer there are quite a few problems I have with this episode.
Galen’s message always was real touching for me and very showing for his character, but it was a taste of a paranormal happenings. Could have been more, but I haven’t seen it in a while. In a way, I don’t think the episode went far enough. It needed to go more paranormal. Blur the line a little more. Go fully Sybock on them. Make them relive and face their past. Make it more than a flashback and saying “I forgive you.” Otherwise, I’d think more of them would have reacted like Galen and brushed it off as an alien playing with their head unless they were ready to accept their past.
I guess my question from this episode was always “Why the hell did any of them feel guilty?!” In each case, the characters all seem to have some form of survivor’s guilt so there’s no way that atonement could ever be made and there was no wrongdoing in the first place.
People beat themselves up over things they never could have helped all the time. It doesn’t make sense to me but I recognize that it happens. Perhaps the simple ‘I forgive you’ allowed them to be more gentle with themselves.
Which sort of helps support Galen’s refusal. It wasn’t just survivor’s guilt. A lot more to it than just “Oh, I was outside the ship when it blew up. Darn.” or “I left the building before someone blew it up. Zooty.” In a way it makes “I forgive you” sort of alright to me for the others. Galen on the other hand was betrayed, unable to save his love, and so forth.