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jackI mentioned this in passing a couple of times, but in retrospect it was indeed difficult to get the point out of my successively nested parenthetical asides.
"Sorry" can mean two different things, sympathy or apology. But my way of viewing it was as a continuum, something like
1. Pure sympathy, with no apology.
2. You accept causation but no culpability. You regret that you inadvertently and unavoidably hurt someone, and wish you hadn't, but don't regret any of your actions. Eg. You're driving responsibly and someone chooses to step out a few feet ahead of your car. You feel awful, and the way you apologise is a lot more than a bystander would, but doesn't mean you think it was your fault, but does mean you feel a greater responsibility for causing it (either because that's how we're wired or because *often* if you cause something it's at least partly your fault).
3. You admit carelessness but not specific expectation to harm. If you were acting unthinkingly, and think you really shouldn't have been, but that you didn't deliberately harm them either, you were just more careless than you should be. Eg. if you repeatedly fail to remember to do something. You might feel legitimately apologetic, but not in the same way as if you'd deliberately harmed them.
4. You admit selfishness, you deliberately hurt someone because it got you something. Eg. you stole from them.
5. You admit malice, you deliberately hurt someone because you wanted to hurt them (although you might claim diminished responsibility, eg. if you bullied them but were too young to completely understand).
So most have some sympathy, depending how serious they are. And the last three have apology. But there are intermediate stages. (Eg. if you express sympathy because something bad happened to someone (1), you might also feel bad because you were better off than them in that way which is actually also like (2), in that your good fortune may make them feel worse, even though you couldn't have prevented that. And at some point between 3 and 4 deliberate and persistent carelessness becomes a complete disregard for someone.)
And I sometimes feel that while almost all of the time people know what sort of apology someone is actually talking about, sometimes this gets horribly distorted. For instance, in culture A it might be normal, if you knock into someone in the street, to apologise in the sense (2). But in culture B that might be interpreted as (3), and give the other person grounds to sue you.
Or you might try to offer sympathy to someone for something you've done, but get tongue tied explaining how you don't feel guilty, etc. And you normally can explain, but having the different ideas in your mind may make it easier to do so quickly and simply.
"Sorry" can mean two different things, sympathy or apology. But my way of viewing it was as a continuum, something like
1. Pure sympathy, with no apology.
2. You accept causation but no culpability. You regret that you inadvertently and unavoidably hurt someone, and wish you hadn't, but don't regret any of your actions. Eg. You're driving responsibly and someone chooses to step out a few feet ahead of your car. You feel awful, and the way you apologise is a lot more than a bystander would, but doesn't mean you think it was your fault, but does mean you feel a greater responsibility for causing it (either because that's how we're wired or because *often* if you cause something it's at least partly your fault).
3. You admit carelessness but not specific expectation to harm. If you were acting unthinkingly, and think you really shouldn't have been, but that you didn't deliberately harm them either, you were just more careless than you should be. Eg. if you repeatedly fail to remember to do something. You might feel legitimately apologetic, but not in the same way as if you'd deliberately harmed them.
4. You admit selfishness, you deliberately hurt someone because it got you something. Eg. you stole from them.
5. You admit malice, you deliberately hurt someone because you wanted to hurt them (although you might claim diminished responsibility, eg. if you bullied them but were too young to completely understand).
So most have some sympathy, depending how serious they are. And the last three have apology. But there are intermediate stages. (Eg. if you express sympathy because something bad happened to someone (1), you might also feel bad because you were better off than them in that way which is actually also like (2), in that your good fortune may make them feel worse, even though you couldn't have prevented that. And at some point between 3 and 4 deliberate and persistent carelessness becomes a complete disregard for someone.)
And I sometimes feel that while almost all of the time people know what sort of apology someone is actually talking about, sometimes this gets horribly distorted. For instance, in culture A it might be normal, if you knock into someone in the street, to apologise in the sense (2). But in culture B that might be interpreted as (3), and give the other person grounds to sue you.
Or you might try to offer sympathy to someone for something you've done, but get tongue tied explaining how you don't feel guilty, etc. And you normally can explain, but having the different ideas in your mind may make it easier to do so quickly and simply.
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Date: 2008-02-22 08:52 am (UTC)P.S. Please check your inbox ;-)
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Date: 2008-02-22 10:53 am (UTC)Although, it's probably too optimistic to hope that one had never been selfish -- I know I'm not that perfect, even if I don't want to admit it. Hopefully, very often not about *big* things, but I've definitely done wrong things, and also little things that are quite normal but are in fact deliberate. I've just thought of this, but it might even be the correct choice, but still admit a small if sincere apology, eg. if there was a group of people going to see one of two films, and someone was overruled and didn't want to come, you might say "Sorry" even though you're going ahead anyway.
The other confusion is there's often overlap. Eg. if you played a prank on a friend, or took a liberty with their kitchen, deliberately hurting them a little bit, but with a reasonable expectation that they'd wouldn't actually mind, but it turned out to hurt them more than that, then you'd apologise first for doing something that inadvertently causes this, but more so because you did it deliberately, just not realised it would be that important.
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Date: 2008-02-22 12:28 pm (UTC)As for 4, there is a different sort of sorry which is "I am terribly sorry that I stole stuff and got caught". While sincere, this does not contain apology :)
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Date: 2008-02-23 12:04 am (UTC)Well, if they *deserve* it, yes. But *if* you regret your malice, that's where it is :)
Oh yes, insincere apologies come in all sorts, from "I don't really care if I'm sympathetic or not, but I will be if it shuts you up" to "I'm sorry, your honour, I deeply and sincerely regret..." :) That's another discussion in itself, almost orthogonal to this list.
For instance, fake apologies often involve pretending to respond at the wrong level: eg. expressing sympathy when "promise not to do it again" would be the desiered operative concept :)
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Date: 2008-02-23 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-23 07:45 pm (UTC)As with everything else, it's the thought that counts. :-)
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Date: 2008-02-25 03:21 pm (UTC)Yes, exactly.
It carries a lot more weight when your good faith is demonstrated by your personal salvation from an angel, too :)
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Date: 2008-02-25 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-25 04:00 pm (UTC)[1] I don't know why avoiding minor, inconsequential and universal errors should be so much more anathemic to me than deep seated emotional problems :) Probably because it always looks like I might think a minor error was actually correct, which is ignorance I muchly despite possessing.
[2] <Frasier>So, there I was, on holiday, watching fifty psychiatrists skiing inexpertly; I'd never seen so many Freudians slip. No wait, is that right?</Frasier>