Sorry, Not Sorry

   This second element means the misdemeanour was wrong in-and-of-itself,
   not merely wrong because the other party took offence. Yet, if we’re
   going to speak confidently about right and wrong, we need to be able
   to speak confidently about shared values, about shared notions of truth,
   and about shared ethical norms.

I recently said something that offended a person that I share a mutual crush with. It was a very conventional thing to say and few people would see anything offensive about it but the reaction I got would have been predictable if I'd really thought through everything I knew about this person... But I didn't. Given the nature of our relationship I want to give her the best mirroring that is possible to give and I fell short of that and whether or not I did anything wrong in a moral sense is beside that.

I sent a carefully written text the next day where I took complete responsibility for the situation and got a good response, she even apologized for overreacting but I would have been happy if she hadn't.

A lot of guys (and I do mean men whatever that means for you) get really stuck trying to tease our the one moral truth of a situation which is like Rashomon where different people are going to have different points of view. It is so easy for someone to become a cringelord and really embarass themselves and the people around them, and one sign of that is that a person like that won't take the kind of complete responsibility that makes a good apology.

I'm also in the middle of domesticating a stray cat and very much thinking about the ethics, morals and relationship dynamics of the situation. My son grew up on a farm which hosts a riding academy and he'll tell you that animals have a definite moral sense, so frequently I've seen a cat be sorry because it bit me accidentally or a horse be contrite because it wasn't careful and I fell off.

With my new cat Bob B I very much want him to think that I'm a good person and that he will want to stick around when I open the door let him out. I know he makes judgements about people but not at the level of ideology such as religion or Marxism or social justice or anything like that (I'd make the case that any of those will lead you wrong if they separate you from the root of morality that you share with mammals if not other animals.)

In the case of the cat it is obvious that ideology gets in the way, it's just as true for people except we can make excuses because they have language and are capable of talking in an ideological frame.