Syn­onyms for matur­ing in the Mer­ri­am-Web­ster dic­tio­nary include: devel­op­ment, growth,  mat­u­ra­tion, and ripen­ing.
Log­i­cal­ly, then, adults should be mea­sured not by what they start­ed out as, but what they have become.

In prac­tice, today’s yard­stick is best summed up by the reply the har­ried edi­tor in Eve­lyn Waugh’s “Scoop” used to counter his proprietor’s mad­cap ideas: “Up to a point, Lord Copper.”

 Any­one in the pub­lic eye is expect­ed to apologise…and atone…for any behav­iour or utter­ance in their youth deemed to breach today’s norms, as set by…whomever.
Careers can be short-stopped and even ruined by a years-old Tweet, off-colour joke or ill-con­sid­ered turn of phrase in a speech.

Alexi McCam­mond, a polit­i­cal reporter who cov­ered the 2020 elec­tions, lost a job as edi­tor of Teen Vogue before she even took up the post, when racial­ly-tinged com­ments she made on Twit­ter when she was a teenag­er were dug out.

                      HYPOCRISY AND WILLFUL IGNORANCE

Politi­cians, many of whom lie as eas­i­ly as they breathe, and in some cas­es as often, leap with alacrity to use the past as a weapon. For them, the Bib­li­cal injunc­tion “Let he who is with­out sin cast the first stone” be damned. The com­pe­tence of the stonee isn’t even a factor.

Sen. John Bar­ras­so (R‑Wyo.) of the Sen­ate Ener­gy and Nat­ur­al Resources Com­mit­tee opposed Pres­i­dent Biden’s nom­i­nee to lead the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment, Tra­cy Stone-Man­ning, because, he alleged, she “col­lab­o­rat­ed with eco-terrorists”.
He based that on the fact that when she was 18, Stone-Man­ning for­ward­ed a let­ter for the rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ist group Earth First.

The “eco-ter­ror­ists” label is debat­able, and since then, “Stone-Man­ning has built a rep­u­ta­tion for wran­gling gra­nola-munch­ing green activists and ruby-red Repub­li­cans onto the same side of con­tentious pub­lic land issues, some­times seek­ing com­pro­mise with indus­try, to the dis­may of more-lib­er­al environmentalists.”

Appar­ent­ly Sen­a­tor Bor­ras­so, a Catholic high school grad­u­ate, doesn’t put much stock in Dam­a­scene con­ver­sion, which turned Saul of Tar­sus, Jew­ish per­se­cu­tor of Chris­tians, into the Chris­t­ian Saint Paul.

                                        AGE MATTERS

Judg­ing and con­demn­ing some­one by what they did years ago assumes peo­ple don’t change, which is ridiculous.
The ratio­nal part of the brain isn’t ful­ly devel­oped until a per­son is about 25. Until then, emo­tion tends to rule over reason.
As Mark Twain summed it up in his inim­itable way:
“When I was 17, my father was so stu­pid, I didn’t want to be seen with him in pub­lic. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just sev­en years.”
An adult who shows no sign of hav­ing reached that point should not be tak­en seri­ous­ly, or giv­en any form of authority.
But if all that counts are past mis­takes, Alco­holics Anony­mous is a waste of time, peo­ple who com­mit crimes can nev­er be reformed and there­fore can nev­er be released into soci­ety, and the 18.6‑million self-help books pur­chased in 2019 were a waste of money.
Some, maybe many were, but the sta­tis­tics show that peo­ple believe they can change. Over­all, the “self-help-how-to-change your-life” indus­try “was worth $9.9 bil­lion in 2016 and is esti­mat­ed to grow to $13.2 bil­lion by 2022 with 5.6% aver­age year­ly gains.”.

                    WILL AN APOLOGY SERVE AS PENANCE?

In the case of Ms Stone-Man­ning, she could, of course, apol­o­gise for some­thing she did 32 years ago. Whether she should, or what dif­fer­ence it would make, is debatable.
When an apol­o­gy is offered, the reac­tions of those who demand­ed it tend to be along the lines of: “Why now?” or “Why not at the time?” or “You don’t real­ly mean it”, and on and on…

That’s not to say I’m anti-apol­o­gis­ing. I’m Cana­di­an.
By stereo­type, we say “Sor­ry, eh?” if some­one steps on our toe. (Lest any­one thinks that makes us wimps, bear in mind that our nation­al game is hock­ey. When we fight for the puck in the cor­ner, elbows rule. And no apologies.)
Also, “sor­ry” is mere­ly being polite, which we are.

A prop­er apol­o­gy is defined as: “an admis­sion of error or dis­cour­tesy accom­pa­nied by an expres­sion of regret”.
Sure­ly a gen­uine one ought to atone for much.

As for those who insist an apol­o­gy is nev­er enough, Friedrich Niet­zsche, one of the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary thinkers in West­ern phi­los­o­phy, summed them up in his most famous work, “Thus Spoke Zarathus­tra”:

“But thus do I coun­sel you, my friends: dis­trust all in whom the impulse to pun­ish is powerful!”

 Com­ments are wel­comed. Just click CONTACT

 To receive alerts of future posts, click SUBSCRIBE