Healthy Aging

Life Review: Truth, Reconciliation, Forgiveness and Renewal

Wednesday, December 5, 2007—Arthur Schlesinger has said, “History is to a nation as memory is to the individual.” ILC-CEO Robert N. Butler, M.D. drove that point home in a persuasive keynote speech he delivered to the Institute of Reminiscence and Life Review which proposed that life review, with its components of forgiveness and atonement, may have implications for society at large.

Presented November 16th in San Franciso, Butler's speech, entitled Life Review: National History Truth and Reconciliation: A Diplomacy of Forgiveness and Renewal, cites examples of conflicts between nations and ethnic groups and compares them with the very human struggle with such concepts as contrition and reconciliation.

A Leap of Faith

Butler notes that neither individuals nor nations need to fully understand everything in order to be willing to seek forgiveness and reconciliation. Rather, a leap of faith is required, a desire to overcome our deepest histories, myths, and so-called "righteous" anger.

By way of illustration, Butler points out the Truth and Reconciliation Commission created by the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act No. 34 of 1995. Chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Commission was critical to South Africa's transition to democracy. Other examples include:

• The Soviet policy of glasnost, created to deal with past atrocities
• The German policy of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the history of Nazism)
• Australia's implementation of a process to heal cultural divisions between non-indigenous and indigenous populations

Contrition Marks Beginning of Renewal

Is there really transferability of individual experience to the behavior of nations? Is the idea that history is progressive, leading to better things, an illusion? According to Butler, it is not. He states that to forgive is to liberate, not to condone but to move on.

And the act of contrition marks the beginning of renewal, which he notes is all the more necessary in these times where combatants don't always wear uniforms and conflicts are more often than not ideological— and seemingly without end.

Related Links: Download Life Review: A Diplomacy of Forgiveness and Renewal

Keywords: healthy aging, politics

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