Regret Removes the Human

I got into an argument with a roommate the other day. It was about a mosque being built near the Twin Towers. To oversimplify our viewpoints: I thought they had the right to, and people shouldn't be upset, he thought they had the right to, but people should be upset.

Short story - we hashed it out, even raising our voices at times. (OH MY!) We decided I was taking the emotion out of the argument, making it more of a theoretical situation, and he was figuring the emotions in, making it a more human situation. I tend to do that. Whenever I analyze my past, or any human situation, I tend to take the human element out of it, and make it a moral or philosophical issue.

I think my method of moralistic analysis works in that it can realize, in hindsight, what the correct actions would have been. We can use these hindsight realizations to make less mistakes in future decision making.

What this made me realize personally is something I think people have been telling me for years. There's no point in regretting the majority of mistakes we make. If we were truly the cold, morally-analytical beings that made the most beneficial decision at all times we would be denying our humanity. I can think back to things I said to people or did to people and think of how stupid I was, or I can realize the emotional/situational state I was in at the time, realize I am human and try not to make the same mistake. By spending my time regretting, I am trying to take the past self and make it into something that is no longer the self. I'm trying to chastise the human that is me for not being a robot. This is misguided, the past me was a human, the current me is a human, let's hold myself to human standards.

SIDENOTE: I realize that this blog, in reality, is a hindsight's view of regret. I am in a sense analyzing my regret in the same way I would analyze myself, in such a fashion that often leads to regret. What I am not doing however, is regretting my past regret, merely realizing much of it as misguided, and decreasing its impact on my future.