What is the difference between paradox and nonsense? I have listened to any number of lectures, talks, and simple conversations and walked away simply shaking my head wondering if there was any sense in what I just heard regarding the use of the term paradox. Merely matching up mutually exclusive phenomenon and then declaring them of equal validity is simple mental laziness. Yet I believe legitimate paradox actually exists and to declare it invalid without examination is the same form of laziness but coming from the other side of the door.

I found an illustration of critical paradox in the New York Times article by Dr. Linda Kinstler entitled: Jan. 6, America’s Rupture and the Strange, Forgotten Power of Oblivion. She is addressing our current obsession with retribution or the eye for an eye (and maybe more than an eye if possible). This retribution ethic is more than a local issue in 2024, the political world seems anxious set the planet on fire in case global warming doesn’t get the work done. For centuries governments and bodies politic have issued forms of amnesty following national and social ruptures starting with the birth of democracy in 403 BC. After the reign of the Thirty Tyrants, “Citizens took an oath promising not to remember what had occurred, to not remind their neighbors of the evils of the tyranny.”  The tyrants were punished firmly, but the citizens who suffered under the tyranny were asked to not to remember or stoke the hatred against the other side. Dr. Kinstler then describes numerous instances of “Acts of Oblivion” throughout western history up to current times including our own American Civil War, World War II, into our current era. She concludes:  “The unique power of oblivion is that it does not forgive the crimes committed on one side or the other but rather consecrates and memorializes the profound gravity of the wrongs. It demands accountability and refuses absolution, yet it rejects the project of perpetual punishment”.  This sets up the paradox worth thinking about and working with. Before you dismiss Dr. Kinstler you might want to read her book. “Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends.” Her huge humanity mounted on rationality lays out a paradox that might be the only alternative to our own self-immolation as a nation and world.