The truth about apologies and who they are almost always really for, with cameos from Sigrid Rausing of Granta and David Remnick of The New Yorker

Friday 12/19/25

I don't think I've ever known anyone who apologized for an aspect of their behavior who then didn't simply continue behaving as they had been. Apologies for an oversight or the out-in-life version of a typo are different. But to stop acting a certain way? Stop treating me a certain way? That's never happened that I can recall.

People, with the rarest of exceptions, don't change. It's not just that--they won't change small parts of themselves or what they're doing. They won't put forward that effort. They won't remember what to focus on either.

The apology is usually selfish in nature and self-serving. It's for the person who issues it to diffuse or alleviate a situation so that they don't lose something they want to have, or think they should have; or forestall something they don't want to deal with or have be an issue; or because they don't want to feel bad about something, which is going to pass anyway, and soon enough, because people don't have enough of an inner life--especially now--where guilt becomes a factor. Guilt concerns an inner voice--it's part of an internal monologue. And active thought pertaining to a particular narrative strain.

People don't have the focus, the attention span, and they don't make the mental effort--which is real effort--for such a voice/narrative to exist as more than a short-term, basically one-off, yelp. That yelp produces the apology. Words are said as a solution. But when words are said solely as the solution, nothing changes, because those words are then forgotten and they're not followed by action. Not that words aren't actions; because the saying of those words, as empty words, is an action that hurts. It can do much more than hurt over time, too. Hurt is different than the kind of pain that migrates into the area of obliterative.

What is change as I define it here? Because we know someone who is overweight and then goes to the gym strenuously and becomes fit. Is that change? Well, it's a kind of change. What I would call true change is always actuated by what's inside. It comes from within, rather than without. People may appear to change, but that's a response to external stimuli. The person who doesn't want to be alone conforms themselves in a relationship, in a marriage, so that they won't be alone.

They are taking their cue from what they know they need to do in order for that other person to exist with them in this arrangement, which is often what marriages are. They're arrangement-based rather than love-based, only each party doesn't say that, either to the other party or to themselves. But they didn't change. That didn't come from within. It was other things. They shape themselves to the space. Like an amoeba. But it's still the same amoeba.

Consider Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, as this is the season. This is something I wrote about in my book on the 1951 film adaptation. Scrooge isn't that bad prior to the visits of spectral Jacob Marley and the ghosts. He's actually correct about many things. We think he's this ogre, but that's a result of residual hearsay and our own lack of curiosity. It's not what we think if we read the 1843 story or watch something like 1951's Scrooge and pay attention. He doesn't have as far to go, change-wise, as is generally perceived, to be a better person. Dickens was no dummy. Neither was director Brian Desmond Hurst. It had to be believable.

The big knock on Scrooge is what he doesn't do for people he doesn't "have" to do anything for. What do you do for people you don't "have" to do anything for?

People don't change that much. And now, in this AI world, this "whatever you say is 'your truth'" world, this world of enabling, avoidance, codependency, narcissism, the unexamined life, a world where true connection and true friendship is exceedingly rare, and with absurdly, horrifically compacted attention spans and the concomitant inability to sit, be, reflect, think, and deal in/with anything, they change less than ever before. Especially because it's so easy to get reinforcement for the bad things that we are, as though they were good things, from people doing the exact same thing and who wish for us to likewise provide that service to them. The service of inversion and avoidance. Invert long enough, avoid long enough, and you have no idea what things may really be. Then you're free to call the non-existent things, and your non-existent self, whatever you wish, and foreground them as "the truth." As what is "official."

Who we are with, who we know, who we marry, who we promote, who we call friends, often comes down to this style of reinforcement.

Pre-change Scrooge in both the book and the 1951 film, is a much better person than almost everyone today. The film is the superior work of art, in part because of what it adds. Scrooge is made to see things beyond unkindness. Core things about himself. The kind of things that if people are present were made to see those things about themselves, they'd all but die. They couldn't handle it. Think of the scene of the film--again, written about at length in the book--when Scrooge is in the room as his sister gives birth to Fred.

It's pure horror. We can barely watch it the pain is so searing. Scrooge himself tries to beg the spirit to take him away, and chokes on the words. He can't get them out. This is part of the impetus for his change; he's going to a very dark place within himself, and putting on a light. People just aren't going to do that. They rarely can now if they even wanted to. They don't have the strength, the willingness, or, frankly, the reason, the motivation. And if no one is complaining? And today is like yesterday and tomorrow will be like both? And so on? They're not going to do jack shit, but make sure anything that threatens this status quo is kept out, avoided, attacked as if it--or that other person--was the real problem.

We think that lying is this thing we do with and to other people, but the "best" liars are people who are able to lie to themselves as well as they can lie to anyone else. Better. These are also the most dangerous people, because they can't assess right from wrong and whatever they do, no matter how wrong, will be assessed as being right. These people become even more dangerous when there's no outward system of checks and balances. Put simply: No one to call them out. Or expose them.

Look at publishing. It's like the Catholic church when those priests were molesting those boys. That was playing out in darkness, in voids, in tenebrous corridors. It's really no different than a David Remnick, a Sigrid Rausing. Pick anyone else you want that we've spoken about from publishing. The darkness allows for the inversion of truth. The bad person who is not a morally and mentally sound person is then "free" to craft whatever narrative they wish. A narrative whose upkeep is bolstered by that person's ability to lie to themselves unchecked.

You pull the truth out into the light, you get eyes on it, you sit that person down on a stage under lights, and you say, in front of an audience, "So, this right here...you think that was good? You think it was right? Just? The way to do things? A good way to be?"

In that case, they'll squirm and want to flee, because they'll know. But that's only when they're going to know. Left to their druthers, unchecked, in that darkness with their diseased souls and minds and dead hearts, they'll formulate a narrative that serves them best, that makes them look the best. Add in money, add in ass kissing, hangers on, toadies, awards, recognition, and you have what's tantamount to one enhancing tool/device after another.

They're not going to stop and realize that none of that is real, that there's no truth-based correlation between, say, an award and the thing that is awarded being the best thing, or even not being an example of ineptitude, a total absence of talent, at thing without any actual value. They've been set up to look at something a way they want to look at it anyway; they're not going to parse. They're going to go with the the favored flow. Regardless of the untruth or a totality of untruths. None of it comes from a place of truth. Justice. Merit. All of these things become more of that which can be used. Bastardized and warped in service of the narrative of the darkness, the shadow corridor, the room without light. The space designed and maintained so that no one else, let alone a group, let alone a formidable number of people, can say, "That is so wrong."

In publishing, this is how choices are made. Who to hire. Who to put forward. Who to surround one's self with. Who to work with. Who to befriend. Who do be favorably disposed towards. Never underestimate what it means for someone to be favorably disposed towards someone else before the nuts and bolts of anything--like, "I have this story for you," or "Here's my book, do you want to publish it?"--is broached. That inclination before the thing has started, before the official business has been gotten to, carries so much sway. I've always known ahead of time how it will go with someone with my work because of how they're inclined to be disposed towards me. It's the same work. It's the best work.

But it's not going to be about that work at all if that person isn't disposed towards you. No one talks about this. I'm not sure anyone is aware of it. But that mindset that someone has about you going in, and what you represent to them, what they think you have in common, what they recognize as similar in themselves, really makes for the determination. If I know that someone isn't evil, if they aren't going to be envious of me and what I do, can do, that they haven't and cannot, it'll go well. They aren't going to seek to punish me, or shun me, because of how great that work is. Because of the mind I possess.

But if they're petty, if they're insecure, if they're an imposter, etc., I have no chance unless they feel like they have no choice. Why would they feel that way? Because of where I was in terms of standing, fame. Because of things this journal ended up bringing about and what it could do to such a person through exposing them for exactly who they were and what they were up to and why.

For now, anyway, a person like that feels like they have a choice and they can be as unjust and discriminatory as they wish.

These things like the above--the awards, the hyping, the boot-licking, the surrounding of sycophants, etc., these designed circumstances and environments, reinforce what that person wants to believe about themselves. Do you think a David Remnick would hire someone he thinks is exponentially, or infinitely, smarter than he is? Do you think that would abet him in the maintenance of his narrative of lies? It wouldn't it, would it? You know who he'd prefer. Someone who doesn't threaten his ego. Which is pasted together with lies. There's no solid, truth-based, secure self with a man like this. So he makes his choices accordingly. His hires. Nearly all the people of publishing work this way. To bring publishing into this discussion.

Ironically--but not really, if you think about--people like a Sigrid Rausing expect and demand apologies, when they are the monster. Because getting those apologies, when they are themselves so flagrantly in the wrong, is a power source for them. It's like the physically abusive drunken spouse who beats the person they're with, and wants that person to apologize to them. They continue on, and within their darkened room, they're able to think they are the person in the right. That's a Sigrid Rausing. That's a David Remnick. Again, we could use most of the people in publishing here. We don't need to fly in the assortment of names with this entry.

People like to say that you should forgive people not for them, but for you. I think that's terrible advice, because that's not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness isn't self-serving. Forgiveness isn't a "life hack," which is how people treat it. But most people who apologize for anything are doing so for themselves. Usually entirely. Sometimes mostly entirely and a tiny bit for you, because they don't want you to be crying in front of them...but even that's for them.

Sure, all things being equal, if presented with some offer from God or whomever to take away the pain they've made you feel, they'll say, "Okay, sign me up for that one, too," but that's not being sorry. People who are truly sorry change what it was they were doing. They remember what they were doing. They have this mental note as per what they were doing that's always affixed to the refrigerator, so to speak.

What people also fail to understand with AI and our so-called brain rot culture, is that we're not just becoming dumber, but those things make us more immoral. They make us worse people. It's easier to be bad than good for starters. Being good is like running up the stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument. Being bad is more akin to coming down them. Takes more effort to do the former. More commitment.

The worst person I've ever known--someone even worse than anyone in publishing, when we factor in context--is a contractor in Maryland. I've known this person for thirty years. The things I've done for this person are beyond the scope of what we'd ordinarily think as "just" kindness, and in some different category altogether. When their kid was struggling, for example, in part because of this person, and wouldn't go to school, I offered to home school the child via FaceTime. For free. Give up my time and put forward that energy. Me, whose days begin usually before three in the morning. That's typical of me. Anyone who knows me would say, "Yes, that tracks, that's who he is."

This is someone who has lied to me tens of thousands of times. The most selfish of people. Dishonest. Which doesn't come close to covering it. Pathologically dishonest. What they'll say, after doing something awful--something that needn't have been done, almost like it was done just to hurt, the not doing of which wouldn't have cost them any time, energy--is, "I apologize." They won't even say they're sorry. You see the difference? The first means, "I'm saying these words. I used the right template." They could never see the difference. How even their choice of words betrays them and speaks to who they are. They will then resume doing that awful thing literally seconds later. Every time. Without a single exception, a single point of deviation from that pattern, over decades.

They also operate by what we'll call the darkness principal. In their way, they're doing what a David Remnick or Sigrid Rausing does. People they think they're so different than. Who they condemn. Yes, publishing people are the worst of the worst. They're their own thing. There's a unilaterality to the type of person who is in publishing that there isn't to other things. That's in part because no one cares, no one has any idea what goes on in the system, which is a closed system that people who aren't in that system--like people out in the world--are indifferent to and/or wholly ignorant of. They don't care. They don't care about how a story comes to run in The Paris Review, this outlet they've never heard of, which publishes work they wouldn't read, and who don't read anyway. This indifference and ignorance behooves the people of publishing, because it allows them to carry on as they were, being what they are, doing what they do, and getting away with all of it. And as you can see from the myriad prose off in this journal, it's not as if these people are trying to produce or promote anything that people might actually think...doesn't suck. Or bore them out of their minds.

It's so arrogant. A total disregard for readers. For doing anything for readers. Offering readers anything. In the work. And all of the millions of pretend writers who call themselves a writer so they can think they have this thing that makes them "special"? This thing with the lowest bar to clear to call yourself that thing? Can't call yourself a basketball player or an oboist, can you? But writer? Then you have these communities that are all about the enabling of delusion? Those people have no idea what's being published, and how the system works, because they don't even care. They're as indifferent and ignorant as the 325-pound guy on his couch watching his tenth straight hour of football who hasn't read more than a paragraph since high school and didn't understand the seven that he did back then. Because they don't care. They just want this ego thing for themselves. A badge that says, "I'm this."

Which is really why they're in publishing. It's not for the propagation and dissemination of great, consequential works of writing, art, and entertainment, or for business. Publishing exists so that the people of publishing can be the people of publishing. You have a system where people can just be as evil as they wish to be. What's to stop them? Those who join their ranks do so because they're similar and have been approved on the basis thereof. Those are the asked-for, demanded, required qualifications of the job, if you will. That's the test to pass to gain entry and membership, and, of course, support.

Being a better person, or just changing an aspect of one's behavior, requires awareness. You have to remember, too. You can't just forget that thing you said after it served its purpose of diffusing a situation. We're becoming too unintelligent not to be horrible. The people who are left behind in a society like that, the people who are alone without anyone else, are the people who aren't horrible. And especially the people who are good.

If I say, "Do you want a world like that?" then almost everyone will respond, "No." Same as if I ask, "Do you want a world like that for your children?" But they're not going to do anything save make this world that very way. And worse, and worse, and worse. As with the apology, saying, "No, of course I don't want a world like that!" would just be lip service.