Contrite Is as Contrite Does
The concept of contrition is often thought to be associated with Catholicism. We think of sitting in a confessional and leaving with the seemingly trivial penance of saying so many Hail Mary’s or Novenas to absolve ourselves of our sins. But contrition is a far more general and important concept for modern life than these old, somewhat antiquated memories or images. We all need to start from a common basis of understanding and that is that we, as humans, are not only fallible, but, indeed, destined to transgress. Thinking about this in terms of Christian heritage (and I’m sure every major religion has similar elements in their cultural fabric), the Lord’s Prayer pleads that we be forgiven our trespasses just as we must forgive those who trespass against us….not to mention that we hope not to be led further into temptation and delivered from evil. Out of five pleadings (Kingdom come, thine will be done, daily bread, trespasses and delivery from evil), fully 40% of our prayers are focused on our own imperfection and tendency to do the wrong thing, for which we know we will need to be forgiven. That is one heavy burden for mankind and it is acknowledgement that we are all flawed and need to be constantly vigilant about how to do better. And that requires contrition.
Psychologists will wax eloquent on the psychological value of contrition. Guilt is a burden that weighs heavily on our souls and if left unchecked and unpurged, it will damn us to eternal punishment. This all makes sense to me despite my general avoidance of organized religion. In the same way that I see prayer as a valuable practice because it involves giving thanks to the universe for our good fortunes and for the very life we live, contrition is the other side of that coin. Simplistically, I need to give thanks for what I have and give an apology for what I have done. Since what I do is often directly connected with what I have, I worry that saying sorry I did that, but thanks for letting me have what I got from doing that. That can’t be right. Contrition is supposed to be more than a wave of sorries. Contrition must, at its core, be genuine. Being genuinely sorry involves some degree of course correction and disgorgement of gain from the offending actions. It may go so far as to require restitution that goes beyond the disgorgement. That gets us into reparations, which are thorny issues at all times because temporal issues are important to the resolution of those transgressions.
The simplest problem is a function of the time value of money since reparations almost always involve money compensation. A dollar that should not have been taken yesterday is worth more today and the calculation of those damages and the proper balance of recompense is a highly complex discipline in and of itself. But that is at least quantifiable. The uncertainties of the who and the how of recompense is a probabilistic endeavor of contingent claim analysis and is increasingly subjective and fraught with its own set of ethical conundrums.
But all of that aside for a moment, the act of apology is central to socialized human existence. If we cannot admit to our wrongdoings and then agree to some form of chastisement, we are doomed to carry that wrong forever. If everyone was wired the same way it would be easier to determine how much that burden carrying makes up for the wrong, but conscience is both incredibly wide-ranging and incredibly hard to quantify or pin down. It is another one of those things that is hard to define, but we know it when we see it and certainly know it when it is missing. The good news is that as undefinable as conscience is in humans, it is far more easy to pin down at the institutional level. Probably because it depersonalizes a lot of the stigma of wrongdoing, institutional contrition is easier in some ways, but then again, leaderships’ livelihood and career may take it back into the personal realm. The separation of the institution and the person are not always so easy in such things.
This all comes to mind for several reasons today. I feel the constant need to be amazed that Trump, and now almost all Republicans (at least that majority of them that continue to follow Trump zealously) find it anathema to admit wrongdoing, accept responsibility for mistakes, apologize for them and then go through the process of contrition to either improve for next time or make amends. I even find my Republican friends that say they are not Trump believers or followers anymore to be engaged in this blame avoidance because they seem trained to deny, deny, deny. When they don’t deny, they deflect. In answer to direct questions, they just say “Well, what about…….” And you can fill in that blank with whatever current excuse you choose.
The second reason is that I am reading about the CDC’s recent soliloquy about its shortcomings over the past five years. It has admitted that its handling of the COVID pandemic, the Monkeypox outbreak and their preparation for the next global pandemic has fallen well short of acceptable standards. This is very encouraging to me, not because CDC has fallen short, but because Rochelle Walensky, the Director of the CDC since Biden came into office is willing to be so forthcoming about its failings and what it needs to do to get back to being the gold standard of infectious disease prevention and cure. CDC has been the national public health agency since 1946 and is showing the typical signs of organizational aging that many institutions face at a similar age. Organizations are supposed to be timeless and live on forever, but that does not happen without careful diligence and constant reinvention and renewal. Organizations get tired and lazy just like people do and it is up to the leadership to constantly renovate it if it is to stay effective. Sometimes it takes something like a pandemic to bite the organization in the ass and drive it out of its complacency. This seems clearly to be what is going on at CDC right now.
The best news for American health is that under the leadership of someone like Walensky, this renewal can happen because she is not afraid to divulge the organization’s weaknesses and shortcomings. It requires this sort of candor and honesty to accept failure and strive to improve that makes organizations like this successful. Walensky is showing us how an important organization can be contrite about its status, honest about its mistakes and genuinely engaged in self-improvement. This sort of advancement cannot happen in a world where no one takes accountability, no one admits to failure and no one is prepared to accept any outcome except success. As Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos famously said, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” The truth is, you can and most likely will fail at some point and, as they say, its not failing, but how you recover and get past a failure that sets the stage for where you will likely go in the future.
My red friends like to say that both Republicans and Democrats are the same kind of dishonest crooks and it is simply not true. Few, if any, Republicans on the national stage seem prepared to accept accountability at any cost, where Democrats are more prepared to tell it like it is the way Walensky has just done about her charge. Accepting responsibility and a willingness to be contrite about failure is so refreshing and I can honestly say that it seems to only come from one breed of politician or administrator, and those are Democrats. Republicans are good at pointing to the failures of others, but not so of their own. Being institutionally contrite is extremely important and its time that we demand that administrative leaders act in a contrite manner and do contrition and not just act contrite.