Ignorant Ex Friend has one sided political views - to say something or not?

I've no reason to question your honesty about this, and the rest of your comments about "closure" are not unreasonable, but I hope you can allow for the possibility that some people have in fact achieved what you've been unable to.

You have engaged in a fair amount of mind reading to reach your conclusion. Your assumptions about how one might feel, how one will feel etc are again, not entirely unreasonable, but they are still assumptions that inform or conform to your view on this matter.

One assumption which you seem to be making which I don't think reflects an appreciation of all possibilities, is that the two people involved in dispute are equally at fault. It is possible, of course, to be involved in a dispute because you have clearly been wronged and not in response to your own wrongdoing. Whether or not this is the case with the OP is immaterial because we have moved on to a broader discussion than just her circumstances.

We can go way down a Zen road and talk about what does and doesn't really matter, and there come to a conclusion that it's always best to just let it go, but the process I am talking about is letting it go, but in a manner which allows you to feel good about yourself and the situation.

If through no fault of their own, a person is wronged by someone, they are likely to feel a combination of essentially negative emotions: resentment, humiliation, anger and so on. It is natural for the wronged person to want to somehow make things right, to obtain some measure of justice.

It's absolutely great if that person happens to be someone who can, once and for all, move completely away from the experience by telling themselves something like

"You know what, she's the one who has really sustained damage. She's harmed herself by harming me, and she has to live with that. I'm not going to let her harm me any further by holding on to these emotions. I'm just going to put it aside; put it in the past and move on with my life."

Of course not everybody can and while they may sincerely try the negative emotions can return.

What they are probably missing is the opportunity to declare to the person who wronged them that they did in fact wrong them, that they suffered as a result and it was unjust.

There is a reason why the loved ones of murder victims are often provided the opportunity to address the the murderer. Sometime the loved one just goes on a rant about how they hate the murderer and how much they hope they will suffer. Sometime the loved one tells the murderer that he or she is forgiven, and sometime the loved one just tells the murderer what he or she has stolen from them.

Sometimes it brings peace and sometimes it doesn't. My bet is that the angry rant helps less often than the others, but I can't say for sure, and I can easily imagine that it might help.

"Telling someone off" doesn't have to mean standing in front of someone with spittle flying from your lips as you curse them up and down. It can be done in a calm but assertive manner that addresses what the person did and how it hurt you.

It's not necessary for the person who has wronged you to break down in tears and ask for your forgiveness, it can be enough that you had and took your chance to tell them what you think. Whether it means anything to them at all is not a requirement for the process to work; it what it means to you that matters and it can mean closure.

True closure in the strictest sense can only come about with their genuine felt apology, and not necessarily even then should a wound have been opened from the past. We attack in order to mend our minds, to self counsel, but the outcome for us is but seldom this positive, and the clock can only ever entirely be put back in the short term with genuine and full apology.

True closure is determined by the person wronged, not by armchair psychologists and philosophers.

Of course a sincere apology from the wrongdoer can go a long way in establishing closure and is always to be encouraged and hoped for, but if someone doesn't get one and yet moves through a process at the end of which they feel that they have closure, who is in a position to tell them they are wrong and in the strictest sense they can't feel as they do because they didn't get an apology?

Of course a sincere apology from the wrongdoer can go a long way in establishing closure and is always to be encouraged and hoped for, but if someone doesn't get one and yet moves through a process at the end of which they feel that they have closure, who is in a position to tell them they are wrong and in the strictest sense they can't feel as they do because they didn't get an apology?
If a person wronged is left entirely to his or her own devises in making the said correction the extent to which this correction can optimally be made is finally governed by their sense of self adequacy, their ability to thrive as an island. I would argue that even the strongest and most stable minded of us are far from able to genuinely thrive as islands., that any process for attaining isolated approval/self approval (I was

right/I was perfect) can only be part successful, that there would always remain an element of suppressed doubt in all of us.
I agree, nobody can tell them that which they do n`t wish to hear. In the absence of the apology one might experience a gradual closure, and with an apology one might experience an immediate closure. I believe that our minds retain a residue of both every positive experience and every negative one. An agreed definition for closure is called upon.

Nothing that you've expressed can be considered outlandish, but it can easily be seen as presumptuous.

The attainment of enlightenment is an arduous process that very few people accomplish (Assuming anyone does. I've certainly never met anyone who I thought has) even after a lifetime of traveling that path. Most people don't spend a great deal of time walking the path, let alone their entire lives. Setting that state of mind as the standard against which all efforts people make to resolve turmoil in their lives are measured is, in my mind, only of value in terms of philosophical musings.

The process of which I have written is by no means a perfect technique for achieving closure, let alone Enlightenment, and I'm sure that if improperly applied it could create a roadblock on that path, however, the goal of the process is closure not Enlightenment, and being able to achieve some sense of closure as respects certain troubling issues in your life seems to me to be a necessary skill to learn if Enlightenment is ever to be achieved. So while pursuing closure is not the pursuit of Enlightenment, I don't believe it will necessarily hinder the latter.

My definition of closure is a space a person arrives at where they can effectively let go of the negative emotions generated by a given person, incident or situation, so that those emotions don't sap the energy needed to focus on and obtain positive outcomes in their life. To be effective it doesn't require achieving a state of Enlightenment nor even a complete and total elimination of the negative emotions that have been generated by the original source. A person can obtain satisfactory closure and still be revisited by bad memories and negative emotions from time to time, but that is a vastly different situation that being obsessed by their cause and allowing them to direct the person's life.

"Telling a person off" was not a term to be taken so literally. As I've explained, it need not, at all, be an aggressive, confrontational rant, nor a tearful, emotional outburst (although both of those can be effective). What's necessary is to have the opportunity to convey to the person you believe has wronged you, what they did, how it affected you, and how you intend to move forward in regards to it (this could range from never seeing or speaking to the person again to telling them that you forgive them and inviting them to participate in a "new" relationship with you).

The bottom line is that after whatever process you choose to implement is concluded, if you have achieved your goal of letting go of negative emotions and being able to focus on positive ones and positive outcomes, then you have achieved closure, regardless of the fact that it probably isn't going to come to you in an Enlightenment package, and it doesn't mean a damn if it doesn't fit someone else's definition of closure or they think it is an imperfect result.

This is not a matter of people fooling themselves or believing what they want to believe. If they dispel the negativity to an extent that they can move forward; focused on the positive (or even the negativity generated by a different person or situation) they will have, for all intents and purposes, effectively, and genuinely, closed the book on one distressing chapter of their lives. Anyone who would counsel them that they are wrong to trust what they are feeling and offer that the positive effects they are experiencing are illusory, would be an entirely presumptuous ass and not worth attending to.

I have seen this process work and I have personally experienced it work. Of course it's not a guaranteed effective process, but which ones are? There is a risk that you could somehow make matters worse, but if you are consumed by negative emotions that are preventing you from moving forward with your life in a positive way, how can matters get much worse? Getting thrown in jail or inciting someone to kill you? Anyone who truly risks such outcomes has not at all grasped the concept as it is intended to work and has emotional and mental problems that go well beyond the effects of one person or experience.

I recognize that the term "closure" has developed a New Age, pop psychology connotation and is often used to describe an amorphous state of mind that may be impossible to achieve if it even could be defined. Too many people who whine about their need for closure really mean they need to either change history or get their way, but this, of course, doesn't render the concept void of any meaning or undermine a process that can achieve what is a desirable state of mind that can be rationally associated with the term.

Regardless, if you wish to travel along a path to Enlightenment, you won't get very far if you remain blocked by the negative emotions and energy created by one person or one incident. If you incur a karmic debt in obtaining closure, at least you will be free to figure out how to work it off.

Finn, that`s too much work, this is n`t some kind of competition, and it`s not even as though we are being paid £100 per hour for our time. We should be I know. I`m absolutely fine that we differ, and as individuals it is only healthy that we do. I do n`t take any of my thinking from anyone, nothing is borrowed, everything from personal life experience and individual applied thinking. To borrow material from elsewhere is generally to hinder genuine social psycho philosophical progression. What has been said already exists already. I have no time for schools of thinking or anything else designed to steer one`s path. Philosophical progression is only accomplished one word, one agreed definition at a time, and both parties must operate in absolute and total harmony. This is an entirely different world to that one we find ourselves in now. To continue would be futile, it must end with merely our present individual opinion, merely opinion when we could have done philosophy.

I too am fine if we differ and was getting as exasperated as you seem to be now.

We now have closure.

I`ll respond a little.
By your definition of closure I do n`t believe that it has genuinely ever been entirely attained by anyone. There are always the old tapes which cannot help but being played back in ones head given certain specific circumstances. Do you measure closure in terms of a given preset degree of positive thinking?

First paragraph: Do you then consider it a more productive approach to have no measure for social psychological performance, so no philosophy?

Third Paragraph: I agree with you over the closure enlightenment point. You seem to be suggesting that your road to closure is basically the same no matter in which province the closure be sought, and there are very many?
In my view genuine closure, which is an issue subliminally as well, very often can only be realised with a shift in perspectives, between people via the road to empathetic embrace. This embrace may only at times be realised with fundamental shift of personal reality, so ultimately of character, achieved by embracing and making ones own the others perception. This sate of affairs is less likely to be enacted whilst falling then when having arrived at rock bottom.