I don't believe I am a cynic. You'll have to provide some anecdotes for me here.
My turn: What exactly did you do 20 years ago?
The same as what's discussed here, almost to the letter.
Now then, your attitude often comes up as bitter, and I personally find that you're cynical and harsh towards others on these forums. Also, see your previous signature. So: Why shouldn't one forgive the missteps of the people one loves?
I'm not going to have a circular discission with you. The response to "What evidence do you have of this" is not "Because I personally think so". I won't even ask what you've observed, because it is asking the same question again, and I will get the same nothing answer I did before. Luckily, you managed to escape the circle by slipping in an example. But I don't really see how my Armok quote makes me cynical or bitter. If you think that finding that quote funny is cynical, I would have to ask if you, also, practice the development of eyearms. Which is my question. Answer it before moving on.
Why shouldn't one forgive the missteps of the people one loves?
Here's why: You're using a noncontextual sympathy phrase to lend support to a man who deserves no sympathy. This is an individual who posted a pity-seeking thread (that is, one in which he was seeking pity from other forumites, as all these "I hate life" threads are. Scroll through them. What do you think they're really expecting? They want people to say things to make them feel better) in which he explained that he had just beaten up his mother and brandished a knife on her. In the same way I would not have pity upon a white collar criminal, I do not have pity upon this guy. In some contexts, it might have been okay. Maybe if she had been abusing him. Maybe if he had beaten her up in self-defense. Even if he was loaded up with drugs, it might finally be a wake up call to get to rehab, though I still wouldn't be able to give him any sympathy unless he proved capable of cleaning himself up and never physically hurting somebody again.
But that's not the context we are given. The context we were given is "I just snapped and beat her and even got out a kitchen knife and threatened to stab her, all because she stared at me when I got angry at somebody online."
"I '-just'"
This kid beat up his mother, threatened to kill her with a knife, and then immediately walked over to his computer again. He has rage issues. He has obvious responsibility issues. He seems to be less concerned with taking care of his mother than he is about posting about it on the internet. That leads to two major possibilities: He's either a troll (which we know is unforgivable, because trolls who make threads like this on Life Advice get banned along with their real accounts), or he's a violent, selfish, psychopath. There's a third possibility, wherein he had a very good reason for doing what he did, but it's nowhere to be seen in the post.
But your question is: Why shouldn't one forgive the missteps of the people one loves? Really, that woman should check her son into a mental ward or bring in the police (and maybe that's what she did!), but she did raise the guy, and so she probably has some attachment to him. If she wants to forgive her son, that's her choice.
But there is no reason for people here to 'forgive' him, especially since he didn't do anything to hurt
us except ply us for e-hugs. There is no reason to try to make him feel better about what he did. Just like Mechanical Man said: "People do not forgive based on the severity of the action- they forgive based on the reasons that action happened." The reason this action happened, as cited to us by the person doing it, was that he was getting e-bullied, so he beat up his mother. A lot of people here were bullied as children. I was bullied in elementary, but it stopped by the time I got big enough to be able to beat up my mother, so it would be unfair of me to provide myself as an example, but I'd like to hear from some of the people who were bullied/are being bullied in their teens. Have you ever beaten up your mother and tried to kill her because you were just so mad about being picked on?
I will say that any disagreements I have with anybody here have never led me to creep into my roommate's room and murder them in their sleep. Nikov was in a fight in every thread he was in, but he never cropped up in the news for murdering his wife and kids. We all know he had an exceedingly aggressive personality, willing to take anybody on - but to our knowledge, he never beat up his family. Why then does Audioworm deserve our sympathy?
Your turn, Siquo.