Indifference to the suffering of others.
Sure. But the idiocy of the situation is also that treating people like this, causing them to suffer, just hurts society overall! Itâs not even harmless to the rest of us! Itâs so backwards itâs sad.
At the end of the last season of OITNB, they indicated just this - although it wasnât solitary, but the newly privatized litchfield prison was bringing in a whole host of new inmates, doubling up on beds, and cheaping out on the food.
Iâve been happy to see how the show, about a privilege white woman having to negotiate prison, has become a sharp critique of the prison-industrial-complex⌠because this has been a serious issue that has been ignored by many in the general public.
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Thereâs certainly a causal relationship between someone getting committing a murder and someone getting convicted of murder. Provably so. It just doesnât follow that the people committing the murder and the people convicted of it are the same people at all.
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People who commit crimes are still humans and deserve humane treatment. The fact you think itâs okay to treat people like animals says far more about you than it does about them.
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Representative âdemocracyâ is a euphemism for identity theft. Itâs not democratic. If I donât pay my taxes, I wind up in a box. When a bully takes your lunch money and gives it to the Torture Corporation of America instead of fixing potholes, itâs the bully who funds the torture, not you.
We should all do what we can to fight tyranny, whether or not itâs done by an entrenched political elite fraudulently claiming our democratic support. But I donât buy the collectivist line. Just because I donât intend to get myself shot or jailed by rising up in rebellion or sticking it to the IRS doesnât mean I support the plutocrats that steal from our public coffers to terrorize and imprison and torture my neighbors and brothers and sisters.
So no, I donât do it. And the extent to which I will peacefully and lawfully resist the imperialists that rule my land is based on a responsibility to my fellow man and woman and planet, not something as fickle as culpability for what liars and rapists and murderers do in my name without my meaningful consent.
I am also deeply troubled by predicating humanitarian responsibility on personal guilt. If history and religion has shown anything its that people can talk themselves out of guilt for original sin faster than Houdini could get out of zip-cuffs.
Consequently, what guilt I do feel derives from that which I could sacrifice to fight power, not what those who wield that power do of their own volition regardless of my voice or votes. The measure of civic character is not how much evil your rulers get away with, but how much you sacrifice in pursuit of preventing them from doing it. A man with nothing who lays down his life against tyrants is a hero. A man with everything who sacrifices a modicum of personal wealth or safety to protect others is doing the bare minimum necessary to not be a complete leach.
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@Mindysan33 is not the one demonstrating a detachment from moral reality. Two wrongs do not make a right. Vengeance is not justice, itâs perpetuation.
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The Lit & Phil library in my home town has a collection of the OED from the 19th century that would be perfect. It takes up several shelves and each volume is big enough to kill you if dropped from a reasonable height. Thatâs the ones you need.
Yes, and Iâm beginning to wonder if the good old US of A is even beating 19th-century Russia, on that basis.
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It goes against my better judgement to argue with trollies butâŚ
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Letâs start with your straw man. Overall, nearly three-fourths (72.1%) of federal prisoners are serving time for a non-violent offense and have no history of violence.
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Now letâs address your false dichotomy. No one advocates replacing profit-motivated torture with kissing murderers. Thatâs yet another straw man.
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Now letâs address your remarks on rehabilitation which you brought up despite not wanting to hear any contradiction to your unsupported opinion. Sweden Is Closing Prisons Due to Lack of People to Put In Them The fact that not all criminals can (and maybe not all even should) be rehabilitated is not a justification for sending them to corporate-owned international-gang-run crime schools, which is what American prisons are for people who serve their time and are denied gainful employment because their prison record stays with them to every prospective employer. Now maybe you want to simply give life sentences to all convicts, thereby never letting them graduate the crime schools you support. Fiscally impossible, morally reprehensible, ethically lazy and politically abhorrent even to most social conservatives, so thatâs not a solution. Maybe you want to execute them all on the cheap to keep costs down. This was how it was done throughout most of Europe during the Middle Ages; thieves, heretics and those who protested the kingâs law were typically dispatched in a variety of gruesome methods of murder. Thatâs genocide; ISIS is selling that hard if you want to live in a modern dark age. If thatâs your solution, and I sincerely hope it isnât, there is no more debate to be had with you than with Pol Pot. Maybe right now youâre thinking, wow, genocide, what an assumption. Yes, almost as obtuse as assuming your opponent advocates kissing murderers.
Three strikes; youâre out.
Except Iâm not interested in winning an argument with a trolley. Iâm interested in finding and advocating for real solutions. Solutions such as ending the War on Drugs. Such as shorter sentences for non-violent offenders. Such as rehabilitation for violent offenders that respond to it and making room for prolonged incarceration of violent offenders who donât (psychopaths). Such as mental health care that moves more from the latter category into the former. Such as a justice system that isnât used to fund local law enforcement and county-level corruption by bilking the poor and lower-middle classes and giving breaks to upper-class defendants who can afford to pay for more justice. Such as equality under the law that shouldnât sentence minorities and the poor more harshly and disproportionately than wealthier people and white defendants.
Thatâs just to start. But since youâve made it abundantly clear that youâre not going to engage with reason that challenges your black-and-white authoritarian view of crime and punishment, or your blind faith in the inherent justice of the laws of the land, there is little point in engaging further with you.
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I see what youâre saying, but hereâs a genuine question: Do I have the right to stand by and preserve personal safety in the face of manifest injustice? Iâve asked myself this many times. If someone is being assaulted in the middle of the woods and there is no way to get help, and I have the ability to stop it, without guarantee of personal safety, do I have the right to do nothing? Iâm not sure the answer is no.
If the answer is no, then unlawful as well as lawful means must be employed to affect justice, and in fact there is a duty to engage in those actions which might not be legal. There is injustice, I have the ability to stop it, and I donât have the right to personal safety. So it follows that I have moral duty to disobey the law in the face of injustice. If the answer is yes, then there isnât that duty- but something about that doesnât sit right with me.
Bear in mind that much of our social progress was very dramatically not brought about by lawful means. Iâm not even necessarily talking about armed insurrection. The SNCC unlawfully occupied private property during segregation, and Ghandi led an unlawful salt march. This is the definition of civil disobedience, to deliberately disobey the law. In recent times, people have been conned into believing that any street protest is civil disobedience (but that is neither here nor there.)
My point is that I think on some level you agree with me, since you believe that some level of self-sacrifice is necessary to be a moral person. We may only differ in degree. Here, however, Iâm talking about collective responsibility, which means collective guilt. I can emphasize this by using the individual you, but itâs rhetorical, not logical. So if we assume that we are not obligated to risk personal safety, but that there are some duties that are required of an ethical person, then weâre talking about your duties vis-a-vis the collective. You have a solemn duty to engage the process of manipulating and moving that collective to the extent of your ability, and as allowed by your safety and welfare. What I find, more often than not, is people interpret this to mean voting every four years. But, calling congresscritters is easy, risk-free, and a way of engaging the collective, for instance. Most people wonât even do that.
I understand that (again in the personal-welfare model of responsibility) people canât be calling everyone 24/7, but I would argue we all (even me- especially me, since I happen to know this for a fact) fall short of our potential to be ethical and moral persons. And in that regard, perhaps we should feel individual guilt? I agree that guilt isnât always constructive, but Iâm not sure purely aspirational motivation is the right way to go, either.
What isnât a theory, and has been well established fact, is that weâve turned prisons into criminality factories with revolving doors. Unless you think everyone who commits any kind of crime should be behind bars for the rest of their life, then we have a pragmatic interest in rehabilitation- or at very least, not making people more likely to re-offend. Thatâs where weâre at right now.
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I look at a right as a legal thing. A right is privilege of which people can be deprived when theyâre unwilling to fight for it and to fight for each other to share it. But I get that you mean moral right. The thing is that I donât believe in natural rights, the universe has no privileged value system. We must choose a humanitarian value system and bring it about. This I consider a humanist view.
I would say we all have a moral obligation to do what we believe is right, and that in a just and stable society the prevailing morality will be eusocial. So yes, I think we should fight. But while I will absolutely commend someone who sacrifices more than others, I do not believe people as a whole can me shamed into letting go of safety and security. I do believe that many can be inspired by sacrifice to sacrifice too. In short, heroes lead by example. I can easily imagine the United States and the world at large sliding into a world where I would risk much more than I do. And yes, the person who risks more than I in this present world is my moral better. I wouldnât say this makes me feel guilty that I donât, for example, risk prison to try and stop my government from murdering inmates or bombing weddings. But I admire the peaceful protesters like Ghandi and the millions of lesser known heroes who do make great sacrifices. Heroes should be role models.
Iâm not even sure we differ in degree. Well, perhaps, but I think the substance of our disagreement is on what guilt and culpability are. As I said, I donât think the person whose lunch money the bully takes to obtain power is actively culpable in what the bully does. But everyone has a moral responsibility to stand up to bullies to whatever extent they have both the will and the means to do so, because thatâs the only way evil is defeated. As Edmund Burke so famously said, All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. I am very much more interested in actions than feelings, and I believe white/American/liberal guilt is more often used as salve that gives the illusion of atonement and as social level politicians, who are often bullies themselves, use to build support for their own power base and the the investor class (i.e. those who can afford to invest in locking others out of investment opportunities and other means of meritocratic mobility). But given your handle name, I rather suspect you too value actions more than sentiments.
In the end, I was mostly disagreeing with the collectivist notion that the people are directly responsible for the actions of an undemocratic elite that they did not really choose and cannot depose. It echos the arguments so often used to blame populations that suffer great war casualties because of the actions of tyrants, such as the dismissal of the Afghan death toll as deserved for not themselves personally removing the Taliban from power.
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Itâs not an insult. If you wish to treat others inhumanely, I just think that says more about you.
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Well, countries like Norway, with incredibly low recidivism rates, begs to differ, actually.
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It is impressive how the society handled Breivikâs trial and conviction.
Not only the rection of the prime minister (âmore democracy, more openness, but not naivetyâ) but also that he is still regarded as a human being with rights. I am not aware of serious demands within Norway calling for longer prison terms, and his appeal on human rights grounds is not seen as a scandal.
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Agreed. Also, that asshat from Burzum was also jailed in Norway and was released once his sentence was up. He seems like an outlier, though, the fact that heâs embraced white power, etc.
w00t! Speak it, brothah.
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[quote=âgrimloki, post:24, topic:75874â]
It was wrong to just kill them, or torture them⌠Argued a bunch of religious typesâŚ[/quote]
Cesare Beccariaâs thesis wasnât based on religion. In the introduction of his book On Crimes and Punishments, he even gently ditched religion as a basis for morals (while acknowledging it had been useful for a while).
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