15. Punishment is for animals

15. Punishment is for animals

Although I’m sure Temple Grandin will disagree.

But it’s definitely not for people. People – adults, anyway - can communicate. Even without a common language, people can communicate well enough that they shouldn’t have to resort to just hitting one another, or confiscating each other’s possessions, to make a point.

Punishment is a last resort, or it should be. Punishing a human being is the end of communication, it’s where we say ‘I’m done talking to you, have THIS instead.’ The implicit breach of personal trust and caring that comes with every act of punishment creates the situation for the next one. Once we’ve abandoned communication and resorted to physical aversives or “non-physical” aversives that are supported and facilitated by either physical means or intimidation, we’ve lost the better options.

When talking fails and we punish, trust and love are then horribly compromised, and non-communicative means are all that’s left. Punishing destroys trust and communication. Punishing is a self-perpetuating cycle that once begun, becomes nearly impossible to stop.

People think it stops, we think that our non-physical punishments are working. Children do respond to the training, and it does become possible to control them with verbal commands, but this is based in the previous physical, non-verbal methods used previously; non-physical punishment is really only “previously physical” punishment. It relies on past experience of physical means. It relies on intimidation. I think there is the very real danger that the actual physical training occurs in private, when we’re home alone with our babies and toddlers, and then we get to later parade our well-behaved children about in public, displaying our non-physical mastery of them, and we all get to pretend that we have good, communicative relationships with our kids. It all looks very civilized – as did dinner with the Queen and her court, back in the days of the British empire, but empire is not achieved by good manners, and neither are well trained children.

Of course, we are not fooling ourselves and everyone around us on an individual level. This farce is inter-generational; the blindness we bring to our non-physical punishing is not conscious, it is repressed. It is blindness forced upon us as children and not acted out so much as re-played when we are adults. No-one is to blame.

If you can get past our feelings shouting this idea down, if you can look at it dispassionately, and focus on the logic, you’ll see I’m right.

14. Christianity: the Revolution that Never Happened.

Christianity: the Revolution that Never Happened.

This is the revolution, intended, I think, as a revolution in Judaism, that didn't happen. You've heard it before, this below, from Matthew:

Matthew 5 (King James Version)

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Here, Jesus refers to the Old Testament scripture, the traditional model for Hebrew law and punishment, and then issues the new Way, the revolution. He is making a case here, as in many other places, for a more forgiving and less vengeful God. More to the point for me, I think he made a case for a less vengeful and more forgiving Man.

(Jesus was surrounded by zealots, freedom fighters, or t least the leaders who talked them up, the hawks of his day, plus he was contested and marginalized by the orthodoxy, and the Herod clan. These conservatives had a good case against him, he was politically hamstrung by the occurence of his birth while his mother was still in "virgin" status, so Jesus was dealt the position of moderate, and moderator. The conservative, orthodox church leaders, if not the king, Herod, were to some degree aligned with the zealots against the Roman occupation, and so Jesus, pitted against them by his unauthorized birth, was also set up against the zealots, and so, found himself in the role of peacemaker.

http://www.peshertechnique.infinitesoulutions.com/index1.html

And so, this new, more civilized code of punishment.)

I think Jesus announced a model of peacemaking with these great words, and set a new model for society in general.

It seems that the Christian concept of a more forgiving God caught on; God is now seen as gentler, and far more loving that the punishing, jealous God of the Old Testament.

But the more forgiving Mankind?

Punishment is still the rule of the land, all lands. In the Western world, we no longer take eyes, or teeth, true, that has improved - but we certainly haven't made it all the way to 'turning the other cheek also.'

Not even with our children!

Jesus' time was a high water mark for civilization, one of the few times his message of peace and rejection of punishment could have had a chance in the long, rough history of the world, but old habits die hard. It's still Old School, Old Testament, when push come to shove.

It may have taken two thousand years to hear Jesus' message, but we are arguably at another high point of civilization, and it's one of those changes, like quitting any bad habit, it's always going to be a good change to make. The message is, get hurt, model peace. Prioritize peace over 'security.' Security annihilates peace. Take some lumps. Show the bad guys what it looks like to NOT fight, show them what it's like when someone DOESN'T hurt someone.

At least show your CHILDREN these things.

Turn the other cheek.

Viva la Revolution!