Lousiana OK's Rapist CastrationFollow

So, Pensive, what you are saying is if you had your way we'd do nothing since getting the collective of humanity to agree on something easy like, oh, the color of the sky on a clear day is nigh to impossible, never mind something a wee bit more controversial like penal code and the judicial system.

Great, hey, thanks for contributing nothing to the discussion, pinhead. You might as well have said you like cheese for as much as you added to what has been tossed around.

/shakes his head

Totem

Pensive, I'm sorry, but your sort of clap-trap is what gives Liberals a bad rap for being namby-pamby mealy-mouthed bleeding hearts.

Society has rules. We call them laws. Those laws are created to maintain a semblance of peaceful co-existence within our society. If a person breaks the social pact by flouting those laws, therefore proving him/herself either unwilling or unable to co-exist peacefully within the general population, then that person should rightfully be isolated from the general population. The only exception should be when the person, due to some mental incapacity, is unable to understand the boundaries of the social pact, much less abide by it.

I, for one, am not going to cry and wring my hands and be burdened by "a regretful heart" for that. I feel regret that they often come out worse than they went in and do believe that the conditions in which they are isolated from the general population should not be such that it has a sort of "concentrating" effect on their anti-social tendencies.

But I do not feel regret that if someone behaves in an anti-social manner (by which I mean in a manner contrary to the general principle of peaceful co-existence with ones fellow citizens by not obeying laws regarding the rights of person and property) then that person gets shut away. Sometimes that shutting away of a person is punitive, sometimes it's for the protection of society in general. Sometimes, very unfortunately, its done in excess of what is justified by the anti-social offense or the capacity of the offender to understand the consequences of the offense, and that is tragic. But overall, that's the way it should be and I'm not gonna shed any tears for it.

See at first I was going to say you didn't understand it, which is okay because my last few posts have been quite inelegant and very scatterbrained. The thing is is that you do appear to understand it. This leaves me at a strange juncture, because it makes you as hypocritical as totem is sadistic.

I don't know maybe you don't get what I mean by regret, because what I am saying is anything but idealistic. Isolating a criminal element is fine in the same way that collateral damage in war is fine, in other words, occasionally acceptable. However, it's the height of arrogance to presume that you have a single justification or reason or anything aside from preventing your personal pain and suffering for imprisoning someone, other than necessary evil. You don't; you don't have the right to punish anyone for any behavior. You don't have a "right" for much of anything at all in fact. What you do have is a practical and understandable When you cause pain, even when it's necessary, you should not forget the pain, and you should regret doing it. This makes you do less of it.


If you're okay with being an arrogant and hypocritical zealot, then that's just fine.

Its okay really if you believe in ethics for some god awful reason. My argument exists only to direct people who have realized that ethics as a whole are entirely specious and imagined, and to deal with the implications of that.

Here I'll put it in bulllet points

-Imprisoning a criminal has two effects
1) Painful Effect: taking away someone's freedom
2) Good Effect: other people are protected from pain

2) does not erase 1) from existence. 2) is a justified action according to the principles that I've set forth, but 1) is not. What do you do? All i'm trying to do is answer that question. If this question doesn't bother you then we need to talk about how stupid most ethical theories are (including your own) and why they fail, instead of imprisoning criminals.

It honestly amazes me how fast you lose that liberal and empathetic compassion for anything that's not a baby on the news.



Just because you don't understand the words or the point or the ethical background does not make in nonsensical. Really, do you even have enough background in linguistic theory to know if something is meaningless? Just say: "you are being too abstract and off topic and going over my head with some niche that you have not fully explained" It really can't be that tough; you still get to insult me and as a bonus you get to insult me about something that is true.

That's kinda what barkingturtle does come to think of it. I always liked him for that.



Yes, that is the answer which I have been stating, save the dismissive and abitrary "end of story" sh*t. Why should a necessary evil be called justified just because it is necessary? It's not, and the collective of figures who invented necessary evil would be rolling in their collective grave to hear you say something like that. You can't justify pain to the point where it erases the pain, so why not take some goddamn responsibility for our laws and at last recognize the fact that we're causing pain. It's not hard: "we have caused pain; let us sincerely reflect on this for five seconds"

This is why you are a hypocrite ambrya: you call me desensitized and "part of the problem" for going "meh" at the launching of a baby but then you come into this situation and act as if you no longer need to care for the suffering of individuals who can feel pain. Every single object in the world that can feel pain is worthy of moral patience. All. of. them. Even someone who choses to break the law is just like you in their moral condition. Recognizing this fact makes me infinitely more compassionate than you; I can actually have some abstract care and worry about something that isn't force fed to me through a news channel.



The @#%^? No they don't. You have misunderstood. Imprisonment can be done and should be done so long as you can say to yourself, at the end of the day "man it really is too damn bad that all of this has to happen." The fact that we have to seclude a large portion of society away for their and our own safety should bother you viscerally if you want to think of yourself as compassionate or of recognizing universal human worth.



The @#%^ing @#%^? Where have I said anything that resembles this? Stop projecting/imagining/smoking/other. Please. Ask for clarification if you don't get it, because you don't; you absolutely, positively, have not comprehended a single implication or point that I've stated so far, and that's more frustrating than your hypocrisy.

Edited, Jul 13th 2008 3:13pm by Pensive

Would you compare deciding to buy ugly shoes, with say the mother that decides to shoplift babyfood rather then listen to her baby crying from hunger?

Our system of adjudication is based on each case having it's own merit; from our courts - our supposedly exceptionally minded judges - down to the state patrol that doesnt give you a speeding ticket if caught racing to the hospital, OR doesn't give you that ticket simply because he's having a good day, it's your first offense and you have a nice smile.

There are no absolutes with human circumstance.

I suppose I could almost live with chemical castration as a form of punishment as it does serve the also presumably serve the purpose of social rehabilitation (thought that's really what's a question here?), but they've made it mandatory on the second offense. That bothers me.

(I dig firefox's spell check!!)

1) About the only place in North America these days that anyone gets convicted for "stealing a mouthful of bread" to feed a starving child is in the touring production of Les Miserables. Find me a judge, anywhere, that would sentence a mother to prison for such an offense. No where have I ever claimed that extenuating circumstances should not be taken into consideration. Only that those who should know better and choose to do the crime anyway, without extenuating circumstances or mental incapacity, should be held accountable.
2) With the availability of food banks, WIC, food stamps, etc, etc, I'd have to question whether or not any mother who did shoplift baby food had first availed herself of all her LEGAL options before resorting to the illegal options.



I agree. But the problem with Pensive's little hang-wringing utopia is that it would cripple the ability of those charged with seeing justice met by burdening them with UNDUE angst. Note the word UNDUE: meaning the angst is being wasted upon those who, frankly, don't deserve it because they have no reasonable justification for choosing to breech the social pact--in other words, a starving baby was not part of the equation.

You brought up speeding tickets, so lets go with that for a moment, just as a simplistic microcosm of the whole. Speeding tickets are 100% purely punitive, are they not? Now let's say we live in Pensive's little dreamland. We would have two major issues.

1) No cop would be empowered to give parking tickets because "you don't have the right to punish anyone for any behavior"
2) Even if a cop COULD give parking tickets, given the restriction above, he or she would first have to go through a bout of soul-searching "Can this person afford it? Will they feel really bad if I give them the ticket? Oh, I don't want to cause them pain!" angsty paralysis before getting down to the business of giving the ticket.

The result, of course, would be that a purely punitive action which coincidentally also serves reasonably effectively as a deterrent (I know lots of people whose motivation for not speeding is the inability to afford a ticket and/or higher insurance costs) does not get taken. Speed limits become impossible to enforce, and thus meaningless. Lives are jeopardized and even lost as a result.

So what we see is that, in practical application, Pensive's attempt to dictate how society should FEEL toward those who break the social pact basically results in anarchy.



It bothers me too.

First, because mandatory sentencing is NEVER a good thing, because it precludes the possibility of considering extenuating circumstances. While I don't see how many "extenuating circumstances" can be claimed in cases of sexual offenses, I suppose its possible that a 19 year old guy with a 16 year old girlfriend might find himself losing his sexual function due to a mandated sentence. We have human beings involved in the justice process for a reason, and that is so they may hear not just about the offense, but also about the circumstances surrounding the offense, and mete out justice with reasonable discrimination. With mandatory sentencing, justice might as well be doled out by a computer.

Second, because I'm not certain it wouldn't do more hard than good in those whose compulsion to commit sexual offenses exists in their brains, rather than their gonads.

Meh. I had already used the word "tripe" and didn't want to be repetitive. Your fetishes about words are your problem, not mine.

The reason I blew off your paragraph, and accurately summarized your argument as DRIVEL, is because ethics are neither specious NOR imagined. Ethics are at the very foundation of the social pact and exist in every culture around the world in some form or another. They are the guidelines which tell us, to quote from a particularly popular source, "Do unto others as you would have done unto you" and "you reap what you sow." Which, quel suprise, are the founding priciples of criminal justice.

The reason I was dismissive of your wordy and nonsensical paragraph is because it is utterly ridiculous. Frankly, your argument--with its utter insupportability, its pretension to intellectualism, and it's "more liberal and enlightened than thou" contrivance--remind me of some of shadowrelm's more memorable moments, such as the time that he said that anyone who is disappointed that his/her spouse is unfaithful has only themselves to blame for expecting his/her partner to be faithful in the first place.




Oooh, phear your Google-Fu!!!! Anyone can turn up a Google search on anything that agrees with their position, it doesn't mean that position isn't absolutely absurd.

Edited, Jul 13th 2008 7:16pm by Ambrya

You don't seem to get it--you confuse disdain with lack of understanding. Your paragraph IS meaningless, because the claim it makes is so asinine as to obliterate any attempt you might have made to give it meaning. You're blowing hot air and attempting to call it philosophy. It's not, and no amount of delusional intellectual-wannabe self-importance is going to change that.



What you fail to realize is that there is a threshold where absurdity devolves into meaninglessness. You have crossed that. To say that the guiding principles of co-existence held by virtually every society on the planet--those principles we know as ethics--are "specious"

Quote:

Main Entry: specious2
Part of Speech: adj
Definition: plausible but not true; based on pretense; sophistic
Etymology: Latin specissus 'beautiful, plausible')

and "imaginary" is so ridiculous as to render meaningless anything preceding or following that claim.



Lern 2 read. The fact that ethical principles such as karma/do unto others/reap what you sow/threefold rule/etc are vital and necessary to the function of society precludes the possibility of those principles being "plausible but not true." Without those principles, the social pact disintegrates and everything becomes anarchy. Which means that they are very, very true, and that your position that they are "specious" is, in fact, utter nonsense.



Such a notable important renowned philosopher such as yourself can't find anyone who agrees that ethics are bullsh'it and that we all need to wring our hands and cry for the poor punished criminals because the necessity of locking them away doesn't justify locking them away. Hmmm. Whudda thunk it? Go figure.




Pretty sure the Constitution already covers pain-minimization with the whole "cruel and unusual punishment" thing. Beyond that, you have failed to support the claim that necessity does not, in fact, provide justification.



Whatever you want to call it, you still haven't demonstrated how it's not justified by the necessity. If an action is necessary enough to be undertaken regardless of the potential for collateral damage, then it is, in fact, justified by the sheer fact of its necessity.

You damn twit. If you can understand the words in context then by definition they are meaningful. Use them correctly please. You need to recognize the difference between arrogance and ignorance and really stop conflating the two. Yeah, I'm havin the time of my life chewing you out for inconsistencies and discussing a subject that I happen to enjoy (phil of war) and linking it to phil of law. I'm going to be exceedingly arrogant about it also, because the internet does strange things to people and I like getting to yell at imaginary people occasionally.

In fact you'd do well to completely call me on that because it goes against the message and mentality of every single thing I've said about compassion and understanding in this thread.

That being said I'd eat my damn hat if you could show some good secondary sources and a strong logical argument to support a single thing that you've said, instead of just blowing your *** in the wind as if you are even attempting to have a charitable interpretation of anything that I'm saying. I'm well aware that you can't possibly be so dumb as your reconstituted version of my argument indicates, and you're probably just not trying. Thankfully, I'm okay with it.

Edited, Jul 14th 2008 2:21am by Pensive

Honestly, this has been fun but I'm going to try to stop responding. I make no promises but I need to remind myself how not-actually-serious the internet is sometimes. I'm betting on my pride being enough to let me stop responding by saying that I will, so lets see what happens eh?

That's fine, the weekend is over and I'm back to being the sole care provider for a rambunctious toddler for 14 hours a day. And frankly, the original word I used to summarize your claims is still the best: claptrap. Rubbish spewed forth in an attempt to emulate ivory-tower intellectuals whose theories are totally divorced from the reality the rest of us inhabit, and which pathetically comes across more like Kevin Kline's desperate parroting of Neitzche in A Fish Called Wanda.

The problem is the difference between letting one emotions have more power over one actions then logic.

If I had proof that someone sexually abuse one of my children, my fantasy would be to skin them alive and salt their wounds as just a start of the pain I want to cause them for hurting my love ones. Logically I know this doesn't fix the problem and while I may think of revenge as just payback for the wrong done to my child, it doesn't make it right or morally better then just locking up a person for how ever long the law allows.

Would it not be better for one to try to prevent others from being hurt as my own child, then just scream for more mandatory punishments for those who behavior I may not like.

Also just because we think society needs ethical systems to function, doesn't make a law always ethical. The arguement I see here has been over wither one belives in absolute or situational ethics. The divide often is also seen as between those who believe in a Greater Being that hands down our morals from the top of some mountain and those who question if such an entity exists.

I suggest one do some study before judgment is made on any ethical system one chooses to follow. While I choose to be an Ethical Humanist I haven't felt either position is right or better, then the other for every situation.

I find it far better to try to limit the conditions that lead to criminal behavior then to lock up people we fail as an society to offer support. Just look at the percentage of the prison population that suffer from mental illness or have learning disabilities.

BTW my being uncomfortable with chemical castration has to do with the fact that the Swhat information I seen on it was done, was done by John Money at Johns Hopkins, who's work did much harm to the Transgender Community in Baltimore. So I tend to be somewhat bias on the subject, since I saw a news report on the work he did and see his work questional.

Quote:

John Money was critical in the debate on pedophilia. He felt that both sexual researchers and the public do not make distinctions between affectional pedophilia and sadistic pedophilia, including infantophilia (occasionally referred to as nepiophilia), pedophilia and ephebophilia. For Money, affectional pedophilia is about love and not sex.

If I were to see the case of a boy aged ten or eleven who's intensely erotically attracted toward a man in his twenties or thirties, if the relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual...then I would not call it pathological in any way.[17][18]

His view was that affectional pedophilia is caused by a surplus of parental love that became erotic, and is not a behavioral disorder. Rather, he felt that heterosexuality is another example of a societal and therefore, a superficial, ideological concept.