Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑April 26th, 2023, 10:20 am Yes, it is, that's why I oppose vengeance. It achieves nothing except making me the same as the offender. We don't want or need "negative consequences" — vengeance by another name; euphemism — we need protective action, and we probably need to call it that, so that we are clear about what we mean.
If an offender cannot be trusted to walk our streets freely without doing some sort of harm to their fellow citizens, then that person cannot be allowed to intermingle with the rest of us. They must be separated or segregated from the rest of the community: protective action. We cannot un-kill the person they killed, but we can make sure they can't kill anyone else. Positive action; protective action; vengeance would add nothing useful or productive to this.
I was aiming, in my comments, at the more extreme offences, like murder. But your comments remind me that the same sort of thinking also applies to lesser misdemeanours too. I think, and hope, that my sentiments apply as well to those too.LuckyR wrote: ↑April 26th, 2023, 1:27 pm Your comments sound great to read online, but don't square with common (accepted) human behavior. Say someone at the office takes credit for work you did. You could bring this up to your manager, but you make the accurate calculation that you will lose more through appearing
"petty" than you will gain from getting credit for your efforts. Let's say later you are in a position to choose the next project leader, your antagonist is slightly better qualified to get the position, but there are other reasonable candidates. No one will second guess your decision. You can respond by 1) doing literally nothing (pretend it didn't happen) and promote your antagonist 2) pass over your antagonist specifically based on what they did to you before.
What do you do? Which do you think most folks would choose?
Do you dispute the psychological reality that wrong doers who have literally no consequences for performing a negative act have a higher chance of repeating that act than if they suffer a negative consequence?
The problem with these minor offences is that they are not serious enough for most of us to want laws to control such behaviours. In the case of murder, we have a 'contract' with our fellows that we don't take vigilante action (personal vengeance), that our police will deal with it. There is no such system in place for minor offences, and perhaps there shouldn't be. So we're looking for some sort of social agreement, an informal social 'contract', to oppose such behaviours informally and socially. I don't know how successful that might prove to be, in practice.