Ogged: Someone needs to rerun Rollerball in the cinemas over there. and THEN maybe some entertainment company could actually start a world series. Know what I mean?
Well, joe o, the point of the analogy to abstinence programs is to say that it doesn't work to try to stop them completely. In fact, then they get barbaric in massive and scary ways.
No. Because there is an effect on the audience and those participating, and that isn't that it just functions as an outlet and lalala we go back to our day jobs. I cannot believe that someone can participate in killing another person and not be affected by it. The prevalence of PTSD supports that assertion.
I don't think sports works so well, because we're not the agents of cruelty in the same way that we are (by proxy) in a public execution. Of course we're affected by killing, but that, in itself, isn't an objection. The question is how much and in what ways, and whether less/more or other ways would be better.
You have got to be kidding. What precisely makes you think that the enjoyment of cruelty can be managed? Why wouldn't it be more like a really potent drug - a little bit's OK right now, but then that gets boring, so you ramp it up, and so on, until you need a certain amount to, you know, maintain. Look at our movies, where we normally sublimate our violent tendencies - getting more or less violent, do ya think? And which way do you think the trend line will be pointing 10 years from now?
I hate to disagree with you about something on which many other people will disagree with you, but nonetheless I disagree, though perhaps I could be convinced if there were reasons to believe that the state's use of cruelty in punishment would weaklen some of our less pleasant urges rather than encourage them. Worries about causation duly noted, but I don't look at places where this sort of thing goes on and think, there's a society that deals admirably with malfeasance and the human condition.
Yglesias:
Volokh notes that even torturing and killing a man who raped and killed dozens of children is, from a certain point of view, "ridiculously inadequate." Which is quite right and entirely part of the point. Unleashing excess cruelty on serious wrongdoers doesn't, in the end, solve anything, or balance out any sort of scales. Dead kids aren't revived and they're not really avenged, either. Family members pain and loss doesn't go away.
Or, as as someone I like once put it, "just because God died doesn't mean you have to solve all His problems."
Slightly OT but triggered by your post. The novel "An Instance of The Fingerpost" by Ian Pears contains a very vivid description of execution in public, and a dramatic explanation of how the execution was wrong but necessary at the same time. Suffice to say, it moved me to investigate anabaptism a little more closely.
IF it's true that cruelty is crucial, what's wrong with video or role-playing games? i'd far rather my little brother squirrel himself away in his room playing Grand Theft Auto than in a square cheering at anyone's death, even a child molester's.
Of course we're affected by killing, but that, in itself, isn't an objection.
Why is that not an objection? Your point, if I understand you properly, is that we have a natural bloodlust, and it's better for society if we're allowed to get it out now and again. (God, even typing that is so annoying. It's a ridiculous argument.) If exercising our bloodlust *damages* society by creating a lot of crazy fuckers, or even in smaller ways by inuring us to small, everyday cruelties, then that is a downside that has to be taken into account.
Anyway, to an extent you are right: people will kill occasionally, and wars will break out. But to move from that acknowledgement of an unavoidable evil to an argument that we ought to accomodate, even embrace it is just... even as a "devil's advocate" argument, it's offensive.
You know, I lived in Samoa for a couple of years, where they're very uptight about sex. Premarital sex could, no fooling, get you beaten to death with rocks by offended family members. (Didn't always happen, but it was a genuine risk.) Nonetheless, teenagers still screwed around. There were a lot of quick, pregnancy related weddings. There is no threat that will stop most teenagers from having sex.
Killing people isn't like that. Very, very few Americans have ever killed anyone. And we're doing fine. All that bottled-up blood-lust? Not a problem. The idea that we should torture criminals to death because it's a psychological need (that is what you're saying, right) is absolutely nuts.
I've been of two minds about this for a very long time, particularly because I am neither strongly for or against capital punishment. Something is wrong with a society that carries out executions behind closed doors, allowing its citizens to avoid facing the reality of what their government does in their name. On the other hand, something is wrong with a society that allows execution to be a spectator sport. I suppose that is effectively an argument against capital punishment, though I've seen plenty enough cases where the death penalty was (IMO) completely justified and perhaps even an underreaction to the crimes committed. I'd have been willing to be a witness to the executions, though I find the folks cheering outside prisons to be engaging in absolutely repugnant behavior as well.
You kids are Philosophers. Now my theoretical grounding in theories of punishment is non-existent (and is actually one of the reasons for enrolling in an external undergrad programme in Philosophy offered by London) but I have an instinctive horror of the notion that the state, as executive, abrogates to itself ultimate powers to suspend fundamental rights. It could be a religious point (it is with me) but even on a purely humanistic agenda it must be unnacceptable. There is NO excuse for decending to the level of that against which we legislate.
Oh.. And please be fucking sure you got it right, before giving the perpertrator the drop.
My guess is that is like sex. The more you get, the more you need. If that is true, we loose both ways
(And, you might consider that a people that has gotten out of the habit of seeing itself as an agent of cruelty might, say, bomb the shit out of another country--for its own good--without batting an eye.)
I think this is a red herring. I rather doubt that putting a bunch of LGFers in front of a public execution—or even letting (since I doubt "making" would be the right word) them take part in one—would open their eyes to the horrors of inflicting death on a fellow human.
Given that we humans need to get a little barbaric every now and again, what's the best way for the state to manage our bloodlust?
At the metting-out-justice point in the timeline, haven't people already gotten a little barbaric? So you want to reward the victims of barbaric crimes with a license to perform barbaric justice? And when barbaric justice is misapplied on the innocent, &c.?
I rather doubt that putting a bunch of LGFers in front of a public execution—or even letting (since I doubt "making" would be the right word) them take part in one—would open their eyes to the horrors of inflicting death on a fellow human.
To elaborate, I think it would actually desensitize people to violence.
The historical evidence would suggest that they'd think it was loads of fun, and would bring picnics and their children. Anyone else see that exhibition of lynching photographs that was up in NY a couple of years ago?
Even if you accept the sex/bloodlust analogue (I don't), surely the analogous Dem position on bloodlust would be something like reducing penalties for fights that break out, or creating boxing gyms where people could go and beat the shit out of each other while minimizing the potential harm of such actions. Your claim about the policy analogue would be more convincing if the Dem response to abstinence programs was to suggest providing hookers to every teenager in need.
It tends to be applied unequally or wrongly. And then the people doing the applying do it to someone else. This is the original basic reason for the injunction in the constitution - the British did it to political opponents, but not to rich thieves and suchlike.
That wasn't an argument, against, say, flogging, which is non-lethal. (And which I would be fine with.)
Given that we humans need to get a little barbaric every now and again, what's the best way for the state to manage our bloodlust? If you ask it that way, a cruel public death for a child-molesting serial killer seems like a damn good answer.
Well, if THAT's a problem, bring back dueling (voluntary), which I'd be fine with. That'll certainly manage the bloodlust.
(And, you might consider that a people that has gotten out of the habit of seeing itself as an agent of cruelty might, say, bomb the shit out of another country--for its own good--without batting an eye.)
The counter-argument is that the country in question is specifically being prevented from being aware of it the consequences of its actions, preventing corrective action to self-image.
Also, one could point out that the faction that seems to love this stuff seems to be engaging in a peculiar form of masturbation.
I rather doubt that putting a bunch of LGFers in front of a public execution—or even letting (since I doubt "making" would be the right word) them take part in one—would open their eyes to the horrors of inflicting death on a fellow human.
To elaborate, I think it would actually desensitize people to violence.
This is the argument of Montaigne's essay on courage (I think that's the one anyway).
#18: On the other hand, we might consider that a people who aren't accustomed to public killings would be more horrified by war--which is why we prefer to bomb from a safe distance. Not that that's morally defensible, but it does suggest that we are less, not more comfortable with violent death than you seem to be saying.
Now, on the death penalty full stop: aside from the moral and ethical issues--I'm adamantly opposed--there's the hypocrisy of the thing. Why is the child rapist/serial killer being murdered? Because he did something barbaric and horrible that resulted in someone dying. So what's the solution? Let's do something barbaric and horrible that results in someone dying.
If that's justice, it's justice of the most shameful kind.
Natural human bloodlust is a silly notion. What's your evidence? That people who don't have to fight in wars have a penchant for starting them? that humans in society have fought wars?
Even low-level violence is rare if not institutionally encouraged, and killing is wholly different. I almost never take up nature arguments, but even I'll admit we're hard-wired against deliberatly killing someone. Evidence shows most if not all serial killers have backgrounds of emotional/physical abuse and some cognitive impairment/damage. The rate at actually firing at the enemy in WWII was terrifically low, somewhere around 17%. Lower still at Gettysberg. And those are situations in which one couldn't even clearly see what one was shooting at.
Look at killing in the human race and you'll see a history of factors training and teaching people to kill. Training a warrior in a tribe to kill was difficult, it took years of him getting used to killing animals. And still, death rates for ancient wars were for the most part fairly low. Ancient Greek wars (with a few exceptions) have been described by some historians as giant pushing matches.
All evidence suggests that cold-blooded sociopaths who can just go out and kill another person are ultra-rare. Even humans in their most basic organization have triggers that have to be set off before they can kill; rage or panic. But instances of rage or panic aren't what you're referring to when you say humans are naturally bloodthirsty.
On the other hand, we might consider that a people who aren't accustomed to public killings would be more horrified by war--which is why we prefer to bomb from a safe distance. Not that that's morally defensible, but it does suggest that we are less, not more comfortable with violent death than you seem to be saying.
I didn't mean to imply that I think we as a society are comfortable with violent death—I mean look at the way we even buy our meat! But I don't think that the people who are currently able to advocate wholesale slaughter from the air do so because they themselves are horrified by war. That kind of war may be more palatable to the public for that reason, but (if I understand rightly) the result of the unprecedented broadcast of death and mutilation in the Vietnam war wasn't an end to public support of war, just to the public support of knowing what was going on in war. Uh, the preceding is pretty incoherent, I think.
The sex ed analogy falls flat. Kids are going to have sex regardless, so we might as well help them be safe and healthy.
There's no harm reduction in state sponsored torture-unto-death. Yes, the Jeff Dahmers of the world will torture people to death regardless of the rules, but that doesn't mean that the state has any interest in preemptively slaking their bloodlust.
Advanced societies provide plenty of harmless outlets for normal aggression: contact sports, yelling at the TV, hunting, video games, flame wars, etc., etc.
Is televised dismemberment supposed to make people less likely to cut each other off in traffic?
Agreed. And understand that I'm playing devil's advocate when I say that just as most folks wouldn't pay to pen a vicious dog, most folks are similarly unmotivated to pay to pen a vicious human being.
Some death penalty cases cost more than life in prison cases. Depends on how long somebody spends in prison and how many appeals a death row inmate gets.
Ogged, I have to agree with bphd, Joe Drymala, SCM Tim. Your point is essentially the pressure-cooker argument: that allowing a small outlet of steam will prevent an explosion. This may be valid in some cases, but when it comes to public executions, I think it's more like the proverbial hole in a dam. Once the government sanctions not just cruelty, but acknowledged cruelty (and there is a difference) in some cases, it will only be a matter of time before it spills over into other areas.
That said, I do know exactly what you and Professor Volokh are saying. There are some people who I think just plain deserve to suffer. But that's an individual micro-scale evaluation. If I thought that, as bphd put it, it could just "[function] as an outlet and lalala we go back to our day jobs," then I'd say go for it. But it wouldn't work that way, especially not in a free society. If we unleash those urges on a macro scale, the berserker rage will just keep reinforcing itself.
Ogged, I see through your cunning charade. You're trying to set a new record in the hundred-comment dash. But I will foil your plan with a future post about how we should torture people for not liking Larry Summers.
36: Don't follow. What about 30 is wrong and what about PTSD would play into it? Please use small words. Lately between 1 and 6 I have been unusually slow.
But really, that isn't a money argument, so much as a utility argument: what do we get by keeping this person alive (answer: very little, if anything) versus what do we get by executing them (answer: closure for the victims' families...maybe).
Let's be clear here. We aren't talking about the death penalty - we're talking about the infliction of wanton cruelty for the sake of sating the audience's blood lust. We get the specific deterrence whichever way our boy dies. More to the point, we aren't doing this for deterrence's sake.
But really, that isn't a money argument, so much as a utility argument: what do we get by keeping this person alive (answer: very little, if anything) versus what do we get by executing them (answer: closure for the victims' families...maybe).
Until ten years later DNA evidence exonerates the dead man!
May I suggest reading two essays that would spare everyone a lot of time: Albert Camus' "Reflections on the Guillotine" and Garry Wills' "The Dramaturgy of Death".
#43: Re-reading 30 I have no idea why I wrote that. I remember thinking you were saying that killing from the air isn't less damaging psychologically than killing face-to-face, but I have no idea where I got that from. Withdrawn.
#44: What we get from keeping the killer alive is moral consistency, and the knowledge that we are a society that does not condone killing. I don't think those things are negligible. And I don't think that I would find any closure in the death of someone who murdered, say, pk. It isn't going to bring the dead back to life.
No Labs, I'm totally serious. And a bit disappointed that in a post about knee-jerk liberal dogma, I get instant mounds of knee-jerk liberal dogma. I don't know that we can "manage" bloodlust, but neither, it seems to me, do y'all know that we can't. And we might want to at least, you know, consider the possibility that out well-intentioned disdain leads ultimately to more cruelty, not less.
Part of the problem is that we can't just take a society as it's currently constituted and append, as it were, cruel executions to it. There would need to be a culture to explain the purpose of the spectacle in a reasonable way.
No, I'm sorry, but Volokh's a sick bastard. There is no fine distinction between capital punishment administered by the state and capital punishment administered by the state featuring Nate Dogg and Dr. Dre. Your hand is in it already. Why put your whole arm in there? You want blood, go huntin'.
I don't know that we can "manage" bloodlust, but neither, it seems to me, do y'all know that we can't.
Howzabout because we've being doing just fine without torturing people to death for centuries now? Specificially, what good do you think it will do? For whom?
Except even if we outlawed capital punishment across the country, we still quite plainly are a society that condones killing, as Iraq and a huge number of other countries would be willing to attest. So, not even much moral consistency to be had there in a nation whose military expenditures are greater than the rest of the world combined.
I don't know that we can "manage" bloodlust, but neither, it seems to me, do y'all know that we can't.
So let's take a look around the globe and through history. Surely there are some societies that are more violent in their punishment of "bad people"; in general, do you think those societies are more or less bloodthirsty than places with bans on cruel punishment? Iran or (I dunno) Holland?
And while I'm pretty mushy on the death penalty issue, I'm going to have to go with Austro on this one: if it were my kid that was sexually assaulted and murdered, you can rest assured I'd have no trouble being the guy who tortured the perpetrator to death, moral consistency be damned.
because we've being doing just fine without torturing people to death for centuries now?
Have we? This too seems unknown to me. What the apostropher said about military expenditures. These seem bound together to me. This place is whack, and I do wish people would at least consider the possibility that "letting off some steam" might help. I am honestly and completely open to being convinced otherwise, but I'm pretty surprised that when another member of the intelligentsia, like Volokh in this case, broaches the topic, people want to write him off as insane.
#51: Look at history. When public executions were the norm, so was beating children, torturing animals for fun, and domestic violence was perhaps regrettable, but accepted. When public lynchings were the norm (as LB points out), not only did it foster an acceptance of, rather than discourage by providing an outlet for (?!?) racist violence, we also still believed in corporal punishment. Most places that have public executions also condone violence against women and children.
And while I'm pretty mushy on the death penalty issue, I'm going to have to go with Austro on this one: if it were my kid that was sexually assaulted and murdered, you can rest assured I'd have no trouble being the guy who tortured the perpetrator to death, moral consistency be damned.
Which is exactly why the decision isn't and shouldn't be yours.
Suppose blood lust is like regular lust. You wouldn't expect a state-sponsored pornography channel to reduce the national libido. So why would you expect televised dismemberment to reduce the nation's lust for blood?
Re. the Dukakis question ("what if it were your wife who were raped"--though to be fair, I think I'm the one that brought it up): hell yeah, if someone threatens my kid, I'm gonna kill them or die trying. But that's not the same as killing them after the fact retributively. I might very well still want to do that, but part of the point of having a justice system is to manage and control our vigilante instincts. On the whole, I think it's a preferable system. And I'm sure there's a name (Ben, help me out here) for an argument that attacks a universal premise by appealing to the auditor's own personal emotional reaction. Even if I feel certain that I'd happily torture anyone who hurt my kid (and I truly don't feel certain of that at all), that doesn't invalidate the argument that doing so is wrong.
Apo: Right, which is why the judicial system exists. To prevent MY arbitrary justice. Why would a society want to prevent that? To prevent the excesses my impartial view would undoubtedly lead to. So errr... If the executive and judiciary themselves carry out the excesses, what was the ffffing point? QED.
Yes, that's right, which is why I say I can't think of a society that's tried to incorporate accomodation of bloodlust along with other rules of social justice. And, the question, again: how much of that is attributable to the fact that people tend to say "this is ok, or this is not ok" but don't like to say, "this isn't so great, but a little is probably good for us?"
The more I think about it, the more this program of ogged's looks like the worst of both the Right and the Left. Here we have the cruel and vengeful God of the Old Testament (Right) married to a social engineering program intended to make society as a whole less vengeful.
And I'm sure there's a name (Ben, help me out here) for an argument that attacks a universal premise by appealing to the auditor's own personal emotional reaction.
Wikipedia just calls this "appeal to emotion", and that sounds ok to me.
This place is whack, and I do wish people would at least consider the possibility that "letting off some steam" might help.
But we've tried that. We had thousands of years of torturing people to death, and it didn't do a damn thing to reduce war. You seem to be positing some kind of scientifically/psychologically designed spectacle that would really work to let off steam -- what makes you think that anything like that would be any better than the time-honored practice of crucifying criminals, which didn't slow down the Roman legions an iota.
And, the question, again: how much of that is attributable to the fact that people tend to say "this is ok, or this is not ok" but don't like to say, "this isn't so great, but a little is probably good for us?"
The problem with formally and explicitly admitting that there are cases around the border where something is admissible is that doing so in itself widens the border.
I will also say that I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the position ogged's advancing here. But it's the kind of thing where you'd want to be pretty damn sure of yourself, and that kind of surety isn't going to be coming along any time soon.
I also don't think that a cruel public death for a serial killer would actually manage my bloodlust. I mean, I haven't noticed that much of a lust for blood in myself, but I think that if I were feeling randy in that sort of way, I'd want to take it out on something I had a more specific emotional investment in.
As I was trying to make my hair look less shitty (but fuck it, I'm not the one interviewing) this occurred to me:
Why is it V's bloodlust and not, say, our horror at torture that is being considered "natural" here? I don't see why revulsion at the idea of torture and public execution is simply knee-jerk liberalism. It's surely as much a visceral reaction as standing on the sidelines cheering.
SCMT—I suppose it is, but I was thinking with more of an emphasis on the formal & explicit part than the slippery part. A unwritten policy of benevolent neglect works on fuzzy cases much better than does a written one, because it can be applied inconsistently.
I'm now curious (honestly) - what was so wrong about Abu Ghraib, in your mind? The absence of a trial? That the torture wasn't televised? That we made mistakes in determining who was truly reprehensible? That we are seeking information, and not satiation? The first strikes me as reasonable, but I'd guess that military law allows us to expedite guilty/not-guilty pretty quickly. Would you have been comfortable with Abu Ghraib if it had been (a) after a military tribunal looked at issues of guilt, and (b) been televised?
I'm sure this sounds like snark, but it really is an honest question.
Abu Ghraib is not a tough question; the fact that you guys see some kind of similarity helps me understand the reaction to the post. In short: no due process, no established norms, no due solemnity in the punishment.
(Kangaroo-ish military trials don't count as due process, certainly not where a cruel execution is concerned.)
Also, I might be imagining this, but does anyone else get a kind of Genealogy of Morality vibe here?
It's kind of surprising that it took so long for that to come up, but yes, much of this discussion has been a recapitulation of the second essay of that book. Inter alia, N. argues that the greater the degree to which the social function of punishment involves giving expression to aggressive impules, the less likely it is that the penal system can function in an impartial and objective fashion. This is a partial answer to ogged's (faux naive?) question why it is that we don't have many examples of penal systems that are like ours, only with torture.
If conservatism is the protection of society from dangerous new ideas, being against the introduction of state sponsored public torture of criminals isn't just for knee-jerk liberals. The lack of historical evidance of societies that used your plan to keep violence under control isn't a selling point for true conservatives either.
Now that things have quieted a bit, let me go back to B's point up top, which seems to be the main issue. She says,
there is an effect on the audience and those participating, and that isn't that it just functions as an outlet and lalala we go back to our day jobs. I cannot believe that someone can participate in killing another person and not be affected by it. The prevalence of PTSD supports that assertion.
I responded that saying that it "effects" us is isn't a counterargument. That's because, if it works, it will work precisely because it affects us, and in a traumatic way.
The metaphor I'm after, after thinking about it some more, isn't "letting off steam," but "innoculation." It's certainly possible to get your fill of violence. How many war veterans think war movies are sexy? How many non-veterans do?
(1) if we're hanging it all on due process, then I think this quickly becomes either (a) some sort of "in the abstract" hypothetical, or (b) an argument about how much "due process" very poor defendents get in the criminal justice system.
(2) the invader/child molester thing suggests that Abu Ghraib wasn't wrong b/c of the torture, but b/c of who was tortured. We might well, for example, cruelly televise the torture Saddam Hussein after his trial. Is that right?
(3) I think the reason that you're getting so much liberal "clap-trap" is b/c lots and lots of people have hashed this argument out before. No doubt they could present the arguments we're making much better, and we may be doing little more than mouthing the words of our betters, but I think there's a fairly substantial case is the West against these sorts of actions. I'd be with (IIRC) Wolfson - you're going to have to have some unbelievable proof of what you claim before we try out the theory.
Assuming, ad arguendo, that most war veterans do find war movies unsexy because of their exposure to massive amounts of war, isn't it problematic for your view that war veterans aren't overwhelmingly opposed to future wars? If exposure to violence on that level doesn't significantly diminish enthusiasm for war, why would violence on the much lower of level of controlled public suffercution (too cutesy?) diminish enthusiasm.
This might be the root of the problem. If you're doing it to sate the public's blood lust, they aren't the veteran. They're the audience in a war movie. How many people leave a war movie thinking war is sexy? A lot.
Put it this way, ogged. Do you think people were more likely to overreact to 9/11 or treat the matter thoughtfully b/c of all of the video footage being constantly played? (Not perfect, or even good, I admit, but I don't think our visceral reactions work the way you think).
Anyway, if you are right, I'd thik that you'd find that more violent punishments yielded less violent people. That seems like a sociological question - does anyone have the Healy family bat signal?
I confess I'm baffled by bza's reading of the second book of the Genealogy of Morals; the one where Nietzsche writes:
I want to state very clearly that in that period when human beings had not yet become ashamed of their cruelty, life on earth was happier than it is now, now that we have our pessimists.
Which is not to say that Nietzsche's "on my side" in this--just that Book 2 is no clear refutation.
I haven't brought up 9/11 because it is such an imperfect analogy. There was this though: after 9/11, a lot of people, myself included, couldn't bear to watch a violent movie.
Ogged: I threw up in the middle of schindlers list, and had to walk out of The Rock. Its not liberal knee jerk. Its what B said Visceral abhorrence of violence. I really hope Im not alone in this. Men shouldn not say this in our role models, but I hope it is still there.
after 9/11, a lot of people, myself included, couldn't bear to watch a violent movie.
Maybe. But the news networks didn't keep showing that footage over and over again because they thought it would hurt their viewership numbers. And it seems like an awful lot of people have claimed a sort of primary injury from 9/11 and used it to justify some Very Bad Things. Again, an imperfect rendering of what I'm trying to say, but I think people are at least as titillated by these things as they are revolted. I think that's why we so often see movies where the hero"justifiably" goes flat nuts on the "evildoer."
I still think my point holds that if exposure to the full-fledged violence of war just increases the level of deliberation slightly, what you're proposing won't have any noticable benefit at all. I mean, unless the causal mechanism from "public controlled violence displays" to "decreased desire for violence" is quite different from the one connecting "having been at war" to "wanting more war." And it undeniably has costs, which some here have argued are exceedingly high. I have to start celebrating this asinine holiday now, people I'll show up later to argue drunk.
I think that's why we so often see movies where the hero"justifiably" goes flat nuts on the "evildoer."
You keep adducing things that I would use as evidence for my point. Probably close to half our action movies involve extracting ridiculously violent and disproportionate vengeance. Might there not be a clue here as to our human needs? Is it really far-fetched to think that "nuke 'em all!" is related to this impulse? The question is whether seeing the real thing, in its unrecreatable goriness, would deter or encourage more of the same.
ogged, we scientists keep getting told that there are some experiments one should not entertain. I serriously hope you never get the chance to test this out. Just draw up the decision tree and think of the cost-benefit of the answers.
I think Ogged may actually be correct, at least in part. Allow me to explain what I'm thinking about here (although, naturally, I may fail in getting my point across).
We are supposedly fighting an existential war against terror-groupings/murder-organizations and yet, we as a public have failed to see any of the terrorists being held by this administration actually receiving justice of any kind, cruel or otherwise. They are held in Cuba, or in a brig, or chained in a dirty cell with a Turkish toilet in the prison of some military junta. Even for the people lucky enough to get a "trial," no one gets to see it. I saw more of OJ Simpson's trial than I have of all the trials of all terrorist suspects captured worldwide since September 11. Is that the way it should be?
Bush has taken the tack of simply covering it all up with a veil, so that there is a very serious feeling (at least in my stomach) that justice still has yet to be done. My favorite example of this is one of the "ghost inmates" at Abu Ghraib who was shackled to the ground and left in the dark for so long that the guards called him Golem, and they even put a picture of Smigel on the door of his cell. Not even the Red Cross got to see this man, much less your average Joe 'Merican.
I want to see these people, goddammit! I want to watch them walk past their victims, stand in front of a judge, and receive their due. This isn't happening, and I'm pissed about that. There is something primal about the need for public justice, it's not just some fancy thing, like underwear, that people just invented for some inscrutable reason.
I think that Bush's tactic of secret justice is extremely dangerous and is distorting America in ways that we don't fully realize (and not just at the level of government). We need to deliver justice to these terrorists in a public way that allows serious, cathartic participation on the part of ordinary Americans, otherwise there will never be closure.
Do you realize that Iraqis will get to put Saddam on trial before any member of al Qa'ida ever gets put before a judge for a full public trial in this country? That is ridiculous, and that is the issue, not torture, public crucifixion, etc.
You know, in a thread whose genesis was torturing a child killer to death, I can't believe no one has mentioned The Children™ yet. Won't anyone PLEASE think about The Children™? As in, wouldn't this severely fuck kids' heads up if it became standard practice?
Violence as natural versus unnatural: I think all humans are perfectly capable of violence. Some level of aggression if 'normal' in a human society. The notion that if you weren't trained to be violent you be a flower-loving pacifist hippy is silly (you have to be trained to be a flower-loving pacifist hippy). Neadertals (don't get me started on whether human ancestry is involved) killed and ate each other, and homo erectus and that lot did the same. Chimpanzees are aggressive (but not real aggressive) as are most of the omniverous primates. The level of 'natural' violence is debatable. I do note that humans have been fighting each other a long long long time, nearly continuously.
Innoculation: speaking of as one who has been there and done all that, I doubt very much that public vicious executions would have much steam-release effect. Volohk was in favor of the Iraq war and in favor of public executions. I strongly expect that a lot of those guys are getting penis enhancements-by-proxy via war footage. (They want to see Iraqi army schmucks killed on Fox because they can go yes! Americans are tough and I'm an American!) Public executions is the same thing to them, because they're watching it on TV. The only people who are innoculated are the families which is a very small number of people. Further, the US had public lynchings in the South in 1898 and so and we still wound up killing hundreds of thousands of Philipinos. That's because people who realize that war sucks are people who have experienced up close and personal. People who experience war via TV (just like public executions) are just getting the porno effect, not the real thing. 'Wow! It's just like Braveheart!'
To inoculate properly you need some selective violence applied to aggressive people. So, the best solution is to take a war supporter out in the alley and beat the shit out of him with a baseball bat, and see how he likes it.
War supporters will not be in favor of this proposal.
As I said, I am fine with say flogging. 20 lashes for the DWI and you go home seems more effective than jail to me. If only G. Bush had been given 20 lashes when he was busted for DWI.
The other problem is male (usually young male) aggression. Weed out the hyper-aggressive ones, let 'em fight it out. Hell, they do that already (gang feuds), but regulated.
Alas, 'liberal dogma' says the lion has to lie down with lamb and stuff, which is why we have a generation that tends to self-absorbed narcissitic bratiness. Which, I guess, beats the Old South routine of lynching black men.
Anyways, about the only thing that seems to cure war fever is war, so we got that covered. If only they'd show pictures.
Re 96: I confess myself baffled in turn. It's, uh, pretty much the premise of the entire book that people used to be cheerfully amoral way back when. Then, according to Nietzsche, we internalized moral norms, which (1) led to the various forms of psychological malaise N. despairs, but which (2) he also regards as a precondition for most every aspect of civilization, and so (3) he doesn't think we should go back to that pre-moral state, just as it was.
The point about officially-sanctioned cruelty being incompatible with jurisprudential objectivity is one of the things that falls under (2).
Y'know, Volokh, the guy who favors this bloodlust, is the same guy who has made it pretty fucking clear that he favors torture as currently practiced by our government. (Check out the Reason roundup of prominent libertarians where Volokh says that he votes Republican in part because Republicans are better on most if not all civil rights issues. There's got to be a word for that position, but I don't think it's 'libertarian'.)
And we used to have this sort of public audience-participation torture and execution frequently. It was called 'lynching'. Some of the lynched people were guilty. Do you think that the places where lynching took place were less violent because of that safety valve?
Actually, lyching came up long before, in one of LizardBreath's comments, I think. It looks like I have to write a much longer post about this. I really misjudged where the audience would be, and left out a few paragraphs of argument.
N. argues that the greater the degree to which the social function of punishment involves giving expression to aggressive impules, the less likely it is that the penal system can function in an impartial and objective fashion.
Hmm. My reading of the relevant portion of Bk 2 is that the degree to which a society lashes out at criminals is a sign of the strength of the society. The weaker the society, the more criminals must be punished. (such as the extravagant torture of the regicide in the opening of The Order of Things) The stronger a society, the less it is threatened by mere criminals, the less it needs to "make examples of" the criminals. Just throw them away, out of sight, they don't matter that much. So, extravagant punishment is an outcome of feeling threatened. Ogged's proposal is in a different paradigm, but still I don't N wouldt view it kindly, if only because it seems to involve unhealthy obsessions (with what's already occured, with giving into (in the mode of giving into, as opposed of in the mode of riding) one's own interior passions, with catering to the masses). I could be wrong, though.
(unaccountable bad mood today, I should probably just return back here and read comments tomorrow.)
Don't give me the "only bad people get locked up" excuse; simply because someone may have been thought of as a bad person is no reason to kill them, let alone rejoice in it!
O, to distance myself from liberal dogma, I emphasize that my disagreement with you rests primarily on psychological claims.
We should have a week where we post on our rightmost (or more accurately, most different from the traditional left) opinions, just for kicks. Then we can post pictures of us mooning the readers.
1. It now strikes me that this might be a coded message indicating that baa should gather the rest of the A-Team and go rescue you. Please blink twice if I'm right.
2. The question is whether seeing the real thing, in its unrecreatable goriness, would deter or encourage more of the same.
Then let's argue about the evidence, or even what you would accept as evidence. For example, are boys who see their mother beaten by their father more or less likely to beat their wives? Has violence gone down as movie gore has gotten more accurate? Etc. I have no idea. I find it incredible that there aren't sufficient data sets out there to suggest some answers - maybe not answers to precisely the questions we're asking, but informative answers nonetheless.
If X number of years of the trends in western history aren't enough, nor is the general consensus in the West on this issue, what kind of evidence are you looking for?
Then let's argue about the evidence, or even what you would accept as evidence.
Yeah, this is key, and I'm honestly not sure what relevant evidence would be. Especially since whenever someone brings up something they intend as evidence, my reaction is, "what the fuck does that have to do with anything?" In a sense, I almost feel like I'm not fighting fair, because I'm saying that the whole society would have to be constituted otherwise in order for this to work--and then we're just having some stupid theoretical discussion. But I want to be saying something more than that, namely, that we should be giving serious thought to how we, in this society, can change our attitude toward violence to make it--what's the word?--more realistic.
I want to be saying something more than that, namely, that we should be giving serious thought to how we, in this society, can change our attitude toward violence to make it--what's the word?--more realistic.
Ah. Ok, this I can understand. But that (a) doesn't seem to have anything to do with your "blowing off steam" deal and (b) probably is, practically speaking, only attainable through personal experience. We're skirting the 9/11 thing on this thread (aside from a few references), but you don't need to be Marshall McLuhan to recognize that experiencing violence firsthand and experiencing it through the filter of television or film or print or what-have-you makes for totally different reactions to a 9/11-type experience. One step removed, it attains an almost mythic quality. In the moment (I was there, and I walked home covered in ashes), it tends to induce an acute revulsion to violence and death. If the goal is to change our attitude toward violence, enacting violent rituals to be broadcast on a national scale doesn't seem to be the way to go. (Unless the change you're looking for is one of numb detachment, but I don't think that's what you mean.)
Your knee-jerk liberal write-off really rubbed me in all kinds of wrong ways, and I didn't elaborate above, but others did, and rightly so. Defending principles that have evolved over hundreds of years, and defending them on not one but a variety of fronts (moral, practical, theoretical) is hardly knee-jerk and dogmatic, and it sounded as though you were channeling the fake superiority we've come to expect from the likes of Sean Hannity. It was miles beneath you, and I'm glad the discussion has moved on from that point.
Anyway, if more awareness of the realities of violence in the U.S. is what we're after, I'm all for it, and I suspect that most on this thread would agree with me. But public execution and/or torture, for the purpose of vengeance or deterrence or blowing off steam or even righteous education, is morally and practically wrongheaded, and it's not knee-jerk liberalism to say so.
Above, you said something about us needing to prove that such measures wouldn't work, but that's wrong; it is you who would need to prove that they would. The onus shouldn't be on us w/r/t proving that this wouldn't be a good idea. It should be on the person advancing the idea that more barbarism here equals less barbarism there, because it's (among other things) a break with established norms and judicial precedent.
Ogged, I think you're all over the place. You started off with the "justice" argument and then moved to the "war veterans understand real violence" argument. But the reason war veterans oppose violence is precisely because they do not see the violence as justified. The big problem with your "let's have a group public execution of a child killer" argument is precisely that it seems "justified," and therefore encourages, not discourages killing. Whereas military men, in my experience, object to war because they *identify with* the victims of it. Either because those victims are their comrades, or because they realize that "the enemy" is grunts just like them.
Moreover, you're right: the crux of the argument is psychological. But I think the vast preponderance of evidence is against you. Societies that encourage public killings, as I said, also tolerate or even encourage violence within families. PTSD is a real, serious problem (and, I suspect, in places like Rwanda or Darfur, will affect the society as a whole for several generations). Children who are abused are far more likely to grow up to be abusive or even sociopaths. It seems to me that the evidence points exactly the opposite way you're indicating: violence begets violence. People raised to abhor violence (knee-jerk liberals, if you will) learn to abhor violence.
Now, does that mean that knee-jerk liberals are less likely to turn into torturers, under the right circumstances? No, it doesn't. But on the whole, I think it is *vastly* preferable to have a society that finds violence disgusting than one that finds it acceptable.
I had this thought while still at work but it doesn't seem to have come up. The thought is this: there are two (2) different claims that I can see ogged making. The first is the one that it seems most people have been talking about, myself included (I skimmed the last 30-odd comments, though, so I might be wrong), and has to do with the theory that people need some outlet for their aggression and that this is healthy and (insofar as healthy) good, even if most such outlets are bad. The second, embodied in the last section of the post, is that if people were more acquainted with the actual realities of killing/torture etc, what it takes to perform such acts and the agonies that the person undergoing them experiences, then they would be more reluctant to blithely root for war, or at least be more cognizant of what such rooting entailed. I think that's true, but that ogged's method for bringing such cognizance about (that is, show them, publically and in detail) is misguided. The people that are so educable do not need to witness an actual public human execution to have such feelings, and the people that are not so educable (Lynndie England comes to mind) are, well, not so educable.
I'll do a slightly longer reply in a sec, but b, I didn't talk about justice at all. In fact, the point of "bring this to earth" was to set aside questions of principle.
In a sense, I almost feel like I'm not fighting fair, because I'm saying that the whole society would have to be constituted otherwise in order for this to work--and then we're just having some stupid theoretical discussion.
Theoretical discussions of this sort are almost always stupid.
But I want to be saying something more than that, namely, that we should be giving serious thought to how we, in this society, can change our attitude toward violence to make it--what's the word?--more realistic.
Discussions of this sort are difficult to carry out in blog comment thread form, I think. And there's a similar problem to the one you mentioned in the underage sex thread, which is that a society can't simply self-consciously decide to change its attitude about something like violence. (I'm thinking about the observation that one of the damaging things about underage sex is the societal opinion of sex and underage sex, and the stigma that attaches to those who participate in it—one can't simply explicitly state that it's going to be something other, or even explicitly and publicly aim to make it other, I think.)
If justified killing is irrelevant, then why is a cruel public death for a child-molesting serial killer the means to your solution? Do you propose just picking people up off the street, ala Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"? I'm thinking of what you said in #86: "due process" is the distinction between Abu Ghraib (bad torture) and the killing of child-murdering serial killers (good torture). But as soon as that enters into it, then it slips into "justified killing" territory.
Ben, re your 124, yes, both of those. Again, the question is whether the method is a good one. And again, I'm really not sure what the evidence would be either way. Actually, it seems to me the question I have to answer is, how would our background beliefs need to be different, in order for public state-sanctioned violence to make us more sensitive to violence. You're also right, of course, that a blog thread might not be the best place for this to happen.
b, of course I'd want to save the cruel executions for the worst of the worst, but I don't think of it in terms of justice, just palatability.
Restating this again, it seems as if you want to release and train (and maybe thus restrain) our impulses for violence. I suspect that impulse won't stay in its harness, and that the training will increase the amplitude of the violence. I wonder if you don't believe that the amplitude increases through exposure to morally approved violence.
All of which suggests that, for the most part, we're all talking about pragmatic ways to limit the effect of the impulse to violence, and not about principle.
All of which suggests that, for the most part, we're all talking about pragmatic ways to limit the effect of the impulse to violence, and not about principle.
Yes, thank you, that's precisely my point. Volokh's point seems to be along the lines of: it's natural and right that we indulge our lust for revenge. That's not the point I'm making. I'm saying that indulging our lust for revenge in this way might not be very civilized and it ought to make us very uncomfortable, but, on balance, it might in fact spare us a lot of bloodletting.
In addition to a question of methods (or bound up with it) is a question of how much we think this sadistic or vengeful impulse is "natural." Volokh and I seem to think: quite a lot; others, apparently, disagree.
Argh, look, as a matter of fact, I'm against the death penalty for precisely that reason, tweedle. That's not my point. What really got my goat, truth be told, were two posts up at Crooked Timber that just quoted Volokh, and then made no argument at all about why he was wrong; they just assumed that it was self-evident that he was off his rocker. That's stupid. It's the worst kind of liberal stupid. You (generic liberal, not you, tweedle) better get a clue as to what's in the hearts of your fellow citizens.
First, I don 't think that's what Volokh's saying at all. I think he's saying, "I want bad things to happen to very bad people; it makes me feel warm inside. And that's OK."
Second, I think whether or not a vengful feeling is "natural" does not address the issue of the consequences of approving that vengful, if natural, feeling. That is, just because it's natural doesn't mean ordering things to satisfy it won't make things worse.
That is, just because it's natural doesn't mean ordering things to satisfy it won't make things worse.
No no, of course not, and please, other people, that's not what I said. I just think that determining how "natural" we think it is will determine the methods we use to manage it.
Just because it's in the heart of our fellow citizens doesn't mean we have to accept it, or even that we need to explain why we don't. Righteous indignation does not require that. Who are we going to convince either way? There's a great saying about arguing opinions between two people set in their ways that I can't remember right now. Something about not expecting to have them change their opinion, but to get them to think.
But if CT's what pissed you off, why not just come out and say it? Or was it what you were trying to say, and it just came out funny?
In addition to a question of methods (or bound up with it) is a question of how much we think this sadistic or vengeful impulse is "natural." Volokh and I seem to think: quite a lot; others, apparently, disagree.
This is getting in to very Freudian territory, but since ogged seems to want to go there, here we are.
I think what you're getting at, ogged, is that killing/vengeance/etc. is a natural urge that will out, no matter what our society dictates, and your analogy is the sexual impulse. But I think that the two are unequal. And the reason is, in a very real way, our social conditioning and the values such social conditioning instills.
It's impossible to know how we'd feel outside our society, whether killing and murder and vengeance would be as natural as sex if we weren't bound to the strictures of Western behavior code. All we can examine is our reality as we know it, and that reality places killing and sex on very different planes. Sex is (to varying degrees) a natural part of life, whereas killing our fellow human beings is generally abhorrent.
I can see what you're getting at -- the Freudian line of logic which dictates that repression of instincts just leads to horrible neuroses, but as far as the urge to kill is concerned, it seems to be far more manageable than our urge to fuck. Obviously, that urge to kill is still there, but in this case, strong taboo seems to be our best defense against general bloodletting, rather than relaxation of taboo under certain controlled circumstances. Again, I'm just going by historical precedent here, and not basing my argument on any sentimental or moral gut-check.
"People need to slice each other up just like they need to screw..."
Yeah, if I don't get laid and/or kill someone every six weeks, I'll go crazy.
Seriously, this is craptacular. People may have a natural blood lust, but it is far, far easier to control than sexual desire. I get my blood rocks off in three ways:
1.) Video games
2.) Quinten Tarantino movies
3.) Red Sox-Yankees brawls
Really, that just about does it for me. I never feel the need to beat the crap out of someone (excluding Sean Hannity) just for the helluvait. I *certainly* don't feel the need to watch somebody get tortured by a lynch mob.
If you want to satisfy peoples' bloodlusts, there are plenty of non-lethal ways of doing it.
they just assumed that it was self-evident that he was off his rocker....You better get a clue as to what's in the hearts of your fellow citizens.
This is actually something I've never understood. Volokh might be a nice, decent, kind man, and by his lights his response is entirely decent. I think there are a lot of Republicans like that. But his lights are not my lights, and one of the ways that I can tell that (if only for the sake of efficiency) is that the conclusions he arrives at are repugnant to me. I thought this was one of the points of reflective equilibrium. Certain questions are settled; I don't see why we are obliged to engage with someone over whether slavery might or might not be better for poor African-Americans, for example.
At the bitter end of it, Volokh notes that the rightness of his argument is dependent on something that isn't really available to refutation. If it's not available for refutation, all we really have are differing interests pushing up against each other. And in that case, I chose mine; I want to win, not understand him.
Now that I think about it, the dominance of the urge to procreate over the urge to destroy is a whole other fascinating discussion. And I think it would be worth talking about whether our priorities have shifted thusly as we've become more domestic and progress-oriented as a culture (since, say, the age of Socrates or so).
But this would probably be a more suitable conversation for some who (unlike me) had completed more than one year of college.
You (generic liberal, not you, tweedle) better get a clue as to what's in the hearts of your fellow citizens.
Well, I agree that Volokh's arguments should be challenged on their merits (see Yglesias for this one), but I really hope the Christian Right doesn't really favor torturing criminals. Seeing that they're Christians and all, I think that's sorta against their religion.
I was just talking to the ex about this on the phone, and I said something like "I just wish people in this country cared more that there's so much violence on television, and cared that we bomb the shit out of people." And she said, "But the people who are disagreeing with you do care." Me: "Yes, but this is where it gets complicated, because I think that if everyone thought that way, we'd go nuts." She: "Oh, you mean like Berkeley."
"[...] is that killing/vengeance/etc. is a natural urge that will out, no matter what our society dictates, and your analogy is the sexual impulse. But I think that the two are unequal. And the reason is, in a very real way, our social conditioning and the values such social conditioning instills."
It took me a quarter hour to locate my copy of Bataille's "The Tears of Eros". I had stupidly filed it under social science, rather than in my ashamedly paltry but still satsifying bin of "pr0n". Beginning on page 204 are photographs of an execution via torture. Ugh, there is "ecstacy" involved. The preceding 203 pages are an excursion through other avenues of sexual release throughout the ages. In this context, it can be seen that torture (let's just relabel it as involuntary sexual masochism) is a natural human phenomenon. As is pederasty, or bestiality, homosexuality, or heterosexuality, or what have you.
So ogged, torture ok, homosexuality ok, pederasty not? Why so?
Joe and B.R., yes, the urges are different, but are they really under control? I guess I don't see that. This country seems pretty consumed with bloodlust to me. (And even before 9-11, I'd say.)
Tim, fair enough on Volokh. I'm not defending his particular argument, but I am using him as an example of the kind of feeling that we have to manage as a society--along the lines of: this is the raw material, this is what we have to work with.
Russell (and anyone else tempted to go in this direction), I think I've been clear--or I think it should be clear at this point--that I don't think this has anything to do with torture, and I don't endorse torture--you can check the archives on that if you like.
One of the things that bothers me about many on the Christian Right is that they aren't uncomfortable about a lot of things. Witness Abu Grahib. I'm not the best Christian going, but what Chritianity I've got makes me very uncomfortable about a lot of stuff.
And Ogged, given that we have Congressional resoltuions saying Iraq sinned.... I'm thinking that legalistic instances of this sort that remind us that we can be agents of cruelty are manifest. We did bat an eye, we went through a fucked up political process, I'm wondering if Abu Grahib isn't someting that could be illuminated by a bureaucratization of the dark angels of our nature. Instead, I think it might be an example of that illumination. Which is to say we suck. In a deep and profound way. And we are torturing the wrong people (I'm not sure that there are "right people" to torture, and even if we are, we're still torturing a lot of the wrong people. Volokh doesn't have to think that we should emulate Iran. You should worry that we're already there.
But as for the meta question "What's the best way for the state to manage our bloodlust?" I'm thinking paxil. Andas for civic rituals, the Aztecs or Mayas played soccer/lacrosse like games and sacrificed winners or losers to the Gods. I think if we did something like this with American Idol it would satisfy whatever inate bloodlust I had quite nicely.....
I think you're feeling overwhelmed with despair over people's gleeful hunger for video games, violent movies, and dead iraqis, and it's driven you mad, and you're ready to just succumb. You should make yourself a drink and read a nice book or something.
And your ex is right: Berkeley is FAR preferable to, say, stoning women in soccer stadiums. Especially since I'm one of the women most likely to get stoned.
Look ogged, when you write: "Given that we humans need to get a little barbaric every now and again, what's the best way for the state to manage our bloodlust?", pointing to the fact that you chew marbles in your archives is not a get out of jail free card.
That said, I'm not going to fire any more broadsides against my people. I'm not mad at you, I'm disgusted with Volokh. Whether or not we got liberal kneejerker lugubrious wailings, this is a fundamentally serious question that lies at the very base of civil society, which I alluded to in the link to a history of the French Revolution. And I appreciate the space you've provided here. People I respect like it here, and even in disagreement I like it too.
Joe and B.R., yes, the urges are different, but are they really under control? I guess I don't see that. This country seems pretty consumed with bloodlust to me. (And even before 9-11, I'd say.)
OK, now we're getting into a compleeeeeeetely different realm.
War, like killing, is acceptable in self-defense. After 9/11, America was completely justified in going into Afghanistan and routing the Taliban. But guess what? We didn't pull a Rome-on-Carthage, salt-on-ashes death fest (note: I don't mean to minimize the destruction the war in Afghanistan caused... I'm just saying it wasn't persecuted out of bloodlust per se). Even Iraq, while certainly ill-conceived, doesn't seem much like a bloodlust affair to me (and please don't use the 101st Fighting Keyboarders as evidence- the vast majority of people *actually fighting the war* are not anywhere near that fucktardularly bloodthirsty).
Now, on the domestic (rather than the international) front- is our country really all that bloodthirsty? Well, violent crime has been dropping for the last ten years. We have enough outlets via movies, sports, and video games (not to mention the way people live vicariously through gangsta rap) that most people can get their fix without actually beating the shit out of somebody.
Finally- I don't think anyone's even addressed this, but:
In addition to having natural bloodlusts, I think people also have natural compassion. Maybe this is me being a fruity emo boy (who DOESN'T listen to emo, mind you... The Smiths are the closest I get to that gobshite) who used to help sick birds as a child, but I think people have tremendous capacity to feel for those who are suffering. And regardless of how deserving someone is of being tortured, I think there's a part of us that, in addition to going "FUCK YEAH!" says, "Whoa, that's a human being."
Now, let's bring this back to the analogy with sex (I know, I'm all over the place, but I'm tired): unlike bloodlust, I *don't* think there's a natural urge within people to abstain from sex- only fear of negative consequences (STDs, pregnancy, getting bitch-slapped by the Mrs. for cheating, etc.). So when you try to repress the sexual urge completely, it doesn't work because there's nothing really fighting against it (or as George Carlin put it, "Here's something you'll never hear a man say- 'Stop (giving me felatio) before I call the police'"). Violence, on the other hand, *does* have a natural counterweight- there is both a natural attraction *and* revulsion to it. IMHO, the best way to get a positive outcome is to nurture the compassionate part of your brain and have the bloodthirsty part get itself off vicariously.
"Joe and B.R., yes, the urges are different, but are they really under control? I guess I don't see that. This country seems pretty consumed with bloodlust to me. "
So, thinking back to a previous post here... does this make many of those present here the "asexual" equivalent w/r/t bloodlust?
I mean, Unfogged comments are hardly representative of the general population, but are our urges and instincts really that alien to our fellow Americans? The problem may be more a lack of empathy with The Other (including the "criminal element") than an incomprehension of violence and its consequences.
I think there's a part of us that, in addition to going "FUCK YEAH!" says, "Whoa, that's a human being."
Yes, thanks for making that clear, Brad. I kept talking about "trauma" being "effective" and I realize that that was a totally unclear way of saying what you just said. What I was getting at is that people, when seeing things like this, will natually say, "damn, that sucks, I don't want to see that again for a long while."
"What I was getting at is that people, when seeing things like this, will natually say, "damn, that sucks, I don't want to see that again for a long while.""
Sorry, I can't resist, just a bowchaser here. Why isn't this a form of collective punishment?
Let's just bring back gladiatorial fighting! That'll solve all of our problems. We can put all the murderers on one side, and good men with big guns on the other. Violent crime will become a thing of the past!
The question is whether seeing the real thing, in its unrecreatable goriness, would deter or encourage more of the same.
Not quite the real thing, but have you ever seen A Short Film About Killing (also available as the fifth movie in the Decalogue series. It follows a story from a brutal murder to an execution, neither of which are shown in anything even close to a cartoonish/action move violence sort of way. I never knew that they put a pan (to catch bodily fluids) under someone who was being hanged.
Let me just say that before this argument comes to a halt, I'd like to hear from the torturer contingent.
Seriously. Who here has ever tortured anything -- from a small animal or insect, to giving your kid sibling indian burns, to actual out-and-out torture of a human being? Did you enjoy torturing whatever or whoever you tortured? And more to the point, did torture ever bring you a sense of relief? Because that's the sort of evidence that Ogged is going to need here.
(For my own experience, limited as it is: as a boy I was occasionally quite cruel to my younger brother, often out of provoked anger or roughhousing that got out of hand, and I can't remember a single time that I didn't regret it deeply, even when he was being completely insufferable).
Sorry, forgot to close a parenthesis and put a question mark at the end of the first sentence of 161. Not that anyone here ever pays attention to such things.
Ah, but do we love him. MY calls for state administered torture as a reasonable approach to reducing the amount of petty criminals in prisons (they get x lashes), thus saving all of us some amount of coin (and increasing liberty for those thus efficiently rehabilitated). Question for ogged: is it important that the punishment is administered in public? Or is a video camera transmitting appropriately blood spattering images sufficient? Is viewing mandatory? Certainly guidelines could be set up, hygenic facilities constructed, even weekly rituals. My blood lust would be slaked, thankfully by the state, that's for sure.
Finally finished reading the comments. I'm surprised this hasn't come up (unless I missed it), but if you're going to argue from nature you need to look beyond the inhabitants of one country.
So, why do death-penalty-abolishing, low-levels-of-violent-crime-committing Western Europeans seem to have lower levels of naturally-occurring bloodlust? (Compared both to Americans, and to Western Europeans of pre-1945 Europe.)
Or does this just mean that we should all fear the day when they explode (again)?
This is just a response to the last comment before I read back up the thread, but there's a sense in which describing Western Europe as death-penalty abolishing is inaccurate. Namely, at the time of abolition, polling showed that the majority of the poplulation in each banning country was in favor of the death penalty, and their parliaments basically decided they didn't care about popular will. Personally, I think that's good for those parliaments to ignore winning elections and remove an evil, but it should change how one imagines the action of those countries.
The only reason I have to believe the above is true is a seminar with David Garland, so if anyone has contrary information, I'd be interested.
I hadn't heard that, although I had heard that the method of execution - such as the continued use of hangings and even in some cases the guillotine - contributed to the decision to abolish capital punishment. The implication being, of course, that something like lethal injection may have been more acceptable.
Would you happen to know what polling shows about the death penalty in Western Europe today?
WD, I think that actually supports your point. They want the death penalty, they can't have it, and they still don't murder lots o people. That seems to provide a bit of evidence that the death penalty isn't working as a healthy outlet for the bloodlust.
(There will be those who tell you that the reason for W. Europe's low murder rate is lack of access to guns rather than lack of assaults. I think this has been slightly debunked but don't know.)
Last night my fourteen year old was playing GTA Vice City and showed me a feature I hadn't noticed before: he could shoot people in the head and the head popped off with the neck spouting blood before the body fell. Another charming touch was that some of the blood would appear to spatter onto your own personal TV screen, and would follow you around for awhile.
Now I love video games, and my kids sure know the difference between real and fake violence but Damn.
I'd need to see a whole lot of scientific evidence before I would believe that the aversion (or inoculation) effect is greater than the desensitization effect.
And if you could prove that the aversion effect overcomes the desensitization I'd still argue that aversion is a crappy way to modify behavior. It sucks in comparison to positive reinforcement, and there is a whole lot of scientific evidence for that.
Feel free to dismiss this as knee-jerk liberalism but I'm not just barfing out opinion. I have thought this through.
It now strikes me that this might be a coded message indicating that baa should gather the rest of the A-Team and go rescue you. Please blink twice if I'm right.
I just want to make sure everyone noticed SCMT's comment. It's incredibly awesome (see here for the background).
Also, has being a faithful reader of Unfogged become like a full-time job, or what? All the discussion is great, but damn, one busy day at work and I'm several thousand comments behind!
It just pains me all of the incredibly witty comments that popped into my head reading through the threads that humanity will now be deprived of forever, since, you know timing is everything.
Also, I think BitchPhD, Joe Drymala, and Austro ought to set up their own Bandarlog-type thingie. It would be quite a Spectacle.
Sorry to be oblique. I just mean y'all all had quite a thread going in that Spectacle post, and it kind of reminded me of a mini-version of the Bandarlog. Plus the subject of making threads into their own blogs has been broached before (on that 500-plus thread that I'm too lazy right now to link to). Ogged would make a great Potsy.
Yeah, it's weird how this place acts almost like a forum. And it was fucking hilarious to be discussing the trolls (although how many of them were actually Michael just fucking around, I would really like to know) right under their noses without them realizing it. A fun way to deal with trolls.
Ogged: Someone needs to rerun Rollerball in the cinemas over there. and THEN maybe some entertainment company could actually start a world series. Know what I mean?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:19 PM
Fightin' leads to killin', and killin' leads to Warren.
Or something like that.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:25 PM
State sanctioned torture is bad. People don't need to get barbaric, they want to get barbaric, but civilized cultures stop them. boo-fucking-hoo.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:30 PM
Well, joe o, the point of the analogy to abstinence programs is to say that it doesn't work to try to stop them completely. In fact, then they get barbaric in massive and scary ways.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:32 PM
No. Because there is an effect on the audience and those participating, and that isn't that it just functions as an outlet and lalala we go back to our day jobs. I cannot believe that someone can participate in killing another person and not be affected by it. The prevalence of PTSD supports that assertion.
What the fuck is wrong with organized sports?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:33 PM
I don't think sports works so well, because we're not the agents of cruelty in the same way that we are (by proxy) in a public execution. Of course we're affected by killing, but that, in itself, isn't an objection. The question is how much and in what ways, and whether less/more or other ways would be better.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:36 PM
So is professional wrestling the cause or the cure? Very confusing....
Posted by benton | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:37 PM
You have got to be kidding. What precisely makes you think that the enjoyment of cruelty can be managed? Why wouldn't it be more like a really potent drug - a little bit's OK right now, but then that gets boring, so you ramp it up, and so on, until you need a certain amount to, you know, maintain. Look at our movies, where we normally sublimate our violent tendencies - getting more or less violent, do ya think? And which way do you think the trend line will be pointing 10 years from now?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:38 PM
I hate to disagree with you about something on which many other people will disagree with you, but nonetheless I disagree, though perhaps I could be convinced if there were reasons to believe that the state's use of cruelty in punishment would weaklen some of our less pleasant urges rather than encourage them. Worries about causation duly noted, but I don't look at places where this sort of thing goes on and think, there's a society that deals admirably with malfeasance and the human condition.
Yglesias:
Or, as as someone I like once put it, "just because God died doesn't mean you have to solve all His problems."
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:38 PM
Of course. There is always the Thunderdome.
Slightly OT but triggered by your post. The novel "An Instance of The Fingerpost" by Ian Pears contains a very vivid description of execution in public, and a dramatic explanation of how the execution was wrong but necessary at the same time. Suffice to say, it moved me to investigate anabaptism a little more closely.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:38 PM
IF it's true that cruelty is crucial, what's wrong with video or role-playing games? i'd far rather my little brother squirrel himself away in his room playing Grand Theft Auto than in a square cheering at anyone's death, even a child molester's.
Posted by ester | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:40 PM
ogged -- can you think of any example in history in which public torture/execution has been the norm, and societal bloodlust was appeased?
Because I can think of lots of examples in which it didn't seem to be.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:40 PM
bphd,
What the fuck is wrong with organized sports?
No salary cap.
hahahahaha.
Ogged, I'm not sure I accept this as a given:
we humans need to get a little barbaric every now and again
And even if I did, what is wrong with sports as an outlet?
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:42 PM
Of course we're affected by killing, but that, in itself, isn't an objection.
Why is that not an objection? Your point, if I understand you properly, is that we have a natural bloodlust, and it's better for society if we're allowed to get it out now and again. (God, even typing that is so annoying. It's a ridiculous argument.) If exercising our bloodlust *damages* society by creating a lot of crazy fuckers, or even in smaller ways by inuring us to small, everyday cruelties, then that is a downside that has to be taken into account.
Anyway, to an extent you are right: people will kill occasionally, and wars will break out. But to move from that acknowledgement of an unavoidable evil to an argument that we ought to accomodate, even embrace it is just... even as a "devil's advocate" argument, it's offensive.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:43 PM
You know, I lived in Samoa for a couple of years, where they're very uptight about sex. Premarital sex could, no fooling, get you beaten to death with rocks by offended family members. (Didn't always happen, but it was a genuine risk.) Nonetheless, teenagers still screwed around. There were a lot of quick, pregnancy related weddings. There is no threat that will stop most teenagers from having sex.
Killing people isn't like that. Very, very few Americans have ever killed anyone. And we're doing fine. All that bottled-up blood-lust? Not a problem. The idea that we should torture criminals to death because it's a psychological need (that is what you're saying, right) is absolutely nuts.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:45 PM
I've been of two minds about this for a very long time, particularly because I am neither strongly for or against capital punishment. Something is wrong with a society that carries out executions behind closed doors, allowing its citizens to avoid facing the reality of what their government does in their name. On the other hand, something is wrong with a society that allows execution to be a spectator sport. I suppose that is effectively an argument against capital punishment, though I've seen plenty enough cases where the death penalty was (IMO) completely justified and perhaps even an underreaction to the crimes committed. I'd have been willing to be a witness to the executions, though I find the folks cheering outside prisons to be engaging in absolutely repugnant behavior as well.
How's that for wishy-washy morality?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:46 PM
But to comment on the topic:
You kids are Philosophers. Now my theoretical grounding in theories of punishment is non-existent (and is actually one of the reasons for enrolling in an external undergrad programme in Philosophy offered by London) but I have an instinctive horror of the notion that the state, as executive, abrogates to itself ultimate powers to suspend fundamental rights. It could be a religious point (it is with me) but even on a purely humanistic agenda it must be unnacceptable. There is NO excuse for decending to the level of that against which we legislate.
Oh.. And please be fucking sure you got it right, before giving the perpertrator the drop.
My guess is that is like sex. The more you get, the more you need. If that is true, we loose both ways
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:50 PM
(And, you might consider that a people that has gotten out of the habit of seeing itself as an agent of cruelty might, say, bomb the shit out of another country--for its own good--without batting an eye.)
I think this is a red herring. I rather doubt that putting a bunch of LGFers in front of a public execution—or even letting (since I doubt "making" would be the right word) them take part in one—would open their eyes to the horrors of inflicting death on a fellow human.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:51 PM
Given that we humans need to get a little barbaric every now and again, what's the best way for the state to manage our bloodlust?
At the metting-out-justice point in the timeline, haven't people already gotten a little barbaric? So you want to reward the victims of barbaric crimes with a license to perform barbaric justice? And when barbaric justice is misapplied on the innocent, &c.?
Posted by Kriston | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:51 PM
I rather doubt that putting a bunch of LGFers in front of a public execution—or even letting (since I doubt "making" would be the right word) them take part in one—would open their eyes to the horrors of inflicting death on a fellow human.
To elaborate, I think it would actually desensitize people to violence.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:52 PM
The historical evidence would suggest that they'd think it was loads of fun, and would bring picnics and their children. Anyone else see that exhibition of lynching photographs that was up in NY a couple of years ago?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:53 PM
Even if you accept the sex/bloodlust analogue (I don't), surely the analogous Dem position on bloodlust would be something like reducing penalties for fights that break out, or creating boxing gyms where people could go and beat the shit out of each other while minimizing the potential harm of such actions. Your claim about the policy analogue would be more convincing if the Dem response to abstinence programs was to suggest providing hookers to every teenager in need.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:55 PM
It tends to be applied unequally or wrongly. And then the people doing the applying do it to someone else. This is the original basic reason for the injunction in the constitution - the British did it to political opponents, but not to rich thieves and suchlike.
That wasn't an argument, against, say, flogging, which is non-lethal. (And which I would be fine with.)
Given that we humans need to get a little barbaric every now and again, what's the best way for the state to manage our bloodlust? If you ask it that way, a cruel public death for a child-molesting serial killer seems like a damn good answer.
Well, if THAT's a problem, bring back dueling (voluntary), which I'd be fine with. That'll certainly manage the bloodlust.
(And, you might consider that a people that has gotten out of the habit of seeing itself as an agent of cruelty might, say, bomb the shit out of another country--for its own good--without batting an eye.)
The counter-argument is that the country in question is specifically being prevented from being aware of it the consequences of its actions, preventing corrective action to self-image.
Also, one could point out that the faction that seems to love this stuff seems to be engaging in a peculiar form of masturbation.
ash
['.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:55 PM
I rather doubt that putting a bunch of LGFers in front of a public execution—or even letting (since I doubt "making" would be the right word) them take part in one—would open their eyes to the horrors of inflicting death on a fellow human.
To elaborate, I think it would actually desensitize people to violence.
This is the argument of Montaigne's essay on courage (I think that's the one anyway).
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:56 PM
#18: On the other hand, we might consider that a people who aren't accustomed to public killings would be more horrified by war--which is why we prefer to bomb from a safe distance. Not that that's morally defensible, but it does suggest that we are less, not more comfortable with violent death than you seem to be saying.
Now, on the death penalty full stop: aside from the moral and ethical issues--I'm adamantly opposed--there's the hypocrisy of the thing. Why is the child rapist/serial killer being murdered? Because he did something barbaric and horrible that resulted in someone dying. So what's the solution? Let's do something barbaric and horrible that results in someone dying.
If that's justice, it's justice of the most shameful kind.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 2:56 PM
Ogged, why are you posting drunk?
Natural human bloodlust is a silly notion. What's your evidence? That people who don't have to fight in wars have a penchant for starting them? that humans in society have fought wars?
Even low-level violence is rare if not institutionally encouraged, and killing is wholly different. I almost never take up nature arguments, but even I'll admit we're hard-wired against deliberatly killing someone. Evidence shows most if not all serial killers have backgrounds of emotional/physical abuse and some cognitive impairment/damage. The rate at actually firing at the enemy in WWII was terrifically low, somewhere around 17%. Lower still at Gettysberg. And those are situations in which one couldn't even clearly see what one was shooting at.
Look at killing in the human race and you'll see a history of factors training and teaching people to kill. Training a warrior in a tribe to kill was difficult, it took years of him getting used to killing animals. And still, death rates for ancient wars were for the most part fairly low. Ancient Greek wars (with a few exceptions) have been described by some historians as giant pushing matches.
All evidence suggests that cold-blooded sociopaths who can just go out and kill another person are ultra-rare. Even humans in their most basic organization have triggers that have to be set off before they can kill; rage or panic. But instances of rage or panic aren't what you're referring to when you say humans are naturally bloodthirsty.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:00 PM
Bphd: Agree. My 17 applies.
Ash: It is certainly pornographic, so it leads to the same stimulus.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:01 PM
If that's justice, it's justice of the most shameful kind.
I don't know that it's justice so much as the same logic that says you shoot a vicious dog.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:02 PM
Humans aren't dogs, and furthermore, we have prisons.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:03 PM
On the other hand, we might consider that a people who aren't accustomed to public killings would be more horrified by war--which is why we prefer to bomb from a safe distance. Not that that's morally defensible, but it does suggest that we are less, not more comfortable with violent death than you seem to be saying.
I didn't mean to imply that I think we as a society are comfortable with violent death—I mean look at the way we even buy our meat! But I don't think that the people who are currently able to advocate wholesale slaughter from the air do so because they themselves are horrified by war. That kind of war may be more palatable to the public for that reason, but (if I understand rightly) the result of the unprecedented broadcast of death and mutilation in the Vietnam war wasn't an end to public support of war, just to the public support of knowing what was going on in war. Uh, the preceding is pretty incoherent, I think.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:04 PM
To be clear, I'm not arguing that many individuals in society aren't bloodthirsty. I'm just saying it's not natural.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:04 PM
#28: You don't shoot a vicious dog if you can keep it penned up. And a person is not a dog.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:04 PM
Outta my head, bphd.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:05 PM
Humans aren't dogs, and furthermore, we have prisons.
Yeah well. Prison's frequently a death sentence itself.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:06 PM
The sex ed analogy falls flat. Kids are going to have sex regardless, so we might as well help them be safe and healthy.
There's no harm reduction in state sponsored torture-unto-death. Yes, the Jeff Dahmers of the world will torture people to death regardless of the rules, but that doesn't mean that the state has any interest in preemptively slaking their bloodlust.
Advanced societies provide plenty of harmless outlets for normal aggression: contact sports, yelling at the TV, hunting, video games, flame wars, etc., etc.
Is televised dismemberment supposed to make people less likely to cut each other off in traffic?
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:06 PM
#30: I think that's wrong. I wonder what the relative incidence of PTSD is in the USAF as opposed to the Army or the Marines.
(The navy is a bad test case, b/c the way people are treated on ships would create PTSD in and of itself.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:06 PM
And a person is not a dog.
Agreed. And understand that I'm playing devil's advocate when I say that just as most folks wouldn't pay to pen a vicious dog, most folks are similarly unmotivated to pay to pen a vicious human being.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:06 PM
#37: The money argument doesn't wash. Death penalty cases cost more, not less, than life in prison cases.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:08 PM
Now cutting up in traffic SHOULD be a capital offence.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:08 PM
Some death penalty cases cost more than life in prison cases. Depends on how long somebody spends in prison and how many appeals a death row inmate gets.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:09 PM
Ogged, I have to agree with bphd, Joe Drymala, SCM Tim. Your point is essentially the pressure-cooker argument: that allowing a small outlet of steam will prevent an explosion. This may be valid in some cases, but when it comes to public executions, I think it's more like the proverbial hole in a dam. Once the government sanctions not just cruelty, but acknowledged cruelty (and there is a difference) in some cases, it will only be a matter of time before it spills over into other areas.
That said, I do know exactly what you and Professor Volokh are saying. There are some people who I think just plain deserve to suffer. But that's an individual micro-scale evaluation. If I thought that, as bphd put it, it could just "[function] as an outlet and lalala we go back to our day jobs," then I'd say go for it. But it wouldn't work that way, especially not in a free society. If we unleash those urges on a macro scale, the berserker rage will just keep reinforcing itself.
Posted by Walter Sobchak | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:10 PM
Ogged, I see through your cunning charade. You're trying to set a new record in the hundred-comment dash. But I will foil your plan with a future post about how we should torture people for not liking Larry Summers.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:11 PM
36: Don't follow. What about 30 is wrong and what about PTSD would play into it? Please use small words. Lately between 1 and 6 I have been unusually slow.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:12 PM
But really, that isn't a money argument, so much as a utility argument: what do we get by keeping this person alive (answer: very little, if anything) versus what do we get by executing them (answer: closure for the victims' families...maybe).
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:12 PM
Let's be clear here. We aren't talking about the death penalty - we're talking about the infliction of wanton cruelty for the sake of sating the audience's blood lust. We get the specific deterrence whichever way our boy dies. More to the point, we aren't doing this for deterrence's sake.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:12 PM
That's it, Labs. You and me, outside, now.
(#40: Ok, then, it's a wash, which still means the money argument's no good.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:14 PM
But really, that isn't a money argument, so much as a utility argument: what do we get by keeping this person alive (answer: very little, if anything) versus what do we get by executing them (answer: closure for the victims' families...maybe).
Until ten years later DNA evidence exonerates the dead man!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:14 PM
May I suggest reading two essays that would spare everyone a lot of time: Albert Camus' "Reflections on the Guillotine" and Garry Wills' "The Dramaturgy of Death".
Posted by lr | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:16 PM
Ben: Right! Just please please be so damn sure you've got the right guy.
As to utility. You use a utility argument in criminal justice, you have to use it universally. And THAT would be so ugly.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:18 PM
#43: Re-reading 30 I have no idea why I wrote that. I remember thinking you were saying that killing from the air isn't less damaging psychologically than killing face-to-face, but I have no idea where I got that from. Withdrawn.
#44: What we get from keeping the killer alive is moral consistency, and the knowledge that we are a society that does not condone killing. I don't think those things are negligible. And I don't think that I would find any closure in the death of someone who murdered, say, pk. It isn't going to bring the dead back to life.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:18 PM
No Labs, I'm totally serious. And a bit disappointed that in a post about knee-jerk liberal dogma, I get instant mounds of knee-jerk liberal dogma. I don't know that we can "manage" bloodlust, but neither, it seems to me, do y'all know that we can't. And we might want to at least, you know, consider the possibility that out well-intentioned disdain leads ultimately to more cruelty, not less.
Part of the problem is that we can't just take a society as it's currently constituted and append, as it were, cruel executions to it. There would need to be a culture to explain the purpose of the spectacle in a reasonable way.
More as I catch up to all the comments...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:18 PM
No, I'm sorry, but Volokh's a sick bastard. There is no fine distinction between capital punishment administered by the state and capital punishment administered by the state featuring Nate Dogg and Dr. Dre. Your hand is in it already. Why put your whole arm in there? You want blood, go huntin'.
Posted by diddy | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:19 PM
Thing is Bphd: If anyone touched my kids, I might just kill. But no one has the right to do that undeed for me. EVER.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:20 PM
I don't know that we can "manage" bloodlust, but neither, it seems to me, do y'all know that we can't.
Howzabout because we've being doing just fine without torturing people to death for centuries now? Specificially, what good do you think it will do? For whom?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:20 PM
And a bit disappointed that in a post about knee-jerk liberal dogma, I get instant mounds of knee-jerk liberal dogma.
Did it feel good to just toss that off? I'll bet it did.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:23 PM
we are a society that does not condone killing
Except even if we outlawed capital punishment across the country, we still quite plainly are a society that condones killing, as Iraq and a huge number of other countries would be willing to attest. So, not even much moral consistency to be had there in a nation whose military expenditures are greater than the rest of the world combined.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:23 PM
I don't know that we can "manage" bloodlust, but neither, it seems to me, do y'all know that we can't.
So let's take a look around the globe and through history. Surely there are some societies that are more violent in their punishment of "bad people"; in general, do you think those societies are more or less bloodthirsty than places with bans on cruel punishment? Iran or (I dunno) Holland?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:24 PM
And while I'm pretty mushy on the death penalty issue, I'm going to have to go with Austro on this one: if it were my kid that was sexually assaulted and murdered, you can rest assured I'd have no trouble being the guy who tortured the perpetrator to death, moral consistency be damned.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:25 PM
because we've being doing just fine without torturing people to death for centuries now?
Have we? This too seems unknown to me. What the apostropher said about military expenditures. These seem bound together to me. This place is whack, and I do wish people would at least consider the possibility that "letting off some steam" might help. I am honestly and completely open to being convinced otherwise, but I'm pretty surprised that when another member of the intelligentsia, like Volokh in this case, broaches the topic, people want to write him off as insane.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:26 PM
#51: Look at history. When public executions were the norm, so was beating children, torturing animals for fun, and domestic violence was perhaps regrettable, but accepted. When public lynchings were the norm (as LB points out), not only did it foster an acceptance of, rather than discourage by providing an outlet for (?!?) racist violence, we also still believed in corporal punishment. Most places that have public executions also condone violence against women and children.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:26 PM
And while I'm pretty mushy on the death penalty issue, I'm going to have to go with Austro on this one: if it were my kid that was sexually assaulted and murdered, you can rest assured I'd have no trouble being the guy who tortured the perpetrator to death, moral consistency be damned.
Which is exactly why the decision isn't and shouldn't be yours.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:30 PM
Suppose blood lust is like regular lust. You wouldn't expect a state-sponsored pornography channel to reduce the national libido. So why would you expect televised dismemberment to reduce the nation's lust for blood?
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:30 PM
Re. the Dukakis question ("what if it were your wife who were raped"--though to be fair, I think I'm the one that brought it up): hell yeah, if someone threatens my kid, I'm gonna kill them or die trying. But that's not the same as killing them after the fact retributively. I might very well still want to do that, but part of the point of having a justice system is to manage and control our vigilante instincts. On the whole, I think it's a preferable system. And I'm sure there's a name (Ben, help me out here) for an argument that attacks a universal premise by appealing to the auditor's own personal emotional reaction. Even if I feel certain that I'd happily torture anyone who hurt my kid (and I truly don't feel certain of that at all), that doesn't invalidate the argument that doing so is wrong.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:30 PM
Apo: Right, which is why the judicial system exists. To prevent MY arbitrary justice. Why would a society want to prevent that? To prevent the excesses my impartial view would undoubtedly lead to. So errr... If the executive and judiciary themselves carry out the excesses, what was the ffffing point? QED.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:31 PM
Look at history.
Yes, that's right, which is why I say I can't think of a society that's tried to incorporate accomodation of bloodlust along with other rules of social justice. And, the question, again: how much of that is attributable to the fact that people tend to say "this is ok, or this is not ok" but don't like to say, "this isn't so great, but a little is probably good for us?"
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:31 PM
The more I think about it, the more this program of ogged's looks like the worst of both the Right and the Left. Here we have the cruel and vengeful God of the Old Testament (Right) married to a social engineering program intended to make society as a whole less vengeful.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:32 PM
Bphd: Get outta my head will ya :)
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:32 PM
#65: Yes, but perhaps that because other rules of social justice do, in fact, lessen and contain the "natural" bloodlust you're arguing for.
Shit, I'm going to be late for a goddamn hiring committee dinner.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:32 PM
This is the worst analogy of all time.
Posted by praktike | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:33 PM
"people want to write him off as insane."
No one's calling Volokh's insane. They're calling him despicable.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:34 PM
Roman Justice: The kind of punishment Roscius Sextus would have enjoyed kept the Romans from "Bombing the shit" out of the rest of the world.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:34 PM
We're.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:34 PM
And I'm sure there's a name (Ben, help me out here) for an argument that attacks a universal premise by appealing to the auditor's own personal emotional reaction.
Wikipedia just calls this "appeal to emotion", and that sounds ok to me.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:35 PM
Which is exactly why the decision isn't and shouldn't be yours.
Agreed.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:35 PM
This place is whack, and I do wish people would at least consider the possibility that "letting off some steam" might help.
But we've tried that. We had thousands of years of torturing people to death, and it didn't do a damn thing to reduce war. You seem to be positing some kind of scientifically/psychologically designed spectacle that would really work to let off steam -- what makes you think that anything like that would be any better than the time-honored practice of crucifying criminals, which didn't slow down the Roman legions an iota.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:36 PM
And, the question, again: how much of that is attributable to the fact that people tend to say "this is ok, or this is not ok" but don't like to say, "this isn't so great, but a little is probably good for us?"
The problem with formally and explicitly admitting that there are cases around the border where something is admissible is that doing so in itself widens the border.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:36 PM
Wolfson -
Is that Stanford talk for "slippery slope"? (If it is, I prefer your formulation).
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:39 PM
I will also say that I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the position ogged's advancing here. But it's the kind of thing where you'd want to be pretty damn sure of yourself, and that kind of surety isn't going to be coming along any time soon.
I also don't think that a cruel public death for a serial killer would actually manage my bloodlust. I mean, I haven't noticed that much of a lust for blood in myself, but I think that if I were feeling randy in that sort of way, I'd want to take it out on something I had a more specific emotional investment in.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:40 PM
I'm a mindreader.
As I was trying to make my hair look less shitty (but fuck it, I'm not the one interviewing) this occurred to me:
Why is it V's bloodlust and not, say, our horror at torture that is being considered "natural" here? I don't see why revulsion at the idea of torture and public execution is simply knee-jerk liberalism. It's surely as much a visceral reaction as standing on the sidelines cheering.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:40 PM
SCMT—I suppose it is, but I was thinking with more of an emphasis on the formal & explicit part than the slippery part. A unwritten policy of benevolent neglect works on fuzzy cases much better than does a written one, because it can be applied inconsistently.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:42 PM
What B. said.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:43 PM
"I will also say that I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the position ogged's advancing here."
I am.
bitchphd: See Michael's comment above (26).
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:43 PM
Also, I might be imagining this, but does anyone else get a kind of Genealogy of Morality vibe here?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:44 PM
I'm now curious (honestly) - what was so wrong about Abu Ghraib, in your mind? The absence of a trial? That the torture wasn't televised? That we made mistakes in determining who was truly reprehensible? That we are seeking information, and not satiation? The first strikes me as reasonable, but I'd guess that military law allows us to expedite guilty/not-guilty pretty quickly. Would you have been comfortable with Abu Ghraib if it had been (a) after a military tribunal looked at issues of guilt, and (b) been televised?
I'm sure this sounds like snark, but it really is an honest question.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:48 PM
I thought about that too. Ogged's reaction to Abu Ghraib, etc seemed pretty visceral. It's a bit baffling.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 3:55 PM
Abu Ghraib is not a tough question; the fact that you guys see some kind of similarity helps me understand the reaction to the post. In short: no due process, no established norms, no due solemnity in the punishment.
(Kangaroo-ish military trials don't count as due process, certainly not where a cruel execution is concerned.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:00 PM
Not to mention that "fighting the invaders" even if one were guilty, is not a crime like "molesting and killing children."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:01 PM
Also, I might be imagining this, but does anyone else get a kind of Genealogy of Morality vibe here?
It's kind of surprising that it took so long for that to come up, but yes, much of this discussion has been a recapitulation of the second essay of that book. Inter alia, N. argues that the greater the degree to which the social function of punishment involves giving expression to aggressive impules, the less likely it is that the penal system can function in an impartial and objective fashion. This is a partial answer to ogged's (faux naive?) question why it is that we don't have many examples of penal systems that are like ours, only with torture.
Posted by bza | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:03 PM
Ogged,
If conservatism is the protection of society from dangerous new ideas, being against the introduction of state sponsored public torture of criminals isn't just for knee-jerk liberals. The lack of historical evidance of societies that used your plan to keep violence under control isn't a selling point for true conservatives either.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:07 PM
Now that things have quieted a bit, let me go back to B's point up top, which seems to be the main issue. She says,
I responded that saying that it "effects" us is isn't a counterargument. That's because, if it works, it will work precisely because it affects us, and in a traumatic way.
The metaphor I'm after, after thinking about it some more, isn't "letting off steam," but "innoculation." It's certainly possible to get your fill of violence. How many war veterans think war movies are sexy? How many non-veterans do?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:08 PM
ogged -
(1) if we're hanging it all on due process, then I think this quickly becomes either (a) some sort of "in the abstract" hypothetical, or (b) an argument about how much "due process" very poor defendents get in the criminal justice system.
(2) the invader/child molester thing suggests that Abu Ghraib wasn't wrong b/c of the torture, but b/c of who was tortured. We might well, for example, cruelly televise the torture Saddam Hussein after his trial. Is that right?
(3) I think the reason that you're getting so much liberal "clap-trap" is b/c lots and lots of people have hashed this argument out before. No doubt they could present the arguments we're making much better, and we may be doing little more than mouthing the words of our betters, but I think there's a fairly substantial case is the West against these sorts of actions. I'd be with (IIRC) Wolfson - you're going to have to have some unbelievable proof of what you claim before we try out the theory.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:15 PM
Assuming, ad arguendo, that most war veterans do find war movies unsexy because of their exposure to massive amounts of war, isn't it problematic for your view that war veterans aren't overwhelmingly opposed to future wars? If exposure to violence on that level doesn't significantly diminish enthusiasm for war, why would violence on the much lower of level of controlled public suffercution (too cutesy?) diminish enthusiasm.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:18 PM
How many war veterans think war movies are sexy?
This might be the root of the problem. If you're doing it to sate the public's blood lust, they aren't the veteran. They're the audience in a war movie. How many people leave a war movie thinking war is sexy? A lot.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:18 PM
How many people leave a war movie thinking war is sexy? A lot.
Right! Because it's just a movie.
W/D, but at least this past go 'round, the veterans in the administration were also the only ones who seemed to understand what "war" would mean.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:20 PM
Put it this way, ogged. Do you think people were more likely to overreact to 9/11 or treat the matter thoughtfully b/c of all of the video footage being constantly played? (Not perfect, or even good, I admit, but I don't think our visceral reactions work the way you think).
Anyway, if you are right, I'd thik that you'd find that more violent punishments yielded less violent people. That seems like a sociological question - does anyone have the Healy family bat signal?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:26 PM
I confess I'm baffled by bza's reading of the second book of the Genealogy of Morals; the one where Nietzsche writes:
Which is not to say that Nietzsche's "on my side" in this--just that Book 2 is no clear refutation.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:27 PM
I haven't brought up 9/11 because it is such an imperfect analogy. There was this though: after 9/11, a lot of people, myself included, couldn't bear to watch a violent movie.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:29 PM
However, a lot of people, yourself included, supported invading Iraq, so there may be a question of violence versus the imagery of violence.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:39 PM
Ogged: I threw up in the middle of schindlers list, and had to walk out of The Rock. Its not liberal knee jerk. Its what B said Visceral abhorrence of violence. I really hope Im not alone in this. Men shouldn not say this in our role models, but I hope it is still there.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:39 PM
after 9/11, a lot of people, myself included, couldn't bear to watch a violent movie.
Maybe. But the news networks didn't keep showing that footage over and over again because they thought it would hurt their viewership numbers. And it seems like an awful lot of people have claimed a sort of primary injury from 9/11 and used it to justify some Very Bad Things. Again, an imperfect rendering of what I'm trying to say, but I think people are at least as titillated by these things as they are revolted. I think that's why we so often see movies where the hero"justifiably" goes flat nuts on the "evildoer."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:40 PM
I still think my point holds that if exposure to the full-fledged violence of war just increases the level of deliberation slightly, what you're proposing won't have any noticable benefit at all. I mean, unless the causal mechanism from "public controlled violence displays" to "decreased desire for violence" is quite different from the one connecting "having been at war" to "wanting more war." And it undeniably has costs, which some here have argued are exceedingly high. I have to start celebrating this asinine holiday now, people I'll show up later to argue drunk.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:45 PM
I think that's why we so often see movies where the hero"justifiably" goes flat nuts on the "evildoer."
You keep adducing things that I would use as evidence for my point. Probably close to half our action movies involve extracting ridiculously violent and disproportionate vengeance. Might there not be a clue here as to our human needs? Is it really far-fetched to think that "nuke 'em all!" is related to this impulse? The question is whether seeing the real thing, in its unrecreatable goriness, would deter or encourage more of the same.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:46 PM
ogged, we scientists keep getting told that there are some experiments one should not entertain. I serriously hope you never get the chance to test this out. Just draw up the decision tree and think of the cost-benefit of the answers.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:50 PM
those rs are the continental influence on my diction.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:51 PM
I think Ogged may actually be correct, at least in part. Allow me to explain what I'm thinking about here (although, naturally, I may fail in getting my point across).
We are supposedly fighting an existential war against terror-groupings/murder-organizations and yet, we as a public have failed to see any of the terrorists being held by this administration actually receiving justice of any kind, cruel or otherwise. They are held in Cuba, or in a brig, or chained in a dirty cell with a Turkish toilet in the prison of some military junta. Even for the people lucky enough to get a "trial," no one gets to see it. I saw more of OJ Simpson's trial than I have of all the trials of all terrorist suspects captured worldwide since September 11. Is that the way it should be?
Bush has taken the tack of simply covering it all up with a veil, so that there is a very serious feeling (at least in my stomach) that justice still has yet to be done. My favorite example of this is one of the "ghost inmates" at Abu Ghraib who was shackled to the ground and left in the dark for so long that the guards called him Golem, and they even put a picture of Smigel on the door of his cell. Not even the Red Cross got to see this man, much less your average Joe 'Merican.
I want to see these people, goddammit! I want to watch them walk past their victims, stand in front of a judge, and receive their due. This isn't happening, and I'm pissed about that. There is something primal about the need for public justice, it's not just some fancy thing, like underwear, that people just invented for some inscrutable reason.
I think that Bush's tactic of secret justice is extremely dangerous and is distorting America in ways that we don't fully realize (and not just at the level of government). We need to deliver justice to these terrorists in a public way that allows serious, cathartic participation on the part of ordinary Americans, otherwise there will never be closure.
Do you realize that Iraqis will get to put Saddam on trial before any member of al Qa'ida ever gets put before a judge for a full public trial in this country? That is ridiculous, and that is the issue, not torture, public crucifixion, etc.
Posted by Yuri Guri | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 4:59 PM
You know, in a thread whose genesis was torturing a child killer to death, I can't believe no one has mentioned The Children™ yet. Won't anyone PLEASE think about The Children™? As in, wouldn't this severely fuck kids' heads up if it became standard practice?
Posted by Walter Sobchak | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:02 PM
Violence as natural versus unnatural: I think all humans are perfectly capable of violence. Some level of aggression if 'normal' in a human society. The notion that if you weren't trained to be violent you be a flower-loving pacifist hippy is silly (you have to be trained to be a flower-loving pacifist hippy). Neadertals (don't get me started on whether human ancestry is involved) killed and ate each other, and homo erectus and that lot did the same. Chimpanzees are aggressive (but not real aggressive) as are most of the omniverous primates. The level of 'natural' violence is debatable. I do note that humans have been fighting each other a long long long time, nearly continuously.
Innoculation: speaking of as one who has been there and done all that, I doubt very much that public vicious executions would have much steam-release effect. Volohk was in favor of the Iraq war and in favor of public executions. I strongly expect that a lot of those guys are getting penis enhancements-by-proxy via war footage. (They want to see Iraqi army schmucks killed on Fox because they can go yes! Americans are tough and I'm an American!) Public executions is the same thing to them, because they're watching it on TV. The only people who are innoculated are the families which is a very small number of people. Further, the US had public lynchings in the South in 1898 and so and we still wound up killing hundreds of thousands of Philipinos. That's because people who realize that war sucks are people who have experienced up close and personal. People who experience war via TV (just like public executions) are just getting the porno effect, not the real thing. 'Wow! It's just like Braveheart!'
To inoculate properly you need some selective violence applied to aggressive people. So, the best solution is to take a war supporter out in the alley and beat the shit out of him with a baseball bat, and see how he likes it.
War supporters will not be in favor of this proposal.
As I said, I am fine with say flogging. 20 lashes for the DWI and you go home seems more effective than jail to me. If only G. Bush had been given 20 lashes when he was busted for DWI.
The other problem is male (usually young male) aggression. Weed out the hyper-aggressive ones, let 'em fight it out. Hell, they do that already (gang feuds), but regulated.
Alas, 'liberal dogma' says the lion has to lie down with lamb and stuff, which is why we have a generation that tends to self-absorbed narcissitic bratiness. Which, I guess, beats the Old South routine of lynching black men.
Anyways, about the only thing that seems to cure war fever is war, so we got that covered. If only they'd show pictures.
ash
['Alas, the cure doesn't take very well.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:05 PM
I came way late to the conversation, so I just posted over on Cereally Seducted (my blog) instead of posting here.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:26 PM
Re 96: I confess myself baffled in turn. It's, uh, pretty much the premise of the entire book that people used to be cheerfully amoral way back when. Then, according to Nietzsche, we internalized moral norms, which (1) led to the various forms of psychological malaise N. despairs, but which (2) he also regards as a precondition for most every aspect of civilization, and so (3) he doesn't think we should go back to that pre-moral state, just as it was.
The point about officially-sanctioned cruelty being incompatible with jurisprudential objectivity is one of the things that falls under (2).
Posted by bza | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:27 PM
Y'know, Volokh, the guy who favors this bloodlust, is the same guy who has made it pretty fucking clear that he favors torture as currently practiced by our government. (Check out the Reason roundup of prominent libertarians where Volokh says that he votes Republican in part because Republicans are better on most if not all civil rights issues. There's got to be a word for that position, but I don't think it's 'libertarian'.)
And we used to have this sort of public audience-participation torture and execution frequently. It was called 'lynching'. Some of the lynched people were guilty. Do you think that the places where lynching took place were less violent because of that safety valve?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:34 PM
Ah, ash beat me to lynching.
Posted by Matt W | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:36 PM
Actually, lyching came up long before, in one of LizardBreath's comments, I think. It looks like I have to write a much longer post about this. I really misjudged where the audience would be, and left out a few paragraphs of argument.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:39 PM
What Matt Weiner and Lizardbreath said.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:40 PM
N. argues that the greater the degree to which the social function of punishment involves giving expression to aggressive impules, the less likely it is that the penal system can function in an impartial and objective fashion.
Hmm. My reading of the relevant portion of Bk 2 is that the degree to which a society lashes out at criminals is a sign of the strength of the society. The weaker the society, the more criminals must be punished. (such as the extravagant torture of the regicide in the opening of The Order of Things) The stronger a society, the less it is threatened by mere criminals, the less it needs to "make examples of" the criminals. Just throw them away, out of sight, they don't matter that much. So, extravagant punishment is an outcome of feeling threatened. Ogged's proposal is in a different paradigm, but still I don't N wouldt view it kindly, if only because it seems to involve unhealthy obsessions (with what's already occured, with giving into (in the mode of giving into, as opposed of in the mode of riding) one's own interior passions, with catering to the masses). I could be wrong, though.
(unaccountable bad mood today, I should probably just return back here and read comments tomorrow.)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:41 PM
Don't give me the "only bad people get locked up" excuse; simply because someone may have been thought of as a bad person is no reason to kill them, let alone rejoice in it!
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:43 PM
O, to distance myself from liberal dogma, I emphasize that my disagreement with you rests primarily on psychological claims.
We should have a week where we post on our rightmost (or more accurately, most different from the traditional left) opinions, just for kicks. Then we can post pictures of us mooning the readers.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:44 PM
Labs, thank you. It's precisely psychological claims that should settle the issue.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:46 PM
1. It now strikes me that this might be a coded message indicating that baa should gather the rest of the A-Team and go rescue you. Please blink twice if I'm right.
2. The question is whether seeing the real thing, in its unrecreatable goriness, would deter or encourage more of the same.
Then let's argue about the evidence, or even what you would accept as evidence. For example, are boys who see their mother beaten by their father more or less likely to beat their wives? Has violence gone down as movie gore has gotten more accurate? Etc. I have no idea. I find it incredible that there aren't sufficient data sets out there to suggest some answers - maybe not answers to precisely the questions we're asking, but informative answers nonetheless.
If X number of years of the trends in western history aren't enough, nor is the general consensus in the West on this issue, what kind of evidence are you looking for?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 5:51 PM
Haha the OC comes on and nobody posts.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 6:17 PM
er... comments.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 6:19 PM
Then let's argue about the evidence, or even what you would accept as evidence.
Yeah, this is key, and I'm honestly not sure what relevant evidence would be. Especially since whenever someone brings up something they intend as evidence, my reaction is, "what the fuck does that have to do with anything?" In a sense, I almost feel like I'm not fighting fair, because I'm saying that the whole society would have to be constituted otherwise in order for this to work--and then we're just having some stupid theoretical discussion. But I want to be saying something more than that, namely, that we should be giving serious thought to how we, in this society, can change our attitude toward violence to make it--what's the word?--more realistic.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 6:23 PM
I want to be saying something more than that, namely, that we should be giving serious thought to how we, in this society, can change our attitude toward violence to make it--what's the word?--more realistic.
Ah. Ok, this I can understand. But that (a) doesn't seem to have anything to do with your "blowing off steam" deal and (b) probably is, practically speaking, only attainable through personal experience. We're skirting the 9/11 thing on this thread (aside from a few references), but you don't need to be Marshall McLuhan to recognize that experiencing violence firsthand and experiencing it through the filter of television or film or print or what-have-you makes for totally different reactions to a 9/11-type experience. One step removed, it attains an almost mythic quality. In the moment (I was there, and I walked home covered in ashes), it tends to induce an acute revulsion to violence and death. If the goal is to change our attitude toward violence, enacting violent rituals to be broadcast on a national scale doesn't seem to be the way to go. (Unless the change you're looking for is one of numb detachment, but I don't think that's what you mean.)
Your knee-jerk liberal write-off really rubbed me in all kinds of wrong ways, and I didn't elaborate above, but others did, and rightly so. Defending principles that have evolved over hundreds of years, and defending them on not one but a variety of fronts (moral, practical, theoretical) is hardly knee-jerk and dogmatic, and it sounded as though you were channeling the fake superiority we've come to expect from the likes of Sean Hannity. It was miles beneath you, and I'm glad the discussion has moved on from that point.
Anyway, if more awareness of the realities of violence in the U.S. is what we're after, I'm all for it, and I suspect that most on this thread would agree with me. But public execution and/or torture, for the purpose of vengeance or deterrence or blowing off steam or even righteous education, is morally and practically wrongheaded, and it's not knee-jerk liberalism to say so.
Above, you said something about us needing to prove that such measures wouldn't work, but that's wrong; it is you who would need to prove that they would. The onus shouldn't be on us w/r/t proving that this wouldn't be a good idea. It should be on the person advancing the idea that more barbarism here equals less barbarism there, because it's (among other things) a break with established norms and judicial precedent.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 7:33 PM
Ogged, I think you're all over the place. You started off with the "justice" argument and then moved to the "war veterans understand real violence" argument. But the reason war veterans oppose violence is precisely because they do not see the violence as justified. The big problem with your "let's have a group public execution of a child killer" argument is precisely that it seems "justified," and therefore encourages, not discourages killing. Whereas military men, in my experience, object to war because they *identify with* the victims of it. Either because those victims are their comrades, or because they realize that "the enemy" is grunts just like them.
Moreover, you're right: the crux of the argument is psychological. But I think the vast preponderance of evidence is against you. Societies that encourage public killings, as I said, also tolerate or even encourage violence within families. PTSD is a real, serious problem (and, I suspect, in places like Rwanda or Darfur, will affect the society as a whole for several generations). Children who are abused are far more likely to grow up to be abusive or even sociopaths. It seems to me that the evidence points exactly the opposite way you're indicating: violence begets violence. People raised to abhor violence (knee-jerk liberals, if you will) learn to abhor violence.
Now, does that mean that knee-jerk liberals are less likely to turn into torturers, under the right circumstances? No, it doesn't. But on the whole, I think it is *vastly* preferable to have a society that finds violence disgusting than one that finds it acceptable.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:26 PM
I had this thought while still at work but it doesn't seem to have come up. The thought is this: there are two (2) different claims that I can see ogged making. The first is the one that it seems most people have been talking about, myself included (I skimmed the last 30-odd comments, though, so I might be wrong), and has to do with the theory that people need some outlet for their aggression and that this is healthy and (insofar as healthy) good, even if most such outlets are bad. The second, embodied in the last section of the post, is that if people were more acquainted with the actual realities of killing/torture etc, what it takes to perform such acts and the agonies that the person undergoing them experiences, then they would be more reluctant to blithely root for war, or at least be more cognizant of what such rooting entailed. I think that's true, but that ogged's method for bringing such cognizance about (that is, show them, publically and in detail) is misguided. The people that are so educable do not need to witness an actual public human execution to have such feelings, and the people that are not so educable (Lynndie England comes to mind) are, well, not so educable.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:27 PM
I'll do a slightly longer reply in a sec, but b, I didn't talk about justice at all. In fact, the point of "bring this to earth" was to set aside questions of principle.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:31 PM
In a sense, I almost feel like I'm not fighting fair, because I'm saying that the whole society would have to be constituted otherwise in order for this to work--and then we're just having some stupid theoretical discussion.
Theoretical discussions of this sort are almost always stupid.
But I want to be saying something more than that, namely, that we should be giving serious thought to how we, in this society, can change our attitude toward violence to make it--what's the word?--more realistic.
Discussions of this sort are difficult to carry out in blog comment thread form, I think. And there's a similar problem to the one you mentioned in the underage sex thread, which is that a society can't simply self-consciously decide to change its attitude about something like violence. (I'm thinking about the observation that one of the damaging things about underage sex is the societal opinion of sex and underage sex, and the stigma that attaches to those who participate in it—one can't simply explicitly state that it's going to be something other, or even explicitly and publicly aim to make it other, I think.)
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:42 PM
If justified killing is irrelevant, then why is a cruel public death for a child-molesting serial killer the means to your solution? Do you propose just picking people up off the street, ala Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"? I'm thinking of what you said in #86: "due process" is the distinction between Abu Ghraib (bad torture) and the killing of child-murdering serial killers (good torture). But as soon as that enters into it, then it slips into "justified killing" territory.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:42 PM
By the way, I apologize that I'm not able to respond to every comment. They're really good, and thanks for that, even though y'all are mad at me.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:45 PM
Not mad. Not personal. Except in that "jesus christ, I am horrified that someone I like would actually contemplate this for a second" kind of way.
I hold out hope, however, that we'll convince you that you are, like, well on the way to rationalizing totalitarianism.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:50 PM
Say something else that's crazy, ogged, and let's see if we can make it to 200 tonight.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:52 PM
Abstinence only education is like telling kids not to drink, but not telling them how to take care of drunk people.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:54 PM
panes, circenses, caedes
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:56 PM
Ben, re your 124, yes, both of those. Again, the question is whether the method is a good one. And again, I'm really not sure what the evidence would be either way. Actually, it seems to me the question I have to answer is, how would our background beliefs need to be different, in order for public state-sanctioned violence to make us more sensitive to violence. You're also right, of course, that a blog thread might not be the best place for this to happen.
b, of course I'd want to save the cruel executions for the worst of the worst, but I don't think of it in terms of justice, just palatability.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:08 PM
Restating this again, it seems as if you want to release and train (and maybe thus restrain) our impulses for violence. I suspect that impulse won't stay in its harness, and that the training will increase the amplitude of the violence. I wonder if you don't believe that the amplitude increases through exposure to morally approved violence.
All of which suggests that, for the most part, we're all talking about pragmatic ways to limit the effect of the impulse to violence, and not about principle.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:11 PM
But that's precisely the point. If it's palatable, it doesn't discourage violence. It encourages it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:13 PM
All of which suggests that, for the most part, we're all talking about pragmatic ways to limit the effect of the impulse to violence, and not about principle.
Yes, thank you, that's precisely my point. Volokh's point seems to be along the lines of: it's natural and right that we indulge our lust for revenge. That's not the point I'm making. I'm saying that indulging our lust for revenge in this way might not be very civilized and it ought to make us very uncomfortable, but, on balance, it might in fact spare us a lot of bloodletting.
In addition to a question of methods (or bound up with it) is a question of how much we think this sadistic or vengeful impulse is "natural." Volokh and I seem to think: quite a lot; others, apparently, disagree.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:19 PM
How bad are you going to feel, ogged, when you fuck up and palatably kill the wrong guy?
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:20 PM
Argh, look, as a matter of fact, I'm against the death penalty for precisely that reason, tweedle. That's not my point. What really got my goat, truth be told, were two posts up at Crooked Timber that just quoted Volokh, and then made no argument at all about why he was wrong; they just assumed that it was self-evident that he was off his rocker. That's stupid. It's the worst kind of liberal stupid. You (generic liberal, not you, tweedle) better get a clue as to what's in the hearts of your fellow citizens.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:27 PM
"I hold out hope, however, that we'll convince you that you are, like, well on the way to rationalizing totalitarianism."
Wouldn't a familiarity with the French Revolution disabuse a person of this theory? Something like Citizens might be a fine curative.
Posted by Russell L. Carter | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:30 PM
Ogged -
First, I don 't think that's what Volokh's saying at all. I think he's saying, "I want bad things to happen to very bad people; it makes me feel warm inside. And that's OK."
Second, I think whether or not a vengful feeling is "natural" does not address the issue of the consequences of approving that vengful, if natural, feeling. That is, just because it's natural doesn't mean ordering things to satisfy it won't make things worse.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:31 PM
That is, just because it's natural doesn't mean ordering things to satisfy it won't make things worse.
No no, of course not, and please, other people, that's not what I said. I just think that determining how "natural" we think it is will determine the methods we use to manage it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:33 PM
Just because it's in the heart of our fellow citizens doesn't mean we have to accept it, or even that we need to explain why we don't. Righteous indignation does not require that. Who are we going to convince either way? There's a great saying about arguing opinions between two people set in their ways that I can't remember right now. Something about not expecting to have them change their opinion, but to get them to think.
But if CT's what pissed you off, why not just come out and say it? Or was it what you were trying to say, and it just came out funny?
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:35 PM
In addition to a question of methods (or bound up with it) is a question of how much we think this sadistic or vengeful impulse is "natural." Volokh and I seem to think: quite a lot; others, apparently, disagree.
This is getting in to very Freudian territory, but since ogged seems to want to go there, here we are.
I think what you're getting at, ogged, is that killing/vengeance/etc. is a natural urge that will out, no matter what our society dictates, and your analogy is the sexual impulse. But I think that the two are unequal. And the reason is, in a very real way, our social conditioning and the values such social conditioning instills.
It's impossible to know how we'd feel outside our society, whether killing and murder and vengeance would be as natural as sex if we weren't bound to the strictures of Western behavior code. All we can examine is our reality as we know it, and that reality places killing and sex on very different planes. Sex is (to varying degrees) a natural part of life, whereas killing our fellow human beings is generally abhorrent.
I can see what you're getting at -- the Freudian line of logic which dictates that repression of instincts just leads to horrible neuroses, but as far as the urge to kill is concerned, it seems to be far more manageable than our urge to fuck. Obviously, that urge to kill is still there, but in this case, strong taboo seems to be our best defense against general bloodletting, rather than relaxation of taboo under certain controlled circumstances. Again, I'm just going by historical precedent here, and not basing my argument on any sentimental or moral gut-check.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:38 PM
The essay I was thinking of in 24 is "On cruelty".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:39 PM
"People need to slice each other up just like they need to screw..."
Yeah, if I don't get laid and/or kill someone every six weeks, I'll go crazy.
Seriously, this is craptacular. People may have a natural blood lust, but it is far, far easier to control than sexual desire. I get my blood rocks off in three ways:
1.) Video games
2.) Quinten Tarantino movies
3.) Red Sox-Yankees brawls
Really, that just about does it for me. I never feel the need to beat the crap out of someone (excluding Sean Hannity) just for the helluvait. I *certainly* don't feel the need to watch somebody get tortured by a lynch mob.
If you want to satisfy peoples' bloodlusts, there are plenty of non-lethal ways of doing it.
Posted by B.R. | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:47 PM
they just assumed that it was self-evident that he was off his rocker....You better get a clue as to what's in the hearts of your fellow citizens.
This is actually something I've never understood. Volokh might be a nice, decent, kind man, and by his lights his response is entirely decent. I think there are a lot of Republicans like that. But his lights are not my lights, and one of the ways that I can tell that (if only for the sake of efficiency) is that the conclusions he arrives at are repugnant to me. I thought this was one of the points of reflective equilibrium. Certain questions are settled; I don't see why we are obliged to engage with someone over whether slavery might or might not be better for poor African-Americans, for example.
At the bitter end of it, Volokh notes that the rightness of his argument is dependent on something that isn't really available to refutation. If it's not available for refutation, all we really have are differing interests pushing up against each other. And in that case, I chose mine; I want to win, not understand him.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:47 PM
Now that I think about it, the dominance of the urge to procreate over the urge to destroy is a whole other fascinating discussion. And I think it would be worth talking about whether our priorities have shifted thusly as we've become more domestic and progress-oriented as a culture (since, say, the age of Socrates or so).
But this would probably be a more suitable conversation for some who (unlike me) had completed more than one year of college.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:51 PM
You (generic liberal, not you, tweedle) better get a clue as to what's in the hearts of your fellow citizens.
Well, I agree that Volokh's arguments should be challenged on their merits (see Yglesias for this one), but I really hope the Christian Right doesn't really favor torturing criminals. Seeing that they're Christians and all, I think that's sorta against their religion.
Posted by B.R. | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:52 PM
I was just talking to the ex about this on the phone, and I said something like "I just wish people in this country cared more that there's so much violence on television, and cared that we bomb the shit out of people." And she said, "But the people who are disagreeing with you do care." Me: "Yes, but this is where it gets complicated, because I think that if everyone thought that way, we'd go nuts." She: "Oh, you mean like Berkeley."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 9:59 PM
"[...] is that killing/vengeance/etc. is a natural urge that will out, no matter what our society dictates, and your analogy is the sexual impulse. But I think that the two are unequal. And the reason is, in a very real way, our social conditioning and the values such social conditioning instills."
It took me a quarter hour to locate my copy of Bataille's "The Tears of Eros". I had stupidly filed it under social science, rather than in my ashamedly paltry but still satsifying bin of "pr0n". Beginning on page 204 are photographs of an execution via torture. Ugh, there is "ecstacy" involved. The preceding 203 pages are an excursion through other avenues of sexual release throughout the ages. In this context, it can be seen that torture (let's just relabel it as involuntary sexual masochism) is a natural human phenomenon. As is pederasty, or bestiality, homosexuality, or heterosexuality, or what have you.
So ogged, torture ok, homosexuality ok, pederasty not? Why so?
Is the word "consent" important?
Posted by Russell L. Carter | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 10:03 PM
Joe and B.R., yes, the urges are different, but are they really under control? I guess I don't see that. This country seems pretty consumed with bloodlust to me. (And even before 9-11, I'd say.)
Tim, fair enough on Volokh. I'm not defending his particular argument, but I am using him as an example of the kind of feeling that we have to manage as a society--along the lines of: this is the raw material, this is what we have to work with.
Russell (and anyone else tempted to go in this direction), I think I've been clear--or I think it should be clear at this point--that I don't think this has anything to do with torture, and I don't endorse torture--you can check the archives on that if you like.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 10:08 PM
One of the things that bothers me about many on the Christian Right is that they aren't uncomfortable about a lot of things. Witness Abu Grahib. I'm not the best Christian going, but what Chritianity I've got makes me very uncomfortable about a lot of stuff.
And Ogged, given that we have Congressional resoltuions saying Iraq sinned.... I'm thinking that legalistic instances of this sort that remind us that we can be agents of cruelty are manifest. We did bat an eye, we went through a fucked up political process, I'm wondering if Abu Grahib isn't someting that could be illuminated by a bureaucratization of the dark angels of our nature. Instead, I think it might be an example of that illumination. Which is to say we suck. In a deep and profound way. And we are torturing the wrong people (I'm not sure that there are "right people" to torture, and even if we are, we're still torturing a lot of the wrong people. Volokh doesn't have to think that we should emulate Iran. You should worry that we're already there.
But as for the meta question "What's the best way for the state to manage our bloodlust?" I'm thinking paxil. Andas for civic rituals, the Aztecs or Mayas played soccer/lacrosse like games and sacrificed winners or losers to the Gods. I think if we did something like this with American Idol it would satisfy whatever inate bloodlust I had quite nicely.....
Posted by benton | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 10:12 PM
I think you're feeling overwhelmed with despair over people's gleeful hunger for video games, violent movies, and dead iraqis, and it's driven you mad, and you're ready to just succumb. You should make yourself a drink and read a nice book or something.
And your ex is right: Berkeley is FAR preferable to, say, stoning women in soccer stadiums. Especially since I'm one of the women most likely to get stoned.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 10:22 PM
And I know that sounds condescending, but it isn't.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 10:23 PM
Look ogged, when you write: "Given that we humans need to get a little barbaric every now and again, what's the best way for the state to manage our bloodlust?", pointing to the fact that you chew marbles in your archives is not a get out of jail free card.
That said, I'm not going to fire any more broadsides against my people. I'm not mad at you, I'm disgusted with Volokh. Whether or not we got liberal kneejerker lugubrious wailings, this is a fundamentally serious question that lies at the very base of civil society, which I alluded to in the link to a history of the French Revolution. And I appreciate the space you've provided here. People I respect like it here, and even in disagreement I like it too.
Best!
Posted by Russell L. Carter | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 10:26 PM
Joe and B.R., yes, the urges are different, but are they really under control? I guess I don't see that. This country seems pretty consumed with bloodlust to me. (And even before 9-11, I'd say.)
OK, now we're getting into a compleeeeeeetely different realm.
War, like killing, is acceptable in self-defense. After 9/11, America was completely justified in going into Afghanistan and routing the Taliban. But guess what? We didn't pull a Rome-on-Carthage, salt-on-ashes death fest (note: I don't mean to minimize the destruction the war in Afghanistan caused... I'm just saying it wasn't persecuted out of bloodlust per se). Even Iraq, while certainly ill-conceived, doesn't seem much like a bloodlust affair to me (and please don't use the 101st Fighting Keyboarders as evidence- the vast majority of people *actually fighting the war* are not anywhere near that fucktardularly bloodthirsty).
Now, on the domestic (rather than the international) front- is our country really all that bloodthirsty? Well, violent crime has been dropping for the last ten years. We have enough outlets via movies, sports, and video games (not to mention the way people live vicariously through gangsta rap) that most people can get their fix without actually beating the shit out of somebody.
Finally- I don't think anyone's even addressed this, but:
In addition to having natural bloodlusts, I think people also have natural compassion. Maybe this is me being a fruity emo boy (who DOESN'T listen to emo, mind you... The Smiths are the closest I get to that gobshite) who used to help sick birds as a child, but I think people have tremendous capacity to feel for those who are suffering. And regardless of how deserving someone is of being tortured, I think there's a part of us that, in addition to going "FUCK YEAH!" says, "Whoa, that's a human being."
Now, let's bring this back to the analogy with sex (I know, I'm all over the place, but I'm tired): unlike bloodlust, I *don't* think there's a natural urge within people to abstain from sex- only fear of negative consequences (STDs, pregnancy, getting bitch-slapped by the Mrs. for cheating, etc.). So when you try to repress the sexual urge completely, it doesn't work because there's nothing really fighting against it (or as George Carlin put it, "Here's something you'll never hear a man say- 'Stop (giving me felatio) before I call the police'"). Violence, on the other hand, *does* have a natural counterweight- there is both a natural attraction *and* revulsion to it. IMHO, the best way to get a positive outcome is to nurture the compassionate part of your brain and have the bloodthirsty part get itself off vicariously.
Posted by B.R. | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 10:42 PM
"Joe and B.R., yes, the urges are different, but are they really under control? I guess I don't see that. This country seems pretty consumed with bloodlust to me. "
So, thinking back to a previous post here... does this make many of those present here the "asexual" equivalent w/r/t bloodlust?
I mean, Unfogged comments are hardly representative of the general population, but are our urges and instincts really that alien to our fellow Americans? The problem may be more a lack of empathy with The Other (including the "criminal element") than an incomprehension of violence and its consequences.
Posted by Scott | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 10:46 PM
I think there's a part of us that, in addition to going "FUCK YEAH!" says, "Whoa, that's a human being."
Yes, thanks for making that clear, Brad. I kept talking about "trauma" being "effective" and I realize that that was a totally unclear way of saying what you just said. What I was getting at is that people, when seeing things like this, will natually say, "damn, that sucks, I don't want to see that again for a long while."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 10:47 PM
"What I was getting at is that people, when seeing things like this, will natually say, "damn, that sucks, I don't want to see that again for a long while.""
Sorry, I can't resist, just a bowchaser here. Why isn't this a form of collective punishment?
Posted by Russell L. Carter | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 10:57 PM
Let's just bring back gladiatorial fighting! That'll solve all of our problems. We can put all the murderers on one side, and good men with big guns on the other. Violent crime will become a thing of the past!
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 11:14 PM
re #102:
The question is whether seeing the real thing, in its unrecreatable goriness, would deter or encourage more of the same.
Not quite the real thing, but have you ever seen A Short Film About Killing (also available as the fifth movie in the Decalogue series. It follows a story from a brutal murder to an execution, neither of which are shown in anything even close to a cartoonish/action move violence sort of way. I never knew that they put a pan (to catch bodily fluids) under someone who was being hanged.
Both murders are painful to watch.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 11:17 PM
Let me just say that before this argument comes to a halt, I'd like to hear from the torturer contingent.
Seriously. Who here has ever tortured anything -- from a small animal or insect, to giving your kid sibling indian burns, to actual out-and-out torture of a human being? Did you enjoy torturing whatever or whoever you tortured? And more to the point, did torture ever bring you a sense of relief? Because that's the sort of evidence that Ogged is going to need here.
(For my own experience, limited as it is: as a boy I was occasionally quite cruel to my younger brother, often out of provoked anger or roughhousing that got out of hand, and I can't remember a single time that I didn't regret it deeply, even when he was being completely insufferable).
Posted by Tom Strong | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 11:18 PM
Sorry, forgot to close a parenthesis and put a question mark at the end of the first sentence of 161. Not that anyone here ever pays attention to such things.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 11:18 PM
Also, it just occurred to me: has anyone looked at the response to the Nick Berg beheading?
I didn't watch it, so I can't speak from experience.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 11:25 PM
Ah, but do we love him. MY calls for state administered torture as a reasonable approach to reducing the amount of petty criminals in prisons (they get x lashes), thus saving all of us some amount of coin (and increasing liberty for those thus efficiently rehabilitated). Question for ogged: is it important that the punishment is administered in public? Or is a video camera transmitting appropriately blood spattering images sufficient? Is viewing mandatory? Certainly guidelines could be set up, hygenic facilities constructed, even weekly rituals. My blood lust would be slaked, thankfully by the state, that's for sure.
No, this is not a broadside.
Posted by Russell L. Carter | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 11:26 PM
Finally finished reading the comments. I'm surprised this hasn't come up (unless I missed it), but if you're going to argue from nature you need to look beyond the inhabitants of one country.
So, why do death-penalty-abolishing, low-levels-of-violent-crime-committing Western Europeans seem to have lower levels of naturally-occurring bloodlust? (Compared both to Americans, and to Western Europeans of pre-1945 Europe.)
Or does this just mean that we should all fear the day when they explode (again)?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 11:46 PM
This is just a response to the last comment before I read back up the thread, but there's a sense in which describing Western Europe as death-penalty abolishing is inaccurate. Namely, at the time of abolition, polling showed that the majority of the poplulation in each banning country was in favor of the death penalty, and their parliaments basically decided they didn't care about popular will. Personally, I think that's good for those parliaments to ignore winning elections and remove an evil, but it should change how one imagines the action of those countries.
The only reason I have to believe the above is true is a seminar with David Garland, so if anyone has contrary information, I'd be interested.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 12:21 AM
I hadn't heard that, although I had heard that the method of execution - such as the continued use of hangings and even in some cases the guillotine - contributed to the decision to abolish capital punishment. The implication being, of course, that something like lethal injection may have been more acceptable.
Would you happen to know what polling shows about the death penalty in Western Europe today?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 12:40 AM
No, I don't know that, nor do I know if polling is even done on that issue.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 1:01 AM
WD, I think that actually supports your point. They want the death penalty, they can't have it, and they still don't murder lots o people. That seems to provide a bit of evidence that the death penalty isn't working as a healthy outlet for the bloodlust.
(There will be those who tell you that the reason for W. Europe's low murder rate is lack of access to guns rather than lack of assaults. I think this has been slightly debunked but don't know.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 7:29 AM
Last night my fourteen year old was playing GTA Vice City and showed me a feature I hadn't noticed before: he could shoot people in the head and the head popped off with the neck spouting blood before the body fell. Another charming touch was that some of the blood would appear to spatter onto your own personal TV screen, and would follow you around for awhile.
Now I love video games, and my kids sure know the difference between real and fake violence but Damn.
I'd need to see a whole lot of scientific evidence before I would believe that the aversion (or inoculation) effect is greater than the desensitization effect.
And if you could prove that the aversion effect overcomes the desensitization I'd still argue that aversion is a crappy way to modify behavior. It sucks in comparison to positive reinforcement, and there is a whole lot of scientific evidence for that.
Feel free to dismiss this as knee-jerk liberalism but I'm not just barfing out opinion. I have thought this through.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 8:50 AM
It now strikes me that this might be a coded message indicating that baa should gather the rest of the A-Team and go rescue you. Please blink twice if I'm right.
I just want to make sure everyone noticed SCMT's comment. It's incredibly awesome (see here for the background).
Also, has being a faithful reader of Unfogged become like a full-time job, or what? All the discussion is great, but damn, one busy day at work and I'm several thousand comments behind!
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 5:56 PM
Yeah, that was a great comment, lost in the heat yesterday.
has being a faithful reader of Unfogged become like a full-time job, or what?
Brother Mills, try getting an email every time someone comments.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:05 PM
Ah, quit bitching. It's all about the hits, baby, and you know it. We're all whores.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:15 PM
Brother Mills, try getting an email every time someone comments.
No.
Anyway, not everyone can have such a cushy job.
It just pains me all of the incredibly witty comments that popped into my head reading through the threads that humanity will now be deprived of forever, since, you know timing is everything.
Also, I think BitchPhD, Joe Drymala, and Austro ought to set up their own Bandarlog-type thingie. It would be quite a Spectacle.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:23 PM
??
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:25 PM
I'm gonna start posting meaningless comments just to annoy ogged with too much email.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:25 PM
Sorry to be oblique. I just mean y'all all had quite a thread going in that Spectacle post, and it kind of reminded me of a mini-version of the Bandarlog. Plus the subject of making threads into their own blogs has been broached before (on that 500-plus thread that I'm too lazy right now to link to). Ogged would make a great Potsy.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:29 PM
LOL.
Yeah, it's weird how this place acts almost like a forum. And it was fucking hilarious to be discussing the trolls (although how many of them were actually Michael just fucking around, I would really like to know) right under their noses without them realizing it. A fun way to deal with trolls.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:35 PM