Final words on the death penalty thread.
>
> In this vein, Sam seems to be dancing on both sides of the line. Both
> genetic endowment and social conditioning, in a complex way, determine
> behavior, but "there is no autonomous self." Sounds pretty mechanical to
> me, as well as reductionist and demeaning to the dignity of the person, and
> not the only interpretation of Marx, for what that's worth.
Executing and incarcerating people like animals in 8 by 10 cages is demeaning to the person and to society as a whole.It lowers the moral level as a whole. Prisons do nothing to rehabilitate people, the only purpose of them is to temporarily remove people from the public and to create profits for Lockheed Martin. When I was 15 I did a tour of a maximum security prison (that was later closed because of its barbaric conditions), it is impossible to see how anyone could get better in such a place. Many prisoners are not socialized properly i.e. they were physically and sexually abused as children. I remember when Canada's worst serial killer, Clifford Olson was interviewed on "Geraldo". When asked about his childhood, Olson responded "I remember being fucked up the ass by my uncle as few times when I was 6 years old, but other than that I had a normal childhood." The only way to stop violent crime is to break the cycle of child abuse. One way of doing that would be to alter the structural nature of the economic system to relieve pressure on parents so they don't have to take out their frustration on children. So it seems to me.
> Without trying
> to demonstrate it, I'll just assert that human beings have free will, that
> they operate within social and economic constraints, that sometimes their
> powers of reason are faulty, but in the end, for those in possession of
> basic faculties, THERE IS NO REASON WHY THEY HAVE TO DRAG A MAN UNTIL HIS
> HEAD SEPARATES FROM HIS BODY. Call me sentimental if you like, but those
> dudes (and many others) deserve only One Thing.
You wouldn't be very happy if you were debating someone from the Cato Institute who said "I'll just assert that the U.S. social security will be bankrupt by 2010. I have no need to prove it because my saying so makes it so."
Look out! The one big union is coming!
Sam Pawlett