> But what do we do? […] We do not merely do nothing to get rid of the conditions in which such people are born – we actually encourage the institutions which produce them. We all know what these institutions are: the mills, the factories, the workshops, the inns, the pot-houses, the brothels. And far from wiping out establishments of this sort – considering them necessary, we encourage and regulate them.
Would the world really have less crime if we didn't have factories and inns? Agrarianism is so alien to modern life I can hardly imagine it being a dominant philosophy.
My understanding of the US prisons was that many people with mental issues end up there instead of proper mental health care [1].
I can imagine that people with mental issues are also more likely to end up in inns and brothels. These people remain problematic after closing those locations. Even more so with factories as you already pointed out.
What mental issue specifically? Example, Childhood mental trauma caused psychological issues that made the convict a violent criminal,would that be better dealt with by a psychiatrist than prison? Probably,but the purpose of prison isn't correction. Correction is a desired end goal,but regardless of correction,prison is punishment for a person that broke the rules defined by society. The line is drawn somewhat clearly: if you are able to understand the ruled and apply reason to your decisions,you are held responsible for the consequence.
IMO, free psychotherapy in prisons and getting rid of private prisons is a good idea. There is too much of "this is how we've always done it".
I am also more concerned about the 90something% of cases that end up in a conviction due to plea bargaining. No due process. Tons of possibly innocent people admit guilt to avoid having their day in court. Risk getting a false conviction and serve 10yrs or plea bargain and get just a year,what poor person would take that risk if you can't afford a good lawyer?
We had a case once where a guy kept breaking into a local business. Didn't take anything, just broke the door or a window and picked things up and moved them around a bit then left. Did it repeatedly despite a series of warnings and discussions.
Guy was not malicious, just not mentally healthy. Doing nothing meant the business would continue to get harassed.
Judge and prosecutor and defense attorney had a long conference about how none of the options available were any good.
In US constitution, the 13th amendment leaves out only prisoners from salvery clause. It was bit shocking because US constitution essentially says that government can use prisoners jus like slaves!
I feel our current system of punishments and prisoners is very barberic. In my experience, people change dramatically in beliefs and who the are every 7-10 years. So having a prison term longer than that is essentially same as transferring sentence to quite different person. Also things like solitary confinements are beyond bewildering. I hope future prisons are essentially closed large spaces where prisoners make their own sustainable living. Prison shouldn’t be about enslaving a person but rather isolating him/her from society for safety of others all the while retraining them to be part of society again after no more than 7-10 years.
What's so barbaric about insisting that rebels to the social contract learn how to work? Or demanding, even at metaphorical or literal gunpoint, that they work to support themselves, just as the rest of society must?
Now, I would like to say that this comment only applies to serious crimes. Murder, violence, kidnapping, theft. People who have proven that they cannot currently function in normal company. Labor and honest sweat can serve a great role in teaching a man the value and positive power of his hands, even if they were once bloody. In fact, you admit almost as much in the phrase "make their own sustainable living".
That said, the current system strays a little far from that script, for two reasons: overcriminalization and unregulated for-profit prisons. I have no problem with forcing a serious criminal to work, or work profitably, but a hard-working blue collar guy who was caught with drugs doesn't deserve to be forced through the same program that's designed to rehabilitate thieves! At the same time, the work they endure should be no more extraordinary, or less regulated, than what a person on the outside must do. The fruits of their labor should be mainly culled to offset the cost of their incarceration, just as most of our pay is taken by the bank and the landlord, but the wages should be fair, and saving some money should be allowed. The only option that should be denied them is laziness.
> In US constitution, the 13th amendment leaves out only prisoners from slavery clause. It was bit shocking because US constitution essentially says that government can use prisoners just like slaves!
It’s definitely a shocking feature of the constitution. I’ve been wondering lately if it really can be (or has been) used to justify things like forced labor benefiting a for-profit corporation at below the legal minimum wage. The text says “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime...”. Couldn’t one argue that being in prison is the punishment - but working in a corporate sweatshop is additional servitude used not as punishment but as abuse of people already being punished?
Well, it's antiquated. Back in the day the basics were expensive, so just keeping someone alive who wasn't working to pull his weight was basically unthinkable. If you fed people for nothing, back then, people would commit crimes just for the sake of being imprisoned.
But now that food is way cheaper, and so is clothing and shelter (not the real estate and finance component--just the construction), I think the rationale is out of date.
This is a weird fixation we have in the modern world. Is anyone really thinking that by knowing the plot of a 120-year-old novel their experience of that novel could totally be ruined?
I don't see why the age of the novel factors in. Reading is a subjective experience with a variety of modes and conditions, so if for example the subject is working their way through old novels as a hobby then yes, I really can see why it'd be just as annoying to have the 120 year old plot spoiled as it would be for a brand new movie.
Still, I think "spoiler alert" is a lot better in cases like these than "no spoilers." It gives freedom of choice to the reader.
One should never read literature for it's plot. Learning the plot of a literature book should have no affect in its enjoyment. This is similar to enjoying a painting for it's plot: "oh so a man is looking up, it's night time, there are a lot of stars, a large tree covering left side of the canvas, the man has some sort vision problem and stars look really huge and yellow. Then there is moon, shining yellow. Below the sky one can see a small city blending with the dusk of the night." Is this an equivalent experience?
Says who? What if I want to read literature for the plot? What if the excitement of what's going to happen is what I care about, and the characters are just a side thing?
What if some days I want to read for plot, other days I want world building, other days I want character development?
> Learning the plot of a literature book should have no affect in its enjoyment.
And if it does affect it? Should we tell people not to read that book?
As an avid reader, I don't think plot is unimportant in the enjoyment of books.
In fact, foreknowledge of plot and detail color your experience of reading the book such that successive rereads each have a different character in many cases.
Imagine the first time you read a book like The Time Traveler's Wife, Life of Pi, Never Let Me Go, A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo, or The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Now, imagine the second time reading through any of those books; the experience will be greatly changed by the knowledge and anticipation of what you know is coming.
Some people may not think that change in experience is important, but some definitely will. I don't think there's any reason to look down on either group, nor to look down on people who chose to respect the latter.
I'm going to leave this Nabokov quote here for the benefit of others:
"Incidentally, I use the word reader very loosely. Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is—a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)—a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book."
A painting is not an equivalent experience. BTW. you could enjoy a picture or painting because it captured an interesting moment despite it's lack of other redeeming qualities. BTW analogies as arguments, would you enjoy a puzzle fully if you know an answer?
Pretty sure the 'No Spoilers' is a joke, sort of how people would joke about how they are ruining the titanic... "The ship sinks"
I mean, just like how we all know, in broad strokes, the story of the titanic, most of us have some idea of the plot to some works of classic literature that we haven't read.
Many people think that we are in a totally unprecendented time in history. So you "don't get to" use history to criticize their great and unique ideas ... that ... mostly are not entirely unprecedented or original.
Just like they did in the 60s ... and the 20s ... and during the French revolution ... and 100 times before and in between those ... Now don't get me wrong, there is something new everytime. Like pictures in the 20s. Recorded music in the 60 (the drugs, I'm afraid, date back longer than recorded history. Sure. Not the exact same drugs. The abuse of them, and the scale of the abuse). But especially don't compare today with the French revolutionaries, because someone might look up what the revolutionaries did once they got what they wanted (as if that's any guarantee the evolution now will be the same, but it is a possibility).
But No ! You keep hearing it's different this time. But we have Google now ! And it's the "first" time ever we see the evil of the church/faith. And we're finally going to eliminate racism, that's the first time ever.
Many people actually believe that such things are new, but ...
Nope, the Roman Republic did that (with about as mixed a success as we did. In some places, they succeeded. Elsewhere ...), and very likely ancient Egypt was a mixed white/black society at least for a period, as was Rome. Which meant the fight for equality is probably older than the concept of a building with first floor, as that didn't exist in the early Egypt. In other words: everything about humans, especially how society is organised, things like families, faith, law, state organisation, is not just old, it's very very very very old. Most of it probably older than the pyramids.
Spoiler culture is unprecedented in history. The idea of spoilers was invented by Hitchcock in the 1960s to sell more tickets for his movies. "Don't give away the ending!"
Yes. I recently read “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and I’m sure that my enjoyment of it was significantly reduced by the central mystery’s resolution having inundated popular culture my entire life.
Yes and no. I haven't read Tolstoy yet, and it's on my bucket list to do so. Ideally I'd like to go into that without any major spoilers.
But at the same time, if a book has stood the test of time of 120-years... the spoiler probably would only very slightly diminish my enjoyment of it. For example, even knowing the plot of the Sherlock Holmes stories and William Poe's mystery poems, I still get enjoyment from re-reading them, in a way that I don't from Dan Brown, for example.
More importantly, the overall story is secondary to the intricate written interpretation, reasoning and connected themes that make the plot meaningful at all. That's integral to Tolstoy, as an author.
Would the world really have less crime if we didn't have factories and inns? Agrarianism is so alien to modern life I can hardly imagine it being a dominant philosophy.