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Post by Umbra on Jun 5, 2012 0:17:48 GMT -5
I chose Little John, Maid Marion, Robin Hood, Sheriff. This is what I chose. My biggest issue with the Sheriff was the imprisonment of Robin and Little John. Loss of freedom in this way is a big moral issue for me.
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Post by Hiro the Half-Elf on Jun 6, 2012 22:53:08 GMT -5
What's wrong with the imprisonment of Robin and Little John? The text provides no information on the conditions of their arrest, thus we cannot use it as a determining factor in our arguments.
Do you mean to say that the concept of imprisoning someone, regardless of legal justification, is immoral? And moreso than betrayal and domestic violence, at that.
You tryin' to put me out of a job, man?
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jun 6, 2012 23:39:59 GMT -5
I know people who would probably argue that imprisoning people for crimes is wrong... can't agree with them (in fact, I'd vehemently and angrily argue with them), but it's still an interesting concept to think about.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2012 14:27:53 GMT -5
I showed this to my brother & he said that none of the characters had any kind of morals!
the Sheriff for improsining people. Marion for selling her self. Robbin for being a jerk & John for using the whole thing for his own ends.
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Post by supersonic1453 on Jun 7, 2012 17:55:34 GMT -5
That's the point though. It's a test to see what people's morals and ethics are, and what they see in people.
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Post by Umbra on Jun 7, 2012 20:49:04 GMT -5
Do you mean to say that the concept of imprisoning someone, regardless of legal justification, is immoral? And moreso than betrayal and domestic violence, at that. I must have overlooked the betrayal/domestic violence part when I said imprisonment was the biggest issue. Domestic violence and betrayal are bigger issues, but imprisonment remains an issue for me. As for imprisonment itself, I think it has a degree of inherent immorality in it--loss of freedom. This is not to say that a crime someone performs is the right thing to do, but that, from a sociological perspective, a crime itself isn't cut-and-clear someone's fault. If a society produces a criminal, what should you focus on correcting--the society or the criminal? If you imprison one criminal (or give them a death sentence even), what difference does it make in a society that keeps producing more criminals? They won't learn their lesson and someone else will just repeat the same crime. Criminals don't choose to be criminals by nature. Society shapes them the way they are--it is the core of the problem and is the one that needs correcting. My belief that imprisonment has some immorality in it, however, doesn't change the fact that it is the only means of maintaining order in this socioeconomic system and that, if we choose to keep the system intact, it is the only thing we can use.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Jun 8, 2012 0:25:06 GMT -5
Hah, well, there's a "certain inherent immorality" in imprisoning people? Isn't there a greater "certain inherent immorality" in murdering people or stealing their things? I think everyone has a right to freedom--to a point. The moment you infringe upon someone else's freedom, yours ends. In the case of extreme crime, like murder or rape, the moment you choose to do that act, you've given up your right to freedom. Why should it be fair for you to keep your freedom when you've just ruined someone else's right to freedom from early death or not being raped? What should you propose be done with criminals if we don't imprison them? I agree that rehabilitation, in many cases, is the best option. If you don't teach criminals new ways of coping and living life in a safe, legal way, they're just going to go out and reoffended again. But there are many criminals who are simply incorrigible; you can't help them, and you're just wasting your time and money trying to do anything other than locking them up. Should those people just go free because they can't benefit from rehabilitation?
If you want an extreme example, take Charles Manson. He was in trouble with the law by the time he was nine and spent most of his adolescence in reform school. It didn't help, and he was in and out of jail for most of his twenties. One judge let him out early from a jail sentence, and you know the rest of the story about what good ole Charlie did after that. Even today, Charles Manson sees nothing wrong with what he did. Is it really so bad that society is violating his right to live freely by keeping him in life imprisonment? I don't think so one bit. Society did try with him as a child in reform school, but it didn't help. The guy is just a flat-out psycho.
You make it sound as if criminals have no choice in committing criminal acts. I don't disagree that society has a profound impact on the way we live our lives (see for reference the distinction between psychopathy and sociopathy), but we're certainly not fated to any particular path in life, and we need to take responsibility for that. Society influences whether we'll murder or steal, but at the end of the day, criminals chose to perform those actions. No one is making them steal, and no one is making them murder. There are plenty of people who grow up in abusive homes, in poor neighborhoods, are exposed to crime, whatever have you, and don't commit crimes themselves because, for whatever reason, they choose not to.
What sort of solutions would your economic system provide, anyway? I can't see any economic system resolving the issue of crime, no matter how imperfect. Even in the most ideal, utopian of societies, there will be crime because, all things being environmentally equally (good homes, good education, good whatever), some people are just born bad. For whatever reason, they're born without a conscience, and, despite heavy psychological intervention, will never feel a sense of guilt, shame, conscience, morals, or anything. There's just something miswired in the brain. Jeffrey Dahmer is an example; by all accounts, the worst thing going on in his life was that his parents went through a nasty divorce. He wasn't abused, his parents loved him, and he grew up in a middle-class household. For whatever reason, he decided to kill and eat people. Who knows why. Those people will be committing crimes in your perfect society, and a perfect society still won't know what to do with them other than to lock them up.
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Post by Hiro the Half-Elf on Jun 8, 2012 0:37:53 GMT -5
There is no such thing as a socioeconomic system that will not entail a criminal element. Your idea of a magical upheaval of societal order that could fix all of our problems is nothing more than mere fantasy.
"...from a sociological perspective..." Do you want to know what the problem with this is? Sociology doesn't give a rat's ass about the individual, so naturally no individual will be at fault from a "sociological perspective." Yes, people are driven to criminal lifestyles most frequently from a combination of societal and individual stresses, however, ultimately the crime is committed because the individual chose to do so. "Society made me do it" is neither a legal nor a moral defense. I could be a poor, starving minority struggling to pay rent, but that in no way means I am going to be robbing a bank to make ends meet unless I choose to break the social contract for my own needs.
A crime is, by definition (and yes, before someone tries to argue this, this is how our laws are defined), a willful and conscious violation of the social contract. Why should a person who has demonstrated that they do not value the rules of society be entitled to their full freedom? Why is it immoral to temporarily detain such a person? Yes, there are a bevy of circumstances that drove them to do it, we've all heard it before. But in the end, only one person pulled the trigger. Crimes don't happen, they're committed.
Yes, I am all for societal change that will lower the stress society places on underprivileged individuals that turns them to criminal lifestyles, but no matter how much you do to fix society, there will always remain an underprivileged section. Moreover, the people who commit crimes are themselves a part of society. Thus, change on the societal level is something much, much harder than a bunch of suits signing bills- you have to change the way people think. You have to get people, the people who are at risk for- and already-committing crimes, to change the way they view society, the way they view law-enforcement, the way they solve problems, the company they keep. You have to break down the communal nature of crime. You have to change the way law enforcement officers treat criminals. The problem is, you cannot enact this change within one, or two generations' time. It has to be an ongoing process, and this takes a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot more mental energy on everyone's part than you seem to be factoring in. And it will never "be complete." The task of rehabilitating the criminal sect is unfortunately sisyphean. Yes, we should still try, it's vital that we try, but you're just fooling yourself if you think things will be "fixed."
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Post by Umbra on Jun 9, 2012 14:48:30 GMT -5
I'll state what I said again: imprisonment is the only way to deal with criminals in this society. I'm not saying we should just let psychopaths and sociopaths run free (We can't in this society. And it would be less moral to do so when they can harm other people). But, for example, to me life in prison and death penalty are somewhat related--you're taking away freedom anyway, and if you're in prison for life, why not just be dead? Except that when the prison system is full of people who could have avoided going to prison in the first place, that in turn, has an effect on the rest of society. (And prison systems are really a mess.)
But I think that if we progressively work toward reshaping the values of people in the process of introducing a resource-based economy, we can get rid of much of the crime that is a product of this socioeconomic system--everything from bank robberies caused by income disparity to gang-related killing. I'll refute the idea that it would be a utopia, but it would be a lot better than what we have now.
Call me an optimist, but I think that a resource-based economy can work and would be a lot better than the system we have now.
Now I'm not about to type an essay on the topic as I've already presented many ideas of an RBE in the past, but before you refute the idea in its entirety, I would suggest learning more about what it is.
The one point you made before on the topic was how do you deal with the people who commit crimes because of their nature--or because that's how they've always been (because of their genetics)? It's debated that genetics have a definite influence on the crimes one commits, and I haven't seen good enough evidence to prove that they do, in which case, it is the nurture of someone that drives people to commit crimes. And in dealing with this, if we flip over the values of people in nurturing them, we can reduce a great amount of crime.
If people, however, are born criminals and that's who they are, can we not work to discovery some scientific miracle to be able to rewire someone's brain? Granted, the brain is one of the most complex things known to us, but scientific discoveries are improving, and given research is put into it, it could yield success.
I could ask, then, what makes a capitalist society like this better than the alternative of an RBE?
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Post by Hiro the Half-Elf on Jun 9, 2012 18:32:38 GMT -5
A resource-based economy will still have socioeconomic inequality and thus crime born from differences in standard of living. You're a fool if you think otherwise.
There is no civilization possible where there will not be people born with disadvantages.
Even if goods and services are free, people will still exist in situations where they will not have access to them. There is a lot more to poverty than just the rent being too damn high.
As for what makes capitalism preferable to your RBE? Well, in the ideal, nothing, because the RBE ideal is absolutely flawless and wonderful. However, it exists only as an ideal. It's not tenable in reality. Capitalism, on the other hand, for all its faults, has worked and is working today. Yes, there's a lot of bad to be said about our society, but we're all quite well-fed, even the homeless, and our average standard of living is quite high, even under the poverty line. It's hardly a failing civilization burning itself to the ground.
It's a matter of realism. We must fix what works such that it works better. We cannot toss it out in favor of an untested and unwieldy ideal.
Also, you keep saying "this society" as if your RBE will have completely different plans for the care and containment of criminals. What shall you do with your murderers and frauds that is honestly and truly different from what we do now?
Also, it is completely unrealistic and absurd to put all of your hope into solving the problem of murder into speculative medicine. It would certainly make my life easier (and put me out of a job!) if we just cut out all the murder circuits in everyone's brains [edit: oh, uh, I should probably have finished typing this sentence, whoops!]
And furthermore, say we stumble upon this miracle science to rewire brains. Who is going to decide what is the proper point to administer mandatory brain rewiring? I'm no fan of slippery slope fallacies, but this science you're proposing is treading too close for my comfort. I should think that literally brainwashing criminals is far more morally unsavory than locking them up until they decide they want to rejoin society in a meaningful capacity. After all, weren't you the one saying that removing freedoms is immoral? Isn't the rewiring of the brain the most complete removal of freedom you can impose upon a person, on par with outright killing them? Personally, if I were a madman, I'd rather die at the hands of the firing squad than at the hands of a brain surgeon.
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Post by Umbra on Jun 9, 2012 23:09:58 GMT -5
You both make strong arguments against my case. I don't feel I can give an educated and thoughtful rebuttal to your points.
Furthermore, there is no point in advocating for an RBE further if I can't, myself, argue against your cases.
My case is full of fallacies and moral contradictions. It was foolish of me to state my mixed-up morals on this thread and defend them unsoundly.
I need to reconsider my morals and my outlook on things, and work on giving less intellectually weak arguments before posting here.
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