Want to go to prison, survivor not interested

sprock wrote: I will never have the self-respect than I would have had I not done something so horrible and that is something I am learning to respect. I am glad I am less likely to act like an entitled, male jerk now than 6 years back. I am really thankful that I came to understand how screwed up my actions were.

We all have regrets. Some of us chose to face them by drowning ourselves in alcohol, or trying to ignore it. In your case, you have turned your regret into something positive. There is no reason to feel bad about doing something good in the world, despite whatever you have done in the past.

As for Hell... I don't much believe in it either, but the doubt still gets to me sometimes. To be honest, the idea that people would want me to suffer infinitely for infinity is very scary. But I understand the desire and belief.

Those people are pretty deranged, maybe even as deranged as male chauvinists are. I think there is a sadism that is sort of dormant in us to varying degrees, and most of us suppress it. When we get an opportunity to be sadistic in a socially acceptable way, many will jump at the opportunity. I think this is the function of the criminal in modern society. They have violated the law, therefor we all can establish an outlet for our own suppressed desires by inflicting torment on them.

Check out the Stanford Prison Experiment. I would argue that it isn't only relevant to being a prison guard. Society itself is the sadistic cop in the experiment.

As for anarchism, have you read Ursula Le Guin's novel The Dispossessed?

I haven't, and unfortunately I have a reading list that is literally over 100 books long.

If you want to talk about anarchism, feel free to PM me sometime.

Sure thing

You seem very well-read and it might actually be useful for me to talk Foucault at some point... I started with The Order of Things, which, if I'm honest, I found very heavy going and did not read all of, but I wonder if I would have had better luck with Discipline and Punish or The History of Sexuality.

sprock wrote:Sure thing

You seem very well-read and it might actually be useful for me to talk Foucault at some point... I started with The Order of Things, which, if I'm honest, I found very heavy going and did not read all of, but I wonder if I would have had better luck with Discipline and Punish or The History of Sexuality.

I haven't read all of the Order of Things either. I have read both D&P and History of Sexuality V1 several times. Both would be good starting points for Foucault. Also, Foucault's lectures are published. They offer more insight into Foucault's projects, and are one of the best ways to learn about his thought.

Thanks! I'll investigate

-- Sun Sep 28, 2014 12:40 pm --

One thing that I've learnt (or rather, only now whatsoever appreciate) is how absolutely amazing survivors are... their resistance is mind-boggling. Like, if I as a perpetrator, find it really hard to get through the day and resist the desire to hurt myself... then how on earth does a survivor manage it?! For anyone reading this who is a survivor and has never perpetrated any abuse, I hope Heaven exists because while I am deathly scared of the possibility of going to Hell, I genuinely want you to receive the peace and happiness that you deserve. I want to think that there is a better place where people who have been abused will go to and where heroes like bell hooks and Maya Angelou will end up. Maybe it's because I've just come back from Quaker meeting and am feeling really over-whelmed by how beautiful some human beings are. I do hope (despite my fear) that these people (maybe including you, person reading this!) will inherit the earth. I guess we will all see!

On the subject of heaven/hell/afterlife, I've come across four main views...

1) Religious view #1: All who do not accept a particular god/saviour will go to hell. If this is the case, people like Gandhi, John Lennon and that gentle, kind, loving yet non-believing man who lives across the road from you, are in hell. No amount of good deeds will save you if you reject god.

2) Religious view #2: God is all loving and forgiving and all will be given the chance to be saved or saved outright out of this infinite love.

3) The spiritualist view (reflected in most reported near death experiences): All will return to source (the "universal consciousness"). No evil one can do on earth can separate you from your true source.

4) The materialist view: You simply cease to exist, consciously as well as physically.

#1 sounds like emotional entrapment - "accept our god (blindly, against all the evidence) or you will be punished".

#2 seems to be the most plausible outcome in the presence of an all loving, all powerful god. How could one be at peace in heaven if someone they care about is suffering in hell? Plus, if god is all knowing, s/he/it will know the butterfly effect of all your good and bad deeds, whereas we humans cannot possibly.

#3 seems to be the most plausible outcome if consciousness is the fundamental source of all existence. We won't die or be judged, since judgement is a human concept, we will just exist in a different conscious form.

#4 seems to be the most plausible outcome period, based on the evidence we have.

Rest easy, young Sprock!

-- Sun Sep 28, 2014 7:45 pm --

Ressentiment wrote:I think there is a sadism that is sort of dormant in us to varying degrees, and most of us suppress it. When we get an opportunity to be sadistic in a socially acceptable way, many will jump at the opportunity. I think this is the function of the criminal in modern society. They have violated the law, therefor we all can establish an outlet for our own suppressed desires by inflicting torment on them.

Nail on the head. The pleasure one experiences in releasing such impulses could easily be measured (not sure if any studies have looked at this). We've all felt it at some point.

Compassion for even the worst criminals is not about condoning the crime. It's about taking what we know from fields such as behavioural biology/psychology and neuroscience and accepting that our impulse control is determined not by free will, but by countless conditioning variables that exist beyond the conscious mind.

Add to this the evidence that the least recidivistic criminal systems are those in which restorative and rehabilitative justice are emphasised.

But evidence and rational thought tend to get outshouted by emotion.

To be honest, I think you're probably right about the afterlife... in the past I would have swayed towards #4, but I'm starting to have a greater understand of #3... consciousness really is a weird chink in the loop... the circle that exceeds itself. It does not seem impossible to me that consciousness could exist in a more holistic, collective form, since the brain itself is already a network. Also, experientially, meditation does seem to partake of something more (or less) than the individual self. I don't know. I certainly don't believe in an individual Christian God in the sense of a singular being with a distinct personality who thinks like a man and created everything... but the idea of God as 'the collective' or 'that which infuses and binds all things' makes some sense to me

I must admit to having felt like I just want to end it all recently... though spending time with my younger sister makes it very hard not to dwell on the suffering which my death would cause her. I feel like my death *shouldn't* cause suffering... I have read a lot of stuff about how if you discover that a friend or family member is a rapist or abuser, the only moral thing to do is to cut them completely out of your life. Such individuals should be deprived of the oxygen of support since the fact that people love them "in spite" of their behaviour is a form of abuse apologism / enabling. As such, I often feel like I don't want my family or friends to talk to me or spend time with me or even like me. I am in the weird situation though that most (if not all) of them don't see me as a 'child rapist' even though I have clearly described to them my behaviour as above, many times. I don't know if this is because they seem me as 'nice' and 'good' and so their cognitive dissonance does not allow them to imagine me doing something so horrible, or whether they have dodgy ideas around consent themselves, or what.

This is a horrible and bleak fact but it seems like society makes it very easy for someone to abuse and get away with me. Even though I've told hundreds and hundreds of people about what I did, both online and in real life, I have had suffered no material consequences whatsoever. I still live in a house, can afford food, and can read books or watch films when I like. I have not even lost any friends or family members. Some of my friends have taken what I did seriously, but they haven't cut me out of their lives... I guess it's strange because I see people being called monsters or being told to kill themselves etc. etc. online for crimes / sins far less grievous than my own. I don't think I'm particularly charming, I'm not famous, and I have honestly tried to tell people what I did as clearly as possible, rather than hiding it from them, or denying it.

I guess it's just testimony to what privilege in the form of being white and male and able-bodied means... I feel like people certainly can be wholly cut off forever from society for committing sexual offences, but only if they're weird, or obviously creepy, or belong to a minority group. I mean, there are certainly sex offenders who live on the streets and have no friends or family... but I imagine they were often from impoverished background to begin with. People don't spit at Rob Lowe or generally call him a rapist and allow him to make loads of money from being in films, even though he's a child pornographer... but he's also good looking and charming. To be honest, while I think Ghandi and John Lennon achieved good things, the latter was a wife beater and the former was something of a deviant... testing his restraint by having teenage girls lay naked alongside him as he slept. He also (and this is in his autobiography, in the first few pages) beat his wife when they were first married as teenagers.

I don't know. It's all very strange. It's quite surreal living an everyday existence when you feel you have passed the moral event horizon. Like... I'm often very unhappy, but at the same time, I'm hardly suffering... if I think of the visceral punishments that people describe giving to sex offenders, the guilt and anxiety I feel seems pretty damn minor. I mean, I read a story about a sex offender being eaten alive in prison and people didn't think it was punishment enough. Also, it is weird having your parents say that they are 'proud' of you or that you are 'good' or having 'nothing' to feel guilty about... I remind them that I'm a child rapist but they always say 'That's just you being ridiculous' or 'You're not going to talk about that'.

Ergle bergle. It's such a weird existence. Like... I feel as though I'm in bizzaro world. I guess it must be because it's unusual for an abuser, sex offender or rapist to talk openly about what they did unless they do so anonymously, because most people don't want to get caught. I guess it's possible that the universe is punishing me through ensuring that I don't get punished thus increasing my sense of guilt and despair... but that seems unlikely.

I sometimes wonder if my family and friends would just shrug it off if I killed someone - which, is generally considered by society to be a less heinous crime, even while legally it attracts longer sentences. I don't understand people at all.

epiphany55 wrote:On the subject of heaven/hell/afterlife, I've come across four main views...

1) Religious view #1: All who do not accept a particular god/saviour will go to hell. If this is the case, people like Gandhi, John Lennon and that gentle, kind, loving yet non-believing man who lives across the road from you, are in hell. No amount of good deeds will save you if you reject god.

2) Religious view #2: God is all loving and forgiving and all will be given the chance to be saved or saved outright out of this infinite love.

3) The spiritualist view (reflected in most reported near death experiences): All will return to source (the "universal consciousness"). No evil one can do on earth can separate you from your true source.

4) The materialist view: You simply cease to exist, consciously as well as physically.

#1 sounds like emotional entrapment - "accept our god (blindly, against all the evidence) or you will be punished".

#2 seems to be the most plausible outcome in the presence of an all loving, all powerful god. How could one be at peace in heaven if someone they care about is suffering in hell? Plus, if god is all knowing, s/he/it will know the butterfly effect of all your good and bad deeds, whereas we humans cannot possibly.

#3 seems to be the most plausible outcome if consciousness is the fundamental source of all existence. We won't die or be judged, since judgement is a human concept, we will just exist in a different conscious form.

#4 seems to be the most plausible outcome period, based on the evidence we have.

Rest easy, young Sprock!

-- Sun Sep 28, 2014 7:45 pm --

Ressentiment wrote:I think there is a sadism that is sort of dormant in us to varying degrees, and most of us suppress it. When we get an opportunity to be sadistic in a socially acceptable way, many will jump at the opportunity. I think this is the function of the criminal in modern society. They have violated the law, therefor we all can establish an outlet for our own suppressed desires by inflicting torment on them.

Nail on the head. The pleasure one experiences in releasing such impulses could easily be measured (not sure if any studies have looked at this). We've all felt it at some point.

Compassion for even the worst criminals is not about condoning the crime. It's about taking what we know from fields such as behavioural biology/psychology and neuroscience and accepting that our impulse control is determined not by free will, but by countless conditioning variables that exist beyond the conscious mind.

Add to this the evidence that the least recidivistic criminal systems are those in which restorative and rehabilitative justice are emphasised.

But evidence and rational thought tend to get outshouted by emotion.

I wrote a big thing here, but my session timed out so it deleted it.

A summary of what I wrote:

Not to mention most people in prisons in the U.S. are people of color who committed victimless crimes like cocaine possession. In self reported surveys, white and black respondents report comparable rates of drug use. So basically, while the cops are shaking down the black guy with saggy pants and a hoody on one side of the street, a stockbroker with slicked back hair and a leather briefcase waves at the police as he walks by on the other side while he is literally coked up out of his mind.

As for the empirical evidence that supports rehabilitation, I personally use a rights discourse to justify rehabilitation. I would argue for the same thing even if the empirical evidence suggested that punishment was more effective. I just think it is inhumane.

-- Sun Sep 28, 2014 11:37 pm --

sprock wrote:Snip

You can't go into reading Foucault, or most critical theory for that matter, with that sort of absurd analysis. Foucault and Deleuze would both argue, I think, that you aren't even the same person you used to be. In fact, from a scientific perspective, a lot of your physical body isn't even the same, since your cells have died off and regenerated.

If you want to essentialize yourself, then lets think about this logically. You are free to disagree, this isn't empirical, this is just my argument. This also isn't technically a logical argument, I just am going to put together a numbered list that outlines a hypothetical line of argument that assumes that punishment is a correct response to criminality (something I disagree with). Let me know at what point you begin to disagree with this argument.

1. A person can change their "self" over time
2. You have changed your "self" over time
3. You disagree with what your previous "self" did, and would not do it again
4. You believe that punishment is a proper way to approach criminality
5. Only a person who has done something wrong deserves to be punished
6. Since you are not the same person you used to be, you have not done something wrong
7. You obviously do not deserve to be punished, because you are not guilty of a crime

Ressentiment wrote:As for the empirical evidence that supports rehabilitation, I personally use a rights discourse to justify rehabilitation. I would argue for the same thing even if the empirical evidence suggested that punishment was more effective. I just think it is inhumane.

I agree, but if you're presenting your argument to, say, the "hang em flog em" brigade, it's futile to try and appeal on criminal rights grounds. You have to hammer them with a cold, pragmatic argument, even if theirs is purely emotionally driven.

The people we are trying to "win over" will reject any notion of sympathising with criminals. I believe compassion comes from a deeper understanding of the human condition - an understanding most people don't have the time or patience to explore meaningfully. But they do understand objective statements of fact.

Ressentiment wrote:1. A person can change their "self" over time
2. You have changed your "self" over time
3. You disagree with what your previous "self" did, and would not do it again
4. You believe that punishment is a proper way to approach criminality
5. Only a person who has done something wrong deserves to be punished
6. Since you are not the same person you used to be, you have not done something wrong
7. You obviously do not deserve to be punished, because you are not guilty of a crime

You can get to the point where comparing your past self to your current self is like comparing two different people. What's the difference, really?

And then there are people like Sam Harris giving scientific validity to ancient eastern philosophy in that the self is an illusion. Who we think we are doesn't even exist. To say "I did this" and "I did that" is meaningless if we don't actually know who or what this "I" is, let alone where it resides in the brain.

I agree with what both of you are saying. I guess I partly want my friends and family to recognise what I did was really bad, so merely because of a need to be punished, but because it's sad and depressing and just weird to be surrounded by people who would be actively enabling your abusive behaviour if you had not come to the realisation that your behaviour was abusive. But there are only so many times you can respond to being called 'good' to 'nice' with a desperate reminder that you are in fact, a sexual abuser at best, a child rapist at worst. It's weird and not very useful to put so much effort into trying to convince people who like you that you are evil, when they will shut down such conversations as quickly as possible. It's also not polite to reject compassion... the distinction between what the individual survivor, my family and friends say compared to the things I see online are baffling though. I just don't know how to orientate myself. I feel it is morally best and most accurate to self-define as a rapist, with all the implications that implies, but people I know in real life don't really care all that much.

If FeministFashionista (or you, if you are FeministFashionista reading this) feels comfortable offering their thoughts as per the 'crippling guilt' thread, which I do not want to derail, that would be great (although it's absolutely up to you / her) ... I feel like the opinion of women, especially feminists, on what I should do is most important, secondary only to my survivor's opinion, which is that she has no interest in prosecution.

epiphany55 wrote:I agree, but if you're presenting your argument to, say, the "hang em flog em" brigade, it's futile to try and appeal on criminal rights grounds. You have to hammer them with a cold, pragmatic argument, even if theirs is purely emotionally driven.

Hah, I agree.

The people we are trying to "win over" will reject any notion of sympathising with criminals. I believe compassion comes from a deeper understanding of the human condition - an understanding most people don't have the time or patience to explore meaningfully. But they do understand objective statements of fact.

And many people can't actually do either of those things.

And then there are people like Sam Harris giving scientific validity to ancient eastern philosophy in that the self is an illusion. Who we think we are doesn't even exist. To say "I did this" and "I did that" is meaningless if we don't actually know who or what this "I" is, let alone where it resides in the brain.

I personally hold a similar view. I don't know whether our lives have all been predetermined by the big bang, part of me still clings to the quasi-mystical view that we have free will to a certain extent. I definitely do not think that consciousness comes from anywhere other than physical matter. Our self is just a bunch of particles. Our self is made of the same stuff that a rock is made of.

-- Mon Sep 29, 2014 2:05 pm --

sprock wrote:If FeministFashionista (or you, if you are FeministFashionista reading this) feels comfortable offering their thoughts as per the 'crippling guilt' thread, which I do not want to derail, that would be great (although it's absolutely up to you / her) ... I feel like the opinion of women, especially feminists, on what I should do is most important, secondary only to my survivor's opinion, which is that she has no interest in prosecution.

Well first of all, I think identity politics is an enemy of progress. The goal should be to destroy the categories of male and female, man and women. That is my idea of feminism.

Second, you have this obsession to punish someone who doesn't exist anymore. I personally am a completely different person than I was 10 years ago. I would hate that person today, but I consider them a separate person. You can't build a time machine and confront that person, so you need to learn to let it go.