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> Rejecting the idea of "genuinely bad guys" leads to the conclusion that they should be punished The idea of individual punishment also was emphasized in Zoro
by techiferous 16y ago
> Rejecting the idea of "genuinely bad guys" leads to the conclusion that they should be punished
The idea of individual punishment also was emphasized in Zoroastrianism and spread its way into the global human psyche. Punishment is a very natural tool for us but it's clumsy. I would elaborate more but it takes a lot of words to explain a different paradigm and uncover hidden assumptions.
I'm not saying you're wrong; I just want to note that thinking in terms of punishment is not the only way to think.
- dkarl 16y agoPerhaps the idea that punishment should always be individual, never collective, started with Zoroastrianism (I haven't a clue) but individual punishment predates it by a wee bit. For example (got this all from Wikipedia; you can verify it there), the Code Of Hammurabi predates Zoroastrianism by hundreds of years. Wikipedia lists seventeen examples from the code; each example describes an individual punishment based on individual responsibility for an infraction. (Since I can't stop surfing Wikipedia now,) the Code of Ur-Nammu, "the oldest known tablet containing a law code surviving today," also prescribes individual punishments for individual infractions. It dates from the third millenium BCE, predating Zoroastrianism by over one thousand years.
- techiferous 16y agoThanks, that's an important distinction. The punishment idea already existed; Zoroastrianism simply emphasized individual responsibility (and therefore punishment). Thanks for the correction.
- Psyonic 16y agoIf you don't want to expand on that, can you point us towards more information elsewhere? I'm interested in this other paradigm.