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I know I shouldn't read reddit comments, but I always find it alarming how many people want to throw people in jail immediately for any minor infraction.

josephg 5y ago
Personally I blame children's cartoons (and comic books, superhero movies, and so on). The core tension in those stories centers around a hero and a villain. The hero is always good and the villain is always bad. If the world truly worked that way, it really would make sense to just throw all criminals in jail and leave them to rot in prison forever. If you commit a crime, thats proof you're one of the baddies, so if you ever get out of jail the assumption is you'd just commit more crimes. The Joker is never rehabilitated in prison. People justify this sort of thinking by pointing to psychopaths and mass murderers. But they're a tiny fraction of the felon population. Most people in jail are mostly normal people who have been poorly socialised. (Hence Norway's tiny recidivism rate. Norway's prison system is essentially a complex socialisation program.) I don't think its a coincidence that cancel culture is also missing a notion of repentance. Why would that guy who masturbated in front of some women ever change? Better just burn the evildoers, to cure society of evil. There is much better fiction for young minds. Anime is great at this - there are very few characters in anime who are simply evil. Most of the antagonists are also sympathetic characters, and usually the heroes of their own stories. Eg, Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke. Pixar does great work here too - Inside Out doesn't have an antagonist at all. And Les Miserables recursively makes this the motivation behind its policeman antagonist - "Once a thief / Always a thief. What you want you will always steal". And the moral climax of the movie - when our (criminal) hero has the (policeman) antagonist at his mercy. The policeman wants the criminal to kill him, because even though he would die, he would die vindicated in his beliefs. And instead our hero lets him go.

josephg 5y ago

Personally I blame children's cartoons (and comic books, superhero movies, and so on). The core tension in those stories centers around a hero and a villain. The hero is always good and the villain is always bad. If the world truly worked that way, it really would make sense to just throw all criminals in jail and leave them to rot in prison forever. If you commit a crime, thats proof you're one of the baddies, so if you ever get out of jail the assumption is you'd just commit more crimes. The Joker is never rehabilitated in prison. People justify this sort of thinking by pointing to psychopaths and mass murderers. But they're a tiny fraction of the felon population. Most people in jail are mostly normal people who have been poorly socialised. (Hence Norway's tiny recidivism rate. Norway's prison system is essentially a complex socialisation program.) I don't think its a coincidence that cancel culture is also missing a notion of repentance. Why would that guy who masturbated in front of some women ever change? Better just burn the evildoers, to cure society of evil. There is much better fiction for young minds. Anime is great at this - there are very few characters in anime who are simply evil. Most of the antagonists are also sympathetic characters, and usually the heroes of their own stories. Eg, Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke. Pixar does great work here too - Inside Out doesn't have an antagonist at all. And Les Miserables recursively makes this the motivation behind its policeman antagonist - "Once a thief / Always a thief. What you want you will always steal". And the moral climax of the movie - when our (criminal) hero has the (policeman) antagonist at his mercy. The policeman wants the criminal to kill him, because even though he would die, he would die vindicated in his beliefs. And instead our hero lets him go.