Chuckle-A-Duck
ChuckleADuck is a webcomic that examines atheism, religion, politics, and general silliness from its own unique perspective. Its audience includes atheists, evangelicals, the spiritual, the cynical, young, old, liberals, conservatives and the occasional space alien.
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Hardcore? Yah. Draconian? Yah.
But, it works.
I’ve been called Draconian, but methinks we’re not dealing with transgressors properly…
I like the ant’s point of view.
It works for them. And it’s been working for a few million years.
Precisely. I think an outright ban on ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment is wrongheaded. Execution for a traffic citation is rather much, but punishment – last I checked – MUST be both “cruel” and “unusual” to a certain degree, or it won’t work.
Spanking a kid is often considered “cruel” – but, if it’s “unusual” enough, it’s effective. So, how is it a problem again?
The problem with spanking is that it teaches the child the hurting others is OK. Also it tends to be done in anger, which often means it goes beyond the scope of the crime.
Note I never said it was a perfect solution. But, if done properly, it can be useful.
It really depends on the individual child and the child/parent relationship. And, the parent.
I was abused as a child, so I considered corporal punishment a weapon of last resort. Still, I found ways to make my point. One that really sticks out:
One Hallowe’en, I found out the boys had gone around egging and TP-ing houses. I called them on it, proved that I wasn’t guessing.
We spend the next week going around the neighbourhood picking jobs – homeowner supplies the paint, kids supply the brushes, rollers, and labour.
They spend two months out of that summer, 10AM to sunset, painting houses.
Another? I got tired of them wearing their Rollerblades in the house, couldn’t be arsed taking them off to come in and get something to munch on or get a drink. I was cleaning the marks off of the floor once a week.
You’d think they’d have noticed when I let them build up for a month…
One Saturday, an hour before they had to leave for a hocky game (they were still young enough that they had to be driven,) I pulled them aside and handed them each:
- One can of neutral shoe polish.
- One cotton web belt end
- One soft buffing cloth.
Demonstrated the technique on a small section of black wheel mark, then told them they had an hour. I don’t care how you split the job, as long as it’s half-and-half. You BOTH work on this. You BOTH get it done. Or you BOTH miss your game, because you’re not going anywhere until this floor is CLEAN. Don’t ask your mum, she’s on board with this. I can do the ENTIRE floor BY MYSELF in forty minutes. Go.
Starting that night, they’d take off their skates at the door. Hell, they’d make their buddies take their skates off at the door, because they figured (correctly, as it happens) that they’d be responsible for the floor getting marked up by their buddies as well.
They lost time, they got tired, they learned to do things. Cruel? Perhaps. Unusual? I didn’t normally work them like rented mules, even though they were expected to help. Punishment? Certainly – that was the idea.
And the desired effect was had.
Children must learn that their actions and choices all have consequences. Good or bad. Good choice equals good result. Bad choice results in unpleasant consequence. Thus they learn self control and good judgement. This is assuming that the rules are explained before hand and spanking is not done in anger and excessive. Spanking is done as a teaching tool and for their benefit and not as an outlet for frustration. One assumes that the person doing the training actually loves the child and not some villian.
Black and Red ants hate each other and go to war for the simple reason of the others color. Not veryt sophisticated after all.
And how exactly does that make them less sophisticated than us?
Maybe it doesn’t, but it also means they’re probably not the best of role models.
Actually, they do it because of smell (pheremones). Not to be a pedant, but maybe there’s a lesson there. Smell, after all, tells where you’ve been and whose food you’ve been stealing!
It’s not simply a judgement by color, it goes way beyond that. It’s a judgement by colony…Any ant from a different colony is attacked because it’s seen as an invader. Humans are guilty of the same behavior, by the way…
My point was to the guy saying they have the most sophisticated society on the planet. My statement points to the fact thaty are no different than us, ergo, we have the most sophisticated society on the planet.
It has been said that the punishment should fit the crime.
This means that JKelley has it right, if you egg or TP houses then you should clean up the mess, if you make a mess (with roller blades or other wise) then you should clean it up.
By this logic if you kill someone (outside of ‘as part of your job in law enforcement’) then you should be put to death.
What about sex offenders? Does this mean that if we catch a rapist we should castrate them? That may seem a little extreme at first, but it would most likely solve the problem.
Actually, by this logic a murderer should not be put to death, but work for the rest of the victims expected lifespan to make up for the loss of the bereaved.
“What about sex offenders? Does this mean that if we catch a rapist we should castrate them?”
Yes.
Well, currently they get sent to prison where they are usually sodomized, so that wouldn’t be much worse by comparison (the castration, I mean).
Whoops. Apart from where it doesn’t work.
And there’s that whole inconvenient civilized nation thing in which they have lower crime rates and less people in prison despite not killing people.
Oh, and all those innocent people that end up on death row.
Or the amount of money it takes to execute someone effectively being more than life in prison.
But yeah guys, it totally works.
You know…if we use a simplified, fallacious understanding of the death penalty and apply it to an analogy with ants, even if that analogy doesn’t apply to ants.
Yeah, totally works apart from all those things.