I'd like to take a moment to explore a couple simple, hypothetical situations.
A young boy's life is taken from him due to the actions of a murderer, and the manner of his death was particularly cruel. He was subdued on the outskirts of the town in which he lived, dragged some distance into a forest, and was then stabbed dozens of times while he was fully conscious, until (and for some time after) his eventual death. In this case, the teenager (substantially older than our aforementioned boy) who carried out the murder is found and brought to trial.
Eventually our killer is convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, however at the sentencing, the murderer is given a chance to speak to the boy's family. He proceeds to claim that his attack on the boy was inspired by pure rage, yet it wasn't focused on his victim in particular, but that he simply lost all control and stopped caring about the consequences of his actions, both in regards to himself and others. He also claims that prior to him carrying out the murder, he had been contemplating suicide, which is what eventually led him to wander out of his house with a pocket knife in the first place.
Afterwards, during the time in which the family of the boy is allowed to speak to the killer, the courtroom looks upon the boy's father. The father states, in no uncertain terms, that he doesn't believe the killer's explanation, and feels no sympathy for him regardless. He goes on to say that, given knowledge of his violent murder of a young boy, other inmates will likely make great efforts to torture, rape, and potentially murder his son's killer, and that he takes great comfort in this.
Lets say that for the sake of this hypothetical, we can know with certainty that both the murderer and the father are being entirely genuine.
I'll give you another one.
In this case there is a man, probably in a similar situation to many of us here. He was unattractive all throughout his life, and suffered all of the problems associated with this. He grew up without a father, his mother made no effort to teach him how to be an adult, or really teach him anything useful whatsoever, and perhaps treated him in a similar manner to a pet. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, he was continuously bullied and ostracized by his supposed peers at a government school. The teachers did nothing to stop this, and often resorted to essentially punishing him for being bullied, presumably because it was easier.
After high school, he went on to university, but his efforts to find acceptance and intimacy were still in vain. By this point he was more or less emotionally destroyed from a decade of bullying and rejection, and he no longer had the capacity to continue his education, so he dropped out. A few years later he was no better off, a man without a decent job, with no experience of sex or romance in his life, and with no real hope for the future. He absolutely hated society for what he had experienced, and decided that he would take revenge upon society to gain at least some measure of cathartic satisfaction.
He then procured a firearm, went to his local shopping mall, and proceeded shoot people at random until his inevitable suicide.
So I ask, would you declare either of these scenarios to be an example of justice being served?
Lets go back to the first hypothetical. While it's certainly simplified, the point I'm trying to make here is that carrying out the punishment of criminals for it's own sake is no better than any other sadistic assault on another human, it's only differentiated through legality, and through the concepts of laws or rules. You can extrapolate this logic to all that encompasses punitive justice. The problem is of course, how exactly are you justified in your application of suffering upon another if human action is merely the product of behavioral conditioning? How can you inflict suffering upon someone for breaking an established rule if people have no real control of their own in regards to whether or not they follow it?
I mean according to literally all of the evidence, this is most likely the exact nature of the situation, meanwhile the only possible defense of free will would be some mystical, undefinable, and unproven intuition. At the very least, we can say with certainty that the universe around us is deterministic, and that people are heavily influenced by their environment. So then, given all of this, since the killer has been shown to be dangerous and emotionally unstable, wouldn't the appropriate action be to execute him as quickly and painlessly as possible, as to prevent him from harming others, and prevent him from going through pointless torture which produces nothing?
What I'm saying is that I don't see any difference between the sentiment of the boy's father, and that of the killer himself. Both reacted emotionally and took their anger out on someone else in an unproductive way, it's just that the father's manner of revenge is tolerated by the judicial system, while the killer's is prosecuted.
Much of the same also applies to the latter hypothetical. While it's true that our khhv incel had been treated unfairly throughout his life, people have no true control in how they respond to others, and his romantic failings can be entirely attributed to genetic determinism. So then, how is it reasonable to inflict suffering in death upon people who in all likelihood never directly wronged him, and even if they did, were only responding to him in a manner determined by their nature? Clearly this is only one last attempt at satisfying himself, and accomplishes nothing more than inflicting more misery.
Ultimately there isn't much of a divide between the murderer, the grieving father, the ethical foundation of the judicial system, and the incel who went ER. All of them are a fine example human cruelty, it's just that some are a bit more honest and upfront about it than others.
TL;DR: All forms of punishment, for the sake of retribution alone, are only carried out to satisfy someone's sadism, upon whom they believe responsibly rests. There is no fundamental difference between a person being overcome by an outburst of rage, an individual carrying out an attack upon their society in a final act of revenge, and a judge/jury condemning one of the two former examples to decades of imprisonment for the sake of punishment alone. Each one is an emotional, unemphatic, and illogical response to a difficult situation, and none of them accomplish anything worthwhile. The only difference is that one is endorsed by a society or government, while the others are not.
A young boy's life is taken from him due to the actions of a murderer, and the manner of his death was particularly cruel. He was subdued on the outskirts of the town in which he lived, dragged some distance into a forest, and was then stabbed dozens of times while he was fully conscious, until (and for some time after) his eventual death. In this case, the teenager (substantially older than our aforementioned boy) who carried out the murder is found and brought to trial.
Eventually our killer is convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, however at the sentencing, the murderer is given a chance to speak to the boy's family. He proceeds to claim that his attack on the boy was inspired by pure rage, yet it wasn't focused on his victim in particular, but that he simply lost all control and stopped caring about the consequences of his actions, both in regards to himself and others. He also claims that prior to him carrying out the murder, he had been contemplating suicide, which is what eventually led him to wander out of his house with a pocket knife in the first place.
Afterwards, during the time in which the family of the boy is allowed to speak to the killer, the courtroom looks upon the boy's father. The father states, in no uncertain terms, that he doesn't believe the killer's explanation, and feels no sympathy for him regardless. He goes on to say that, given knowledge of his violent murder of a young boy, other inmates will likely make great efforts to torture, rape, and potentially murder his son's killer, and that he takes great comfort in this.
Lets say that for the sake of this hypothetical, we can know with certainty that both the murderer and the father are being entirely genuine.
I'll give you another one.
In this case there is a man, probably in a similar situation to many of us here. He was unattractive all throughout his life, and suffered all of the problems associated with this. He grew up without a father, his mother made no effort to teach him how to be an adult, or really teach him anything useful whatsoever, and perhaps treated him in a similar manner to a pet. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, he was continuously bullied and ostracized by his supposed peers at a government school. The teachers did nothing to stop this, and often resorted to essentially punishing him for being bullied, presumably because it was easier.
After high school, he went on to university, but his efforts to find acceptance and intimacy were still in vain. By this point he was more or less emotionally destroyed from a decade of bullying and rejection, and he no longer had the capacity to continue his education, so he dropped out. A few years later he was no better off, a man without a decent job, with no experience of sex or romance in his life, and with no real hope for the future. He absolutely hated society for what he had experienced, and decided that he would take revenge upon society to gain at least some measure of cathartic satisfaction.
He then procured a firearm, went to his local shopping mall, and proceeded shoot people at random until his inevitable suicide.
So I ask, would you declare either of these scenarios to be an example of justice being served?
Lets go back to the first hypothetical. While it's certainly simplified, the point I'm trying to make here is that carrying out the punishment of criminals for it's own sake is no better than any other sadistic assault on another human, it's only differentiated through legality, and through the concepts of laws or rules. You can extrapolate this logic to all that encompasses punitive justice. The problem is of course, how exactly are you justified in your application of suffering upon another if human action is merely the product of behavioral conditioning? How can you inflict suffering upon someone for breaking an established rule if people have no real control of their own in regards to whether or not they follow it?
I mean according to literally all of the evidence, this is most likely the exact nature of the situation, meanwhile the only possible defense of free will would be some mystical, undefinable, and unproven intuition. At the very least, we can say with certainty that the universe around us is deterministic, and that people are heavily influenced by their environment. So then, given all of this, since the killer has been shown to be dangerous and emotionally unstable, wouldn't the appropriate action be to execute him as quickly and painlessly as possible, as to prevent him from harming others, and prevent him from going through pointless torture which produces nothing?
What I'm saying is that I don't see any difference between the sentiment of the boy's father, and that of the killer himself. Both reacted emotionally and took their anger out on someone else in an unproductive way, it's just that the father's manner of revenge is tolerated by the judicial system, while the killer's is prosecuted.
Much of the same also applies to the latter hypothetical. While it's true that our khhv incel had been treated unfairly throughout his life, people have no true control in how they respond to others, and his romantic failings can be entirely attributed to genetic determinism. So then, how is it reasonable to inflict suffering in death upon people who in all likelihood never directly wronged him, and even if they did, were only responding to him in a manner determined by their nature? Clearly this is only one last attempt at satisfying himself, and accomplishes nothing more than inflicting more misery.
Ultimately there isn't much of a divide between the murderer, the grieving father, the ethical foundation of the judicial system, and the incel who went ER. All of them are a fine example human cruelty, it's just that some are a bit more honest and upfront about it than others.
TL;DR: All forms of punishment, for the sake of retribution alone, are only carried out to satisfy someone's sadism, upon whom they believe responsibly rests. There is no fundamental difference between a person being overcome by an outburst of rage, an individual carrying out an attack upon their society in a final act of revenge, and a judge/jury condemning one of the two former examples to decades of imprisonment for the sake of punishment alone. Each one is an emotional, unemphatic, and illogical response to a difficult situation, and none of them accomplish anything worthwhile. The only difference is that one is endorsed by a society or government, while the others are not.