“The Beatings Will Continue Until the Morale Improves”

Why we’re obsessed with punishments and why it’s not the answer

The United States sports the worlds largest prison population and the largest percentage of worlds total people who are incarcerated at roughly 24%. Let that sink in. About one out of every four people on this planet that are imprisoned are in the United States. Why is that? What is going on? Is it because the states have the worlds worst people? Is it because we have the highest rates of criminal activity?

I think it has to do with other reasons that take root inside our hearts and in our minds which translates into cultural and social factors. The micro ripples into the macro which creates a complex mosaic. The reasons are complicated and the solutions tend to be even more complicated but one thing is for sure, we like punishing. A lot. Too much. Way too much. Okay, let’s be honest, it’s gotten out of hand.

Find the person or people responsible and punish them. That’s how we still operate

The government tends to try and solve problems by finding someone to punish and what’s troubling is that we really haven’t moved away from the archaic practice of putting people in the stockades. The methods have just become less barbaric. We don’t have public beheadings or hangings, thank God but we really haven’t moved that far away from this need for broadcasted public punishments. Find the person or people responsible and punish them. That’s how we still operate and I would argue that we have for centuries.

The Scapegoat Still Lives

The origin of the term scapegoat is actually pretty fascinating. Basically, villages of people would find a goat, blame it for all of their problems, confer their sins onto it, scream at it and promptly execute it. When I first learned about this I thought, “wow, how stupid” but when I really think about it, I wonder if it’s actually kind of smart. Let me explain.

Human beings need someone, or something, to blame. They are obsessed with it. They can’t let it go. It’s actually small-minded primitive but we’re riddled with these practices. Instead of seeking solutions, the masses demand a sacrifice. We must find someone to blame and punish them. Perhaps our early ancestors understood this and by blaming a goat and having it slaughtered, they avoided doing that to a person or group of people. The rage of the mob being temporarily satiated and nobody loses their life unnecessarily.

The moral racism outrage mobs took their irrational blame game to statues of southern confederate historical figures by vandalizing them and destroying them. I’m actually fine with it so don’t write me a letter, I prefer they go after a hunk of bronze formed into a shape recognizable by the primitive brain instead of stringing someone up from the nearest tree. But it’s a statue, and their screaming at it like animals. I understand the moral implications of what the statues represent but seriously it’s not worth losing your individuality to an irrational mob.

We see the public stockade behavior towards school teachers, police officers, politicians and the like. Someone is mistreated? Find the person responsible and punish them. There’s a problem within society? Drug problems? Homelessness? Social inequality? Find the person or group to blame and punish them. The mindset being that certain people deserve to be punished and by punishing them, you are good and doing something good.

Let’s Beat People Into Moral Behavior

You can’t punish people into a better attitude or good behavior. It’s kind of like trying to prevent war by carpet bombing a city. Our obsession with punishments and our insistence on doing so is precisely what is destroying the morale in the first place. If a child is crying because they scraped their knee you don’t start taking your belt off to teach them a lesson. They don’t get happy and start smiling because you gave them the belt but this is the attitude that we have for other people. All of us are falling down and coping in bad ways but you can be sure that somebody will be willing to stand over you when you fall down with their fists clenched while wearing steel-toed boots.

We blame and punish because we are invested in our own self-interests instead of the greater good. But we are also often a slave to our whimsical and irrational emotions. We blame and punish because we want to feel better. When the angry mobs form, that’s usually when things can get really really ugly. History is peppered with the masses boiling over. People lose their individuality to the mob, rationality finds a swift exit and the results are hell.

Not Just Wrong But Evil

We are up to our necks in people boiling over in 2020. The social divisions are starker than they have been in quite some time. We are inundated, even by the most established sources in the implied notions that people who have a different opinion than you are evil. They are to blame for the troubles in the world and deserve to be punished. If you have a difference of opinion with somebody they may not just tell you that you’re wrong but you’re a horrible person for holding that opinion.

Again, this is the archaic and barbaric tradition that we just can’t seem to learn from. People’s differences in opinions aren’t the problem, our irrational need to blame and punish is. Maybe we should go back to blaming literal goats so that we can get it out of our systems and move onto working solutions. That actually seems like a better plan.

If you have a difference of opinion with somebody they may not just tell you that you’re wrong but you’re a horrible person for holding that opinion

I’m just as guilty as this as the next guy, we all do this, we are all guilty and our natural inclination to try and make other people own up to their shortcomings while ignoring our own blind spots is yet another step in the wrong direction. Other people aren’t the monsters, blaming is. We need empathy. We need compassion. We need less tribalism. Not punishments.

The solution? Own up to your own need to blame and own up to the fact that giving into the anger and rage that accompanies it might make you just as bad as the people that you are blaming. Our prisons are filled with people mostly because we are punishment centered. We desperately need prison reform but I am reluctant to ask for it because I am sure that it will just lead to more people being punished. We don’t need blame. We need solutions.

So I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am sick and damn tired of that stupid goat!!