One of the more amazing observations I've been privy to over the past half-decade is the seemingly uselessness of the power of the punitive. It seems I've always had a vague faith in the power of suffering or embarrassment to change behavior; perhaps it's a conservative characteristic to think that punishment works - when it most certainly doesn't in most cases. (Think of the high recidivism rate in our prisons and the fact that almost all inmates maintain their innocence. I'm beginning to think there is no such thing as deterrence.)
But this has been brought home more fully in various and sundry ways from the minor to the major. I think partially this is due to the fact that we tend to think others are mostly the same as ourselves. As someone extremely averse to pain and humiliation, I'm always almost impressed by those who seem absolutely immune to it. Bill Clinton and Barney Frank, for example, are folks who seem to have a self-confidence such that they have no embarrassment gene and cannot be brought low by punishment because they will never see it as legitimate. It's a right-wing conspiracy. And to observe a family member buying an expensive 2008 car and paying an exorbitant interest rate due to already having ruined their credit is to create slack-jaw'd awe. The punishment of the bank in the form of a punitive rate did not curb their spending appetite.
Bruce Springsteen is an example of the untameable spirit, someone who hated the nuns in his '50s grade school would not reform no matter the pain they inflicted. And with Saddam Hussein, the unthinkable thing was that he didn't take the U.S. seriously. There were no-fly zones, U.N. sanctions, the Gulf War. And yet - remarkably! - he didn't take George Bush's threat seriously even though every European nation was. And so were the protesters on our streets. The West thought Bush was giving Hussein an ultimatum simply as a pretext for war, while Hussein never thought that Bush would come to Baghdad and so apparently thought the ultimatum was mere bluster. You gain an appreciation for just how difficult it is to parent. I used to naively think that merely "laying down the law" works.
This all was triggered by Darwin Catholic beginning a post with:
Children seem to show a near immunity, at times, to the power of negative example.True enough, but what amazes me more is that we adults show immunity, much of the time, to the power of negative experience.
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