Last semester, I think it was, one of my students asked me what I thought about “나영이 사건” as an article topic for the campus English magazine for which students write articles in my journalistic writing course. If you haven’t heard about it — and you probably don’t live in Korea if you haven’t heard about it — “The Nayeong Incident” was a case in which a 57-year-old man raped a 9-year-old girl in a church. Brian in Jeollanamdo has the basics and some links, and all I can add to that is that there were a lot of variation in explanations floating around at the time. For example, one student said that 12 years is the maximum penalty for sexual assault in Korea (and that 5 years is more usual prison time); another said he “only got 12 years because he said he was drunk” whereas elsewhere the story reported was that he appealed on the grounds that he was drunk at the time.
(EDIT: If you’re easily disturbed, as one reader was, then you might consider giving this next paragraph a pass, as it discusses some graphic details of the case.)
(As a commented on Brian’s page notes: if he was sober enough to use a plunger to extract his semen from the child’s anus and vagina, he was sober enough to think through his actions and, say, decide not to rape and brutalize a child. Not that being drunk would be any kind of excuse, but wiping the kid down, trying to remove his DNA and fingerprints all indicate that he was sober enough to think in the long term in relation to his own life; his inability or refusal to consider her life is not the result of drinking, as much as him being a fucking monster. In other words, it’s an idiotic plea.)
But I’m not posting about this to sensationalize the news. This is a horrible event, and I feel for the child, whose intestines were wrecked and who now likely is in a horrible physical state, and will be for the rest of her life — even if she did recover mentally and emotionally.
That is horrible, but I’m posting about this because I think the reaction we see among people is interesting. For example, in my journalistic writing class, I asked students what they thought would be an appropriate punishment. They didn’t quite follow, so I asked them, “You think 12 years isn’t enough?”
They agreed, so I asked, “How about 15 years?”
Someone else said, “Twenty.”
“But won’t another person say, ‘Twenty years is not enough for such a crime?'”
They agreed, and one student said, “Life. He should be in prison for life.”
Then I asked, “What is the purpose of prison? Is it to prevent him repeating the crime, or to make him suffer? Is it revenge, or protection of other people?”
They were divided about that, so I asked the Russian student in class to talk about gulags a little bit. She did, and we went back to talking about prison and agreed that whether or not it is effective, the idea underlying prison — the model — is rehabilitation. Actually, we all pretty much agreed that the model is ineffective. You can’t detain a criminal with other criminals if you want to rehabilitate him. It makes no sense.
Then I asked, “So then, what should we do with him? I mean, what should Korean society do with this man?”
“Kill him!” said the student who’d brought it up, who’d been angry about it for a long time apparently from what she told me later.
“Ah, revenge,” I said. “He hurts her, her family kills him. What comes next?” After a pause of silence, I said, “His family kills her family. Her family’s relatives and friends kill his family. His family’s relatives and friends kill her family’s relatives and friends. And on we go. I don’t want to live in a world where that’s how we handle this sort of thing. We did that for thousands and thousands of years. That was how we lived pretty much as far back as there were humans. We didn’t just kill people for hurting people in our own group, we killed them just in case they might try it. See a stranger, think about killing him. After all, you never know whether he’s thinking of killing you first, right? Do you want to live in a world like that, to go back to that?”
“No,” they agreed. “That’s terrible,” said one student. And they talked about vendettas and violence and vigilantism and how none of that was particularly appealing to them. We even talked about Sympathy for Lady Vengeance a little, as it’s a pertinent film. (The lead character helps families of children like the nine-year-old girl to hunt down, brutally torture, and execute the pedophile who killed their own children. And the film’s logic and storytelling is such that by the end of the movie, most viewers are likely to great sympathy for her, and on some discomfiting level to find themselves approving of what she’s done.)
“But prison doesn’t work, right? Prison is supposed to fix him, right? And it won’t?”
They agreed that for a petty criminal, or even someone who committed murder as a crime of passion, prison could be rehabilitative. It’s possible. But they agreed that for someone like this guy, there’s a more fundamental brokenness, a malfunction. The man cannot be fixed. We can’t use the system as we understand it to deal with someone like him.
“So what should we do with him?” was the question I left them with. Then, I noted that we’d been talking philosophy for twenty minutes. But, I told them, “We’re not wasting our time. This is how good articles get written: everything starts with a question. My question here was, ‘If 12 years is not enough, what is? What should we do with someone like this?’ The question doesn’t assume that the status quo is the only or the right way. It asks a bigger question, and looks at the world for an answer.”
Looking at the world is the most important part, I think, once you have that facility for asking questions. Looking at the world, we can see a lot of interesting things.
We can see, for example, that the fact we’re horrified about this means we’ve come a long way. According to Steven Pinker, violence is at an all-time, global low. That’s right: with all the violent media in the world, with all that violent ideation that people engage in after seeing Hollywood films and a bouquet of CSI spinoffs and whole music stores filled with rap dedicated to the narrative of killing cops and everything else one might choose to find objectionable, we’re now less violent than we’ve been in all of human history.
Seriously. Listen to the man. But make sure you have time — it’s a longish video, even if it is worth every second, like so many videos at TED:
Just as Pinker points out, we disapprove of violence much more than people ever did in history, too. The public used to gather for hangings, disembowelments, drawing-and-quarterings, and gladiatorial combat. Any of those things would turn most of our stomachs now, but they were prim(at)e forms of entertainment in yesteryear!
The point here isn’t that things are perfect now. It’s that, as we continue to solve the problem of violence, we are beginning to find that the easier-to-solve cases are dried up. Most psychologically normal people are becoming increasingly less likely to engage in violent crime.
Which introduces a dual problem: there are still those people who are psychologically abnormal, who are likelier to engage in violence regardless of prevailing social attitudes and rules. It seems apparent some people will, like the child-rapist described above, continue to be monsters. For those people, no amount of socializing, shame, or other indirect methods will root out their propensity for violence. (And as my classmate from Clarion West and friend, Guy Immega has pointed out, the likelier it becomes that it’s a fundamental facet of their nature that explains why such individuals are the way they are, with the possibility looming up ahead of us that psychopathy might have some fundamentally genetic basis.)
But then there’s the other half of the conundrum, one played with in films like Kick-Ass and Sympathy for Lady Vengenance, which is that the rest of us, the “normals” (let’s simplify it, though really there are probably a spectrum of categories to talk about which we’d count as normal), for whom socialization and rules work. They’re much less violent than in the past, with the net effect that when we do arrive at the time and place where we know who’s a psychopath, an irremediable pedophile, or whatever, and can’t be fixed, we will be even less able to use violence against those individuals.
This isn’t an argument for eugenics. It’s not an argument for arming society in the hopes of the resultant “politeness” wiping out the psychopaths and monsters. It’s just the observation of an ironic dovetailing effect. The less violent society becomes, the more the naturally violent people stand out… and the less able we seem likely to be to deal with them in a way that will effectively insulate the “normal” majority from their violence.
Which is an interesting dilemma for SF. An interesting problem. Guy is already mining out that area, though, and I have other regions to tend to. But it does seem like one reason the next 30 years should be pretty interesting. As we start figuring out just how many things are genetic, we will start realizing some pretty uncomfortable things about ourselves, about civilization, about societies and how they work.
Darwin’s shockwave trembles on through the world, you see.
Interesting thoughts, Gord. It seems to me, though, that you make unquestioned assumption that the justice / rehabilitation system doesn’t work for sex offenders. Maybe it doesn’t, but the blanket assumption that such criminals are irredeemable seems to at least be worthy of debate. If we have, in some species-society wide sense (also problematic, but we’ll roll with it), progressed to a point where violent transgression has become akin to taboo, it’s only because we’ve developed the socio-legal norms and technical infrastructure to manage these criminals – either to rehabilitate them or keep them in isolation from the rest of the population who observe the social order. While we as individuals may have become less inclined to violence, I would argue that it is because we have developed a technical solution – a “social technology” – that addresses it more efficiently.
I haven’t watched Pinker’s talk yet, but maybe he addresses this.
However, the main point I wanted to make was concerning your argument that:
“it’s a fundamental facet of their nature that explains why such individuals are the way they are, with the possibility looming up ahead of us that psychopathy might have some fundamentally genetic basis… when we do arrive at the time and place where we know who’s a psychopath…we will be even less able to use violence against those individuals.”
While I am personally uneasy with the easy equation of “fundamental nature” with “genetic basis”, I am perfectly willing to recognize that genetic abnormalities may have consequences on the processes of brain cognition which affect a person’s ability to act with others. (Think autism, psychosis, and schizophrenia, etc.)
I’m no clinical psychologist, but my impression is that such conditions may also have environmental triggers, and as such their eventual expression – in a form that make criminally transgressive acts more likely – cannot be predicted (at whatever level of medical technology we achieve) as more than an environment-correlated percentage chance.
From the perspective of SF, then, if humanity were supposedly to develop gene-based diagnoses whereby we can say with certainty that a person is ‘going’ to commit a crime (by virtue of what they are), then it seems that it would only be a matter of time (if even that) before the predisposition to such transgressive behaviour itself becomes treatable through genetic therapy. With your philosophical playing field thus levelled, you’re back to the pure moral conundrum.
The question of identifying or removing ‘irredeemably’ bad eggs from society seems a non-starter, speculation-wise, since it simply makes the idea of “bad people” meaningless – by removing the element of choice, “bad” becomes meaningless and, arguably, “people” lose their status as such.
You mentioned Boyer’s book a while back, so I think I can see where you’re coming from in your last paragraph. To be sure, there are some really interesting social patterns that emerge from the fact that we humans are built the way we are, but the shape of the vessel does not necessarily limit the flavour of the wine.
Stephen,
Well, I think the statistics do show pretty well that pedophiles have a rate of recidivism that suggests they mostly aren’t rehabilitatable, at least not without some serious neuroprosthesis or some other method of treatment we don’t have available yet. And in one of his books The Blank Slate Pinker notes that the common claim (and noted pattern) that “those who are abused as children grow up to abuse children” also very neatly ignores the possibility of heredity in the tendency, since a large number of those who are abused as children are abused by relatives. (And, meanwhile, not all people sexually abused as children grow up to perpetrate the same crimes.)
For those who commit sex offenses on other adults, I’m not so sure.
You’re on the money about how a ““social technology” that addresses the issue of violence to some degree of effectiveness.
I get your unease about conflating genetics with “fundamental nature” though I think it’s accepted that, for example, given a decent range of variable environmental factors, certain genetic traits will manifest.
I am not saying that, for example, psychopathy runs in families, or is fundamentally genetic: but what if it was as straightforward as that?
After all, things like Down’s Syndrome, Williams’ Syndrome, and lots of other specific, consistent, and recognizable conditions are linked to specific genetic traits, and environment/development needn’t get too heavily invoked as far as I understand it. Why not psychopathy? Certainly some think that a genetic factor isn’t outlandish!
Which is not to argue it is… I just don’t see why we would necessarily ought to be more complex than a specific genetic condition.
Well, except the fact that we like notions of morality and agency to which we’ve grown accustomed over the last few millennia.
I think the discussion in the twins study linked makes the point I can offer, which is:
Yep, environment or experiences (or, hell, other health conditions, like brain leisons or tumors) can set off all kinds of weirdness, including psychotic states, tremendously violent states, and so on.
But this doesn’t mean that nobody is overwhelmingly genetically predisposed towards a certain kind of behaviour or cognitive state.
In other words, of course in some cases this sort of behaviour or state can result from environmental or other factors. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t often (or usually?) stemming from genetic (or even epigenetic) factors.
(And indeed epigenetics is that weird, spooky place where environment does impact the genetics in a way other than purely classical natural selection.)
There are moral conundrums about that, though, too: one Canadian criminal psychologist has suggested that the prevalence of psychopaths (and, IIRC, borderline personalities) is much greater than most people imagine, and that they can be found not just in dark alleys but also running big businesses, in government, and in other such organizations. (Military, anyone?)
If they’re that common, one must ask what society gets out of having them around. Maybe nothing — maybe they’re niche predators. Maybe not. It’s a still spookier question to ask what society would lose by rehabilitating all its psychopaths (or simply engineering it out of humans at some future point).
If, indeed, genetic therapy could work this way — and I think it’d have to be in utero or in vitro, or, more realistically, through some form of complex neuroprosthesis for those who aren’t mere embryos, though that’s likely farther off into the future — then self-modification would be not much further off, and the whole dichotomy of “good” or “bad people” would become as archaic and stifling as “left wing” and “right wing” are to modern intellectual life. The point being, people could presumably explore a whole different range of empathy settings, likely, again, through some sort of elaborate neuroprosthesis. Then things would just get downright weird.
But of course, the term wine inherently imposes a limiting range on expected tastes. While that range will continue to shift and hopefully grow in the future, corked wine falls among the range only in technical terms, and we are now and will continue to seek to make it a less commonly experienced flavour.
Not that I’m a winemaker, but homebrewing applies only in another way: in beer-making, the shape (or other qualities) of the vessel can affect the beer’s flavor. (Hence the dark glass on many bottled beers; hence the limits on carbonation imposed by a glass bottle, and the necessity for very strong bottles for lambics and such.)
But I think I’m nitpicking!
Bested by a brewmaster! (as a matter of fact, your point holds for wine as well – punts on the bottoms of the bottles, different glasses, different shapes, etc.)
You are right, though, that this is taking my analogy a bit too rigorously.
This is exactly the area that SF would be able to constructively explore, since it brings naturalistic and moralistic fallacies on the definitions of “good” and “bad” into stark definition through the technical management of the group by means of a technology of individual-level intervention.
At the same time, however, it’s worth remembering that certain institutional, organizational, and societal forces do exactly the same thing. For the last four hundred years (depending on where you want to put the tipping point), society has tended towards an increasingly efficient division of labour which in part reinforces particularist rather than universalist moral spheres. The moral values that suit a good autoworker are different than those of a good financial analyst are different than those of a good eldercare specialist precisely because their empathy (for which we might read loyalty) is abstracted to different levels in different contexts. Furthermore, these vary by culture as well as by profession.
Simply put, we already accept a difference between a “good man” and “the right man for the job.” Maybe this is a reason for the phenomenon that Hare suggests about the psychopaths on the loose.
Accordingly, I don’t think that medical-technical interventions render judgments of “good” vs. “bad person” archaic or obsolete at all – these questions are still with us after 10,000 years (with no consensus view in sight), and – for good or for ill (ha!) – it’s unlikely that finding an instruction manual for the human species is going to change anything about that.
Ha, I’m far from a brewmaster! :)
This is exactly the area that SF would be able to constructively explore, since it brings naturalistic and moralistic fallacies on the definitions of “good” and “bad” into stark definition through the technical management of the group by means of a technology of individual-level intervention.
Cf. Just about everything Greg Egan’s written, except his most recent novel. Especially the stories in Axiomatic. (I learned of the idea of neuroprosthesis reading Egan. He has couples switching bodies, sexualities, emotional proclivities, and so on through neuroprostheses, has uploaded humans and seed-generated AIs fine-tuning their mental traits, and so on.)
At the same time, however, it’s worth remembering that certain institutional, organizational, and societal forces do exactly the same thing.
… though perhaps on a different scale? But you do make a great point, and one worth thinking about. As I argued in my Pop Cultures class last week, one of the massive forces that shook up Western (particularly British) society badly enough that it produced SF was the industrial evolution, including massive urbanization, technological change, but also social transformation.
Simply put, we already accept a difference between a “good man” and “the right man for the job.” Maybe this is a reason for the phenomenon that Hare suggests about the psychopaths on the loose.
What’s interesting is where we don’t seem comfortable with this: clergymen, politicians, and superstars all get held under the magnifying glass in differing ways. (In the West it seems more like morbid fascination and an expectation of failure, at least for the latter two, but in Korea, it’s full-on moralistic judgment.
(For, say, having had plastic surgery, or being descended from Chinese immigrants to Korean X number of generations back.)
Accordingly, I don’t think that medical-technical interventions render judgments of “good” vs. “bad person” archaic or obsolete at all – these questions are still with us after 10,000 years (with no consensus view in sight), and – for good or for ill (ha!) – it’s unlikely that finding an instruction manual for the human species is going to change anything about that.
Well, but there are of course technological changes that could render a lot of our moral codes obsolete. For example, if a person could be restored to a placeholder body from a backup, yes, some people would claim it was a copy of the person who simply thought it was the person, but in common practice, eventually, everyone would just accept it as the same person. This would make (traditional, physical) murder not such a big deal. (But murder of data backups might be a really horrific sin.)
More pertinent to our discussion, if psychopathy really were a trait that was inherited through genetic means, but were treatable, say, through neuroprosthesis, then what happens to older notions of good and evil? IT changes a lot:
1. We tend to think interfering with one’s mind directly is immoral, even if we think it is for the individual’s own good. Yet, society would likely do this as soon as it was practicable, in the case of psychopaths. Good, or evil?
(This isn’t a practicable concern, but it’s already come up in deaf communities where children being raised deaf could be given cochlear implants. Some activists think this is a kind of cultural genocide against the deaf subculture. Old (but interesting) article mentioning this here.
(Unlike with the deaf, I think society has a clear-cut universal stake in invasively dealing with its psychopaths.)
2. Our sense of good and evil now — and for a long time — has been predicated on agency. Yet if agency is circumscribed by genetics, and if agency is subject to technological tinkering, by what standard can we deem a person “good” or “bad”? One would expect, in the long term, a shift to a range of “functional states” with outlying dysfunctional states which are, as a rule, to be remedied.
3. Assuming that climate change is anthropogenic, and I do, then the “usefulness” of psychopaths, sociopaths, and borderlines in politics and big business is a trickier moral question: those folks might be “the right person for the job” on some level, but what is the cost? At what point shall we deem this cost simply too much?
I don’t necessarily think ethics becomes obsolete, only, the kinds of questions that make sense change. (Just as I think “right” and “left” just don’t make sense anymore in a lot of ways — though how to deal with the distribution of resources, how to stop the species from offing itself, anbd so on remain pertinent questions.)
Similarly, I think eventually jail will look, to the average person, about as senseless and pathetic and barbaric as chopping the hands off thieves, or debtors’ prisons look to us today. Likewise our diets: killing and eating millions of creatures a year we accept as blunt necessity; when the world switches to vat-grown meat, or maybe to soy, it will look unimaginably horrific and backward.
That world will have other ethical dilemmas, even bioethical dilemmas, but they will be of a different character than the ones we face now. That’s the beauty of science, technology, and of change.
For me, on one level anyway, SF is all about singing the glories and horrors of that world where all of what we assume becomes obsolete, even as we wrestle with the same kinds of questions with which our ancestors once wrestled.
Child rapists cannot be rehabilitated. And for breaking the social contract as violently as they do, for destroying the potential of the species, the only valid solution is death. The same way a rabid dog must be put down to protect every other creature around them.
This is a great discussion, a lot of food for thought.
For the purposes of the discussion, let’s define ethics as morals-in-practice. So you’re right, ethics will change to the extent that the consequences of certain practices change, but that doesn’t mean that good and bad will change. In the Duncan Idaho-style example you bring up, the moral codes stay the same – destruction of the person is wrong – it’s just that the definition of ‘person’ has changed. (Much more tricky would be the potential coexistence of multiple backups, I think).
But let me get to the main points you raise.
I see your point (and share your appreciation of the limitations) of the analogy with deafness.
All right, so there are lots of possible discussion points here if testing and treating otherwise fully functioning adults, but for the sake of argument, if there’s an in-utero test/treatment that would prevent psychopathic development , I can’t see any valid argument for not making it mandatory.
Agency is at the root of what we’ve been talking about of course. My own point of view is that any hypothetical technology whereby we can tinker with the little grey cells, if not used for the purpose of redressing a medical (or medicalized) ‘problem’, is morally questionable. I can see that even this qualification gets me into hot water – once you start drawing lines, isn’t one place as good as another? It’s all arbitrary, right? Morally, I guess, I would discriminate between types of behavioural modification broadly in terms of ‘repairs’ vs. ‘improvements’. Bringing psychopaths up to spec is one thing, but engineering a society by adjusting the cognitive load associated with certain interpersonal behaviours seems to fall much more on the totalitarian side of things.
(I am reminded of an Orson Scott Card book I read in high school, The Memory of Earth, where this was accomplished by some kind of mind-control satellite which made technological development very hard for the planet-bound humans. I can’t remember much about it, other than that I don’t think I read any other books in the series).
Put another way, I think the question we’re getting at here is whether, given a paradigmatic shift in our understanding of agency, we choose to surrender it (or maybe ‘sell’ would be a better term) or to expand it (remove any cognitive tendencies towards or compunctions against certain behaviours so that everything becomes a conscious choice… there’s definitely a ‘buy in’ cost there).
Finally, I suspect that the solution to climate change is a bit more complicated than red-carding the psychopaths. We are all (necessarily, I think) self-serving to some degree, which means that local and global priorities are inevitably at odds. Not that I am cynical about our potential as a species to work through these problems (far from it, in fact). The fact is, however, that climate change and other socially engendered worldwide calamities – environmental degradation, famine, disease, and poverty – aren’t simply a result of a few bad eggs, but rather systemic failures that implicate us all. (The “right man for the job” bit in my last comment was meant scornfully – I don’t condone such cynical organizational decisions, I just know they happen).
But it’s bedtime for me.
Amen.
William,
Well, I think SF has taught us to add “…yet,” to the ends of phrases that include “cannot.” I agree with you that with all the technology we have now, the vast majority (if not all) pedophiles cannot be rehabilitated. But I can also imagine neuroprosthesis or other approaches that would facilitate their “rehabilitation.” I also seem to remember a story somewhere in which such a thing is a achieved, and the pedophile is horrified not just at himself, but at the people who “fixed” him, asking, “What made you think I’d want to be normal and understand what I’d done?” (I think he kills himself in the end, but it was a long time ago.)
I don’t necessarily agree that putting them to death is the solution.
We put down dogs with rabies, by the way, not only to prevent the spread of the disease, but also to alleviate what is both an inevitable and a very painful death. In humans, notably, thought rabies is fatal once it hits the nervous system, we don’t “put humans down” in this way.
(Pedophilia not being fatal in this way, I don’t see “mercy killing” as becoming a particularly likely response… and most of the civilized world doesn’t practice the death penalty anymore, so it’s unlikely in that way too, as horrified of pedophiles as people are.)
I agree with the point that they are socially damaging, but I’m not sure that exile (to an island) or imprisonment (say, to work in garment manufacture) isn’t just as effective in eliminating this social impact.
Stephen,
… and Halleluia! I too am really enjoying this discussion! Thanks!
Well, but we can certainly expand the grey areas. I have this story, as yet unpublished, where an uploaded consciousness is hunting down the other forks of himself (ie. other copies of himself that forked off at earlier points up the datastream). He’s essentially murdering other versions of himself, but he justifies this by noting that (a) they don’t have the wits or guts to hunt him down (because of a “mutation” in the replication of the data, and of his resultant developmental differences over time), and (b) because he feels himself as existing in a continuity with the original man who was uploaded ages ago.
The point being, this is in some sense not unlike how we live, where we imagine possible selves who would result from decisions we’re making — “Go to Japan? Don’t go to Japan?” (I assume you’re that Stephen, maybe wrongly) — and in essence kill off the future selves that would have resulted from choices (a), (b), and (c) when we choose option (d).
Well, is and isn’t. Those other selves, in my story, are ironically closer to the original, and less fit to survive the digital landscape, where resource scarcity exists in another form. So this kind of “murder rampage” kind of takes on something more like the scenes we watch on nature shows, on the African savannah: is the lion bad, or the antelope good? Nope — it’s just biology versus biology.
So it goes beyond Duncan Idaho, in my opinion. By the way, would you believe I’ve not read Dune? I have seen the films — the one with Sting, and the more recent Sci-Fi Channel effort — and I have the book, but haven’t ever gotten around to it. If it makes you feel better, though, I’m catching up on earlier classics, like Asimov’s Foundation books, at the moment.
I’d advise caution. For one thing, are there different kinds of psychopathy? For the ones who aren’t just violent predators — and most of them are not physically violent — is there a social function they serve? One imagines that we’d have been picking them out and killing them off way back when… if we weren’t so busy putting them on thrones and following them and calling them “Your Highness” or “Master” or whatever.
I’m not saying that psychopaths necessarily do serve a useful social function, but I am saying we don’t understand their social role — historical or present — very well. At some point people would have been eager to get rid of mosquitoes and flies, but imagine the ecological consequences of that action!
(There’s no direct analogy intended: it’s just another case of what seems like a good idea maybe not being one.)
Right, but the problem is that historically, we haven’t been so great at seeing through cultural and even racial biases. The crazy eyelid surgery that is so popular in Korea was first performed, here, by army surgeons around the time of the Korean war who saw Korean eyelids and eyes as defective, according to one piece I read.
(And that’s letting alone societies where differences of all kinds are pathologized. I can see some Korean parents seeing it as bringing their kids “up to spec” by genetically modifying them to develop into more studious, obedient, and conformist adults. And then there’s sex-selection. Ian McDonald’s novel and short stories in India play with the idea that as human intervention into reproduction becomes possible, some horrifying things result… like an insane sex imbalance or an elite ruling class of people who age at half the rate of normal humans — but are adults in 10-year-old bodies).
Mind-control wouldn’t even be necessary, in fact I think that’s a cold war bugbear, stemming from the fear of communism. Far scarier to me is the “enlightened self-interest” of citizens in capitalist societies as it would be applied to reproduction.
Well, but agency is a problematic notion already: Benjamin Libet and others have already problematized the notion of agency in the here and now. And while I’m not sure how far I trust Susan Blackmore’s claims, she has argued that in fact the experience of agency and consciousness itself is a kind of memplex illusion. I’m shrugging as Buddhists have argued a similar thing for ages. I don’t think so, but then, I also feel as if I’m the one making decisions, and Libet and others suggest that at least the “conscious” I that seems to be making decisions, isn’t.
Oh, absolutely. I think it might be part of the problem of long-term thinking and of compassion. I think a lot of politicians in all parties would register as having psychopathic traits.
But one needn’t be a psychopath to be shortsighted, selfish, or a poor-decision-maker. There are people who live in places where cars aren’t necessary, but who drive them as a status symbol, for example.
I’m not sure how cynical I am about our potential to deal with climate change and other looming threats. I like to be optimistic. Then I see people frothing at the mouth over gay marriage or whether health care should be nationalized in the US, screaming for Muslim blood or, over here where I live, ranting about Japan and especially Dokdo (Takeshima, in Japanese), and I wonder whether we’re really likely to get out shit together.
One thinks of Olaf Stapledon’s novel Star Maker, and feels a little growing worry, what with all those other species on other worlds whom he depicts as having the same self-assurance they would “make it”… and then destroy themselves, sometimes at a much higher level of social or technical development than we’ve thus far reached.
But we must hope, and moreover must try to find ways of making that hope sensible.
That’s an immensely cool discussion and I feel privileged to have read it.
Marvin,
Thanks! You can join in if you like… :)
Sorry to join late on this thread, but I was in Hong Kong until yesterday.
As a father of two kids (third grade girl and kindergarten boy), I wanted that guy (and those responsible for similar crimes in recent years) dead after a fair trial. While I acknowlege that the argument is more emotional than logical, it is not entirely emotional. There are econometric (i.e. statistical) evidence that death penalty does affect crime rates on serious crimes – though effects specificaly on rape and pedophilia specifically has not been studied. The easiest and most accessible information on these studies are from “Freakonomics.” (Note that these results tend to run against conventional wisdom from sociology and psychology on the usefulness of death penalties – though from what I’ve seen, those soc and psych studies are based on case studies, which have their own set of problems).
In another context, I’ve made the comment that the human race has become such a wimp in the last 100 years(**IT’S MEANT AS A JOKE!!!**). Remember – in the 1800s, executions were like public picnics. Families went out to see people being hung (US West), be-headed (France), tied & caned (Korea), and cheered. it was nice clean entertainment for kids and the whole family.
Since I want to stick more or less to SF, and since we have been talking about James Tiptree Jr. last week, her second novel has a relevant topic. *SPOILERS FOLLOW*
In the book “Brightness Falls from the Air”, she follows up the consequences of Alfred Bester’s “The Demoloshed Man”. In that book, if you are guilty of a horrendous crime, your memories are erased, and your personality is written over. (Note that there is an implicit assumption that personality arises from socialization rather than biology. Tiptree in her real identy was trained as a psychologist, if I remember correctly). There is a woman(a wife and a really nice sympathetic person with a loving husband, and one of the main viewpoint characters). Someone is trying to kill her. It turns out that in her previous life (which no one knew about) she was guilty of genocide; and her personality was wiped. But this would-be assassin was not satisfied, so he wanted to kill her physically; but he couldn’t go through with it. The twist in this story (or this portion of the story – this was just one of the plot threads), was that the woman, learning of her past, agreed with the assassin that she did not deserve to live. (You’ll have to read the book to find out what happened). This idea was later adapted and used in an episode of Babylon 5.
Junsok,
Hong Kong, wow. Conference, I imagine?
I’d be really interested in a study whether it did affect pedophilia specifically. My suspicion is that it probably would not, since this crime seems a compulsion among the convicted offenders — compulsion as in, they seem to repeat it after incarceration or ostensible “rehabilitation” so that, hearing of other pedophiles being executed is likelier to drive them to take stronger measures to avoid capture (like outright killing victims) instead of scaring them off committing the crime in the first place. This, of course, depends on how much agency actually factors into the commission of this particular crime, and I don’t know enough to say. But it worries me.
Oh, I get the joke, and it’s true in a number of ways. Mass executions being entertainment — indeed, and it’s mind-blowing to imagine Romans having a grand day at the Arena watching people (criminals, slaves, war hostages) hacked to pieces while reenacting historical battles.
I kinda like that we’re wimpier now, but I wonder how it’s affecting the socioecological niche inhabited specific subgroups of humans of a more predatory bent — psychopaths, borderline personalities, narcissitic personality disorders, pedophiles. We’re better equipped to filter them, I think, and to separate them from the general population, but maybe they’re thriving as never before? Hard to say since reportage historically is very unreliable.
That Tiptree novel sounds great… I’ll have to find it, though I need to read the rest of the short stories in the collection I have first. Ah, Tiptree.
By the way, Junsok, I’m curious what you thought of Kick-Ass in the context of the argument I’m currently smashing to bits, and in the context of having kids not quite in a relevant age range, but close.
Also, I skipped over your acknowledgement of the emotional component of your response to that case I mentioned… well, I definitely understand (or at least comprehend) it. When I heard it, I rather hoped he’d be put to death too… and when I heard his defense plea, I hoped he’d be put to death for making such a shitbrained mockery of the justice system. (“Oh, um, I was drunk!” does not cut it in a case like this, unlike, say, accidental destruction of property or a mutually drunken altercation between adults.)
But I’m always leery about how emotional responses line up with the world and its workings.
I can imagine thinking none of that mattered so much if I had a kid that age… let alone if it happened to a kid I knew or cared about (not just my own, though I expect that would be more intense still). I understand the desire for his execution that normal people felt then. I’m not sure it would have the effect they’d imagined, though.
I didn’t see Kick-Ass, so I cannot make an informed comment; (Which is one of the reasons why I refrained from commenting on that thread. I do plan on seeing it, though – it sounds like something I would really enjoy) but speaking about US-type comics in general (I read them *a lot* until the early 1990s), it’s pretty obvious that they sexualize the female characters, (While I really enjoy it, you have to wonder how can they fight super-criminals with those large chests, while wearing bikinis…) even the teens. (Wonder Girl anybody? How old is she supposed to be when she started out? 15? 16? Let’s not even talk about Robin) What I remain somewhat unconvinced is whether the sexualization of the characters lead to all the bad things that we read about (degradation of women, actual acts of pedophilia, and so on). What evidence I see seems mixed.
Concerning pedophiles, you’ll probably have heard already that it happened again. Regarding deterrent for pedophiles, I suspect that even death penalty may not deter some hard-core pedophiles or criminals and psychopaths. However, it is the (potential) criminals on the margin who would be deterred by harsh punishment. If the punishment is harsh and widely publicized, some of these marginal nutsos would not commit the crime. (This behavior would be picked up in a statistical study, but NOT case studies, usually done only on the criminal who did the crime and was caught – which is one of the reason why I distrust case studies unless they have been accompanied or backed up by a comprehensive statistical study). Also, there seems to be evidence that activities which we thought were addictive and compulsive (e.g. cigarettes and drugs – even hard drugs) do respond to economic incentives (prices, sanctions, etc.).
Regarding the rapist’s excuse that he was drunk at the time – my understanding is that there actually is a provision and precedence that gives lesser punishment to rape under intoxication, and the judge in the lower courts used it to give the criminal a reduced sentence. (I may be wrong though). Given the social acceptance of binge frat-like drinking in Korea, and given that the people who make the laws, prosecutes and judges the laws have a lot of late night parties where they get drunk, I can’t say I am surprised that they have this “get out of jail” card in place. This casual attitude about drinking IMO requires the harsh punishments dealing with drunk driving here, in order to override the long-term cultural acceptance and complacency.
Regarding Tiptree: I need to re-read it, but I thought “Brightness Falls from the Air” was a great book when I read it in the mid 1980s. Then I found that, of the two novels Tiptree wrote, “Brightness” was considered the lesser book! I have her other novel also (in storage – it would probably take days to find it) but I haven’t read it yet. I really should read it one of these days.
Junsok,
Yeah, I think you’d love Kick-Ass. Like you, I agree that female superhero characters are very often sexualized, but I’m also dubious about all the claims that this leads to things like sexual violence. I do think it might have complex and not completely positive effects on women’s self-image — to be cool, powerful, heroic, one needs to present oneself as sexualized in a way patently designed for men to enjoy? — but then, how many skinny guys have a complex because they’re not stacked like Superman or Batman or whoever?
I’ve not seen enough evidence to be sure, but my strong suspicion is that sex crimes, and especially sex crimes committed against children, are categorically different from crimes like, say, robbery, or revenge killing, or embezzlement. The test case seems to me, asking yourself, “Can I envision myself committing this crime, given some really extenuating circumstance?” And the answer for bank robbery, revenge killing, and embezzlement all seem to me to be fundamentally possible for normal people; whereas, I sense, pedophilia does not. (I certainly cannot imagine any extenuating circumstance that would lead me there.)
Of course, that’s no proof that pedophiles wouldn’t be deterred. But it suggests that the decision process is at least a little alien to people like you and me, and that the idea of deterrence may not work the same way. (Actually, even just differences in intelligence could make a difference. A criminal who overestimates his own ability to evade capture, for example, might arguably be less deterred by a crime than we might imagine… and overestimation of one’s own competence seems to increase as actual competence decreases. Hah… probably also increases as one gets closer to the top of an organization, to link back to another recent comment of yours… or perhaps it is that the flamboyant and overblown overestimation that goes with low competency is the core skill of being a CEO, president, or other leader?)
The interesting thing about the issue of attitudes towards drinking, and this “drunk defense” thing, is that when I discussed the teetotal movement and the Prohibition (as part of the background to the whole Flapper “moment” in the 1920s) with my “English & American Pop Cultures” course, it was pretty clear a lot of them could see exactly why there were so many women involved in the movement. I said, “Why do you think that was so?” and there was a rapid discussion of the kinds of things drunk men do to women, and how drunkenness is (or can be) used as an excuse after the fact; several students (especially women, but then, the class was mostly women) were very quick to offer examples.
I agree with you about harsh punishment for drunk driving. But… is it working as a deterrent here? Back in Jeonju, when there was a drunk-driving crackdown, it was always on main streets, and one got the sense that anyone who was driving drunk could avoid those few checkpoints very easily by staying to smaller roads. (And of course the crackdowns were happening, say, 3 weeks of the year.) I don’t know how common it was, but attitudes seemed so lax that I was a bit shocked by it all.
Not just by Koreans. One former instructor at our own university’s language center (who had the same name as a famous ST:TNG actor, and who seems to have started speed dating) had a penchant for driving home drunk on weekends. He was a real scumbag, in my dealings with him — he was also sexually harassing female foreign professors, somehow always the ones who were not native speakers of English — and I was told by one of his coworkers (after he left) that at some point he’d had his Canadian driver’s license suspended for DUI. Yet somehow, he was tooling around the streets of Korea in his SUV, loaded, according to the same coworker, who was horrified by him… and I’m sure he’s still doing it nowadays. Sigh.
(When I think of him, all my nice ideas about tolerance and acceptance and freedom kind of slip to the edge of the windowsill, not quite but almost. I kind of wish there was an island where we could put the really shitty people like him, and let them live out their lives together, raping one another and hitting one another drunk with their SUVs and abusing one another in general; it’s what folks like him seem to live for, but it’d be best if the rest of us didn’t have to deal with it.)
Tiptree: right, you’ve gotten me to add the anthology of short stories to my list, and when that’s done, I’ll find the novels. But… so much to read. the stack of half-read books on my nightstand is something like 10 books deep. All great, just… I’m distracted, short of time, etc.
As for the second note: oh, I think criminals have been killing off the witnesses/victims as a way of covering their tracks for a long time. I just worry it might increase if harsh deterrents weren’t accompanied by a much higher rate of conviction. (And then, of course, if you ONLY call for higher convictions, you’ll get more wrongful convictions…)
One short comment concerning the possibility that the criminal may kill their victims if the punishment is harsh. I admit this is one thing which does bother me, but in the last few cases, several criminals have already killed their victims. It seems like we’ve already crossed the threshold here.
Junsok,
Woah, dude… I need to digest all that. I’ll comment soon, I promise!
Your comments really deserve more thought out answers. But in the interest of not having this conversation bloat up into a novella, let alone a 20 volume fantasy series…
1) “Lookism and Sexualization of appearences” The argument you cite (concerning how ‘sexualization’ of women lead to demeaning of women and violence) was something that I was somewhat impressed me when I was in high school; now I think it makes women look like a bunch of wimps (or wimpettes). (To quote Chris Rock — “Yeah, I said it.”) It seems that when men find that they are not physically attractive, they try alternative means to become attractive (e.g. money, power, intelligence). They don’t go around saying ‘because I don’t have an advantage in this area, I think this should not be a criteria for judgment.’ I remember a Sting concert I went to when Branford Marsalis was a member of his band, and he was doing a killer solo; when Sting took his shirt off. All the women went nuts – smothering Marsalis’ solo. What makes it OK for women to fawn over shirtless men and not OK for men to fawn over shirtless women? :) [Yes, I know the standard arguments – and I agree that in an evaluation, a person should be rated by the extent of relative talent. But the jokes by women about men in Sex and the City seems much more socially accepted than jokes made in Playboy, even though they are essentially the same jokes but about different genders).
2) Sex crimes (esp. pedophilia) being different from other crimes: I can’t imaging being a pedophiliac either (though how would you and anyone know? On the other hand, I can very easily imaging myself being a murderer…) but deciding whether to commit a crime or not is probably not a simple choice of “yes” or “no”; Else, there would be a lot more repeat sex offenders. (As soon as they see a girl they like, they would be ‘forced’ to rape her). I think social pressure and possibility of punishment affects the potential pedophiliac in choosing whether to commit the crime or not, though the extent of the influence is debatable. For me, if executing five (or more) convicted pedophile rapists prevent one pedophile rape, it’s worth it.
It’s interesting that you think this type of decision-making process is strange. It’s the standard decision making cost and benefit analysis they train you in economics. Most ‘rational’ criminals (though we can argue whether pedophile rapists are rational) follow at least a form of this argument (e.g. what are the chances of me getting caught? Is the payoff enough to compensate?)
3) Overconfidence: I’ve seen papers similar to the ones you cite, not only for crimes, but also for Wall Street stock, bond and foreign exchange traders (in light of the financial crisis); which IMO is one reason why punishments have to be really harsh, even excessive, to get its point across. Citing similar behavorial economics research, wide publicity of criminals getting caught and punished will also help perceptions that a criminial can get away with the crime.
4) Pigheadedness by those on top: In addition to the research you point out, other serious problems in Korea and Asian societies seems to be the unconditional respect given to leaders, intellectuals, and senior citizens. I can come up with a slew of examples, but I’ll just cite my own case. Ever since I became a professor, and all my students look up on me as the ultimate judge of truth or something like that, I’ve been going slowly egomanical, self-righteous and insane. Just ask my wife.
4) Harsh punishment as deterrent (drunk driving):
The popular perception (which is not a careful study) is that it has worked. The knowledge about the problem is higher, and most people use taxis or private drivers for hire when drunk (the harsh punishment begat a minor industry of temporary drivers). The problem was a lot worse in the late 80s and early 90s. However, it is still very easy to evade those checkpoints (which is a problem with Korean law enforcements in general…)
5) Getting drunk as an excuse
Actually, that was one of the excuses offered by Korean businessmen before the 2000s on why people who work together should go out drinking all the time. Drinking lowers the inhibitions between (at the time mostly male) workers so that it eases problems between colleagues, as well as problems with bosses since the underlings become freer to express their opinions. (The latter argument, IMO is utter bullsh*t). Now for men and women, the use of alcohol as an excuse has existed throughout time in all countries, though I also seem to remember some articles arguing that it also worked the other way around – making it acceptable for ‘nice’ girls to fool around… (Though whether this was ‘true’ or an intellectual justification for forcing oneself on his/her date is up to question).
6) False convictions
For better or worse, since the DNA evidence has become more widely accepted, it has probably become a lot easier to get accruate convictions for rape. It’s pretty hard to get off on it without leaving DNA evidence. (Though you’d probably get more defenses saying ‘it was voluntary rough sex…’)
Junsok,
Wow, trilogy/20 volume series (Grr Terry Brooks) indeed! Okay, let’s see:
1) “Lookism and Sexualization of appearances”: No, I understand your point. Again, it seems to point to the common misconception that OTHER people are more adversely affected by media than oneself. Of course, one could look at the rates of plastic surgery in Korea, but like other hypercompetitive things (English ability, TOEIC score, number of certificates accumulated), I think it’s more to do with culture, economics, and schooling. (Well, and the degree to which kids are willing to resist parental/peer life-micromanagement in the aggregate.)
Well, actually, some of them do. The rest laugh at them, call them bitch baby whiners, and they don’t get dates. Then they become Pick-Up Artists.
Personally, I’d be annoyed at Sting, ’cause Marsalis is badass.
Indeed. And I think sadly it’s become the kind of observation a man, when he makes it, finds will get him slotted into the men’s movement or something. I mean, when men complain about women they’re misogynists; when women complain about men, they’re venting because society is patriarchal and how dare anyone call them on their generalizations from personal experience?
I have some friends who complained at length, in front of me, about how men don’t help with kids or housework. My response? “You chose to marry men who were like that. Nobody forced you.”
Right. I’ll admit, I am exoticizing the pedophile’s mental state… in part because from what I can tell, it is exotic, just as a psychopath’s is. But that wouldn’t mean there’d be no cost-benefit or risk analysis going on, you’re right. That said, pedophiles in North American prisons seem to go through absolute hell on the inside, supposedly so bad they wish they’d gotten the death penalty. (I’ve heard they get raped and brutalized by fellow prisoners much more when it gets out what they are in the slammer for, though that may be a popular media misconception that’s gotten into newspapers and such.) Yet pedophiles seem to re-offend more than “regular” sex criminals.
My sister volunteered in a program in the town where she lived, in Ontario, in which members of the community “helped” pedophiles not to re-offend. I think it was 5 people per offender, and they would check up on him, make sure he was paying his rent — he was that bad off in terms of functioning in society — and they would be a support system for him to turn to if he started to feel he was in danger of re-offending. Which sounds very compassionate, and makes me wonder how effective it was. I guess maybe that’d be another approach to contrast with scaring all offenders into not re-offending. Hmmm.
It does raise the question, though, what else would be justified. Public flaying? Drawing and quartering? Would the efficacy of the deterrent go up with how public and how horrifying the punishment was? Which is more moral: torturing one pedophile to death, or executing five — given the same deterrent quality?
Interesting. I’d be curious to see how much the overconfidence survives after a lengthy incarceration. Probably varies from crime to crime.
Hahaha. Well, I’ll caveat one thing: I don’t think it’s actually unconditional respect, as much as unconditional representations of respect. People play the game, but whether they actually respect someone often doesn’t come out in one-on-one interactions. It’s very interesting to get to know students well, and hear what they start saying.
Indeed, we both know of one Head Honcho near and dear to our lives, ahem, who is widely unrespected and mocked, who is hated by many, and yet nobody’s saying anything. I think that’s a human universal, mind, but the hierarchic stuff and other things in culture here seem to exacerbate it.
Yup! In fact, the same problem applies to academic dishonesty. As soon as there’s an established, templated way of preventing cheaters, there will be people who find the workaround. Ha, it works the same way with DRM, and so many things. Problem is, the harsh punishments against copyright violation have ruined the MPAA’s reputation. (Though it wouldn’t work that way with pedophiles, of course!)
Ah, yes, in my experience this is complete crap. Indeed, I am very dubious about the whole idea of people being more honest when drunk. I think people say stupid things when drunk, and some people do very stupid things, and there’s enough chaff to make whatever honesty you get impossible to weed out.
This seems to have happened in the flapper era, when women were starting to drink more (and smoke too). As an aside, I’m fascinated by the way smoking is being marketed to women here (and the focus of some low-level discussion about equality, at least in classrooms) all of a sudden… Torches of Freedom, anyone?
Ugh. Sometimes humanity is just kind of stomach-turning. It’s heartbreaking how many women I know have a story… not just in Korea, of course, but the stuff I’ve heard in Korea has been more out-of-left-field, semi-strangers or strangers. I’m told there are a lot of screams for help at night, down in Yeokgok. And I’ll be honest, it makes one think of Kick-Ass pretty hard, and wish there were a few guys like these walking around with baseball bats.